27th August 2023.
Call it obstinacy on my part, but in July the missus and me had tugged ourselves away from a big event: the Island Games. Which were on Guernsey. For first time in twenty years. Just one of those things, a diary clash.
Sod’s Law, then, that as our Poole bound ferry passed between Les Casquets lighthouse and Alderney it was all kicking off behind us on the chock-a-block sea rock. Athletes from Åland to Saaramaa, Gozo to Hitra, limbered up. Arrows slid from quivers. Sails unfurled. Cyclists jostled in lycra. And ping pong balls got unboxed. Not cricket ones though. A vibe for the glorious game just wasn’t there.
Unlike on the mainland.
I mean, wowza! Wyvern flags flew in their yellow and red. Cider flowed. And ‘Zummerzet-la-la’ was chorused by thousands. Why? Because at Brum’s rainy Edgbaston Finals Day, Tom ‘Pepsi’ Kohler-Cadmore, like a stooping sparrowhawk snatching a dunnuck in a single claw, caught the fizzing boundary bound ball. Making Essex all out. And bang-a-bang-bang went the fireworks.
Led by Cap’n Gregory, his team sang ‘Blackbird’. Raucously. In a state of ecstasy. In front of their supporters. Who doffed wurzel hats. And cheered themselves hoarse in their yokel smocks. Not without heart flutters, the county had deservedly scooped the T20 Vitality Blast. I wouldn’t have missed that occasion for the world.
Fabulous, infectious stuff that tapped a vein. Something I discovered on this August’s return to contemporary Somerset charm.
Indeed, five past eight this morning, in Wiveliscombe’s Thorne’s Butchers shop, an establishment oft frequented by Taunton-born England legend Jos Buttler when home visiting family, Jonathan in his work-a-day apron wielded a length of sausage meat. He demonstrated me his personal observation of white ball batting: “Swish-swosh-swish. Miss ball, miss ball, miss ball. Dot, dot, dot. Then… the reverse sweep. Oops. Up in the the air it goes. Wicket! So another dot. What the eff happened to proper cricket strokes and running on the nurdle?” A lament from a traditionalist before serving me lamb cutlets for tomorrow’s lunch.
Today’s was already catered for. The missus had made a lunchtime reservation. My birthday treat. On a day we could actually see the blinking sun.
Which had me luxuriating, whiling away an hour, on the patio rocking chair. Something I alternated with the cat. I admired the nuts that fatten on the corkscrew hazel. Observed a juvenile blackbird retch on a gurt slug. And I nursed a small bruise from a shoulder whump of encouragement. Summer’s damp having swelled the cottage’s heavy front door to sticking irritation.
Laptop balanced on my knees, a creative juice almost trickled. Sprung from my early morning encounter not so much with the blooming door or Jonathan but with Achojah and, of course, the oh-my-gosh gos of the police garden-to-garden search.
First things first, Achojah, a Nigerian gent whose name, he lets on, means ‘rise up to the challenge’, was in his slippers and yellow PJs with natty brown paw print design, as he filled a neat Fiesta at a Jones’ Garage forecourt pump. He looked flustered. Obviously I was nosy. His explanation for his attire? “My wife, she shoo me out of bed! She’s running late for work. Her hair beads!”
And the police? That particular thrill was down to our flabbergasted neighbour Gill. She’d spied the cop car. Blue lights flashing. Parked in broad daylight at our lane’s end. The uniformed presence, weighty.
“Woah,” I’d breathed, enthralled, “how worrying! A miscreant on the run?” The mind boggled.
“Try miscreant, plural.” Gill smiled enigmatically. “Of the waddling sort. There was me tending the pergola jasmine when, imagine my surprise, a plod hat pops up over the garden wall and its owner puffs, ‘Sorry to bother, we’re responding to a report of some AWOL ducklings. Their mum’s having a quacking wobbly.’” It was a saga, I discovered, that ended happily. I hoped the same for my AWOL creative spark.
Almost noon and the missus saw my fingers hovering but not quite active. “You haven’t tapped a thing since that squirrel made its home in the wood burner,” she observed.
“I keep getting distracted,” I replied.
“So nothing about that superb cup win?”
“Thought I’d let the dust settle.”
“Us driving down to the South of France for your daughter’s wedding, then? Surely that might have inspired you?”
“Felt that that was hard to summarise.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Being mesmerised by leaf and bird shadows while waiting for my best trousers to dry.”
“Truly make a note,” the missus encouraged.
In my defence, the rocking chair, heavy, cast-iron framed and oak-slatted, that sits on the cobbles beside the bamboo clump is a wilful brumby of a thing. When plonking down my derriere hot tea does happen to spill as my nose propels toward the what-the-hell-are-we-doing-out-this-time-of-year-forget-me-nots before thwumping back to point at the underbellies of rooks. Bickerings of which hog the crenelations of the vast church tower.
“Budge up! Budge up!” they seem to shrill. “Here’s Cordelia!” Laggardly Cordelia squeezes in. For moments only. Up and away they flap. En masse. Kaahing cheerfully. The gull atop the flagpole clearly needed a-mobbing. Seeing it off toward the Quantocks, they’re soon back where they started. Another five minutes of their day killed. Of mine too.
“Anyway hubby, move your bum, dry or not,” said the missus clapping her hands, “Time to go.”
Hurrah! Treat time! Lunch at Augustus, Taunton’s Michelin star bistro named after Augustus Gloop, the grub adoring tubby lad from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The venue choice was wholly down to my salivations from reading a critique by the flamboyant, fop-haired, Guardian food writer Jay Rayner. He’d gone doolally for what he described as, “A dome of creamy scrambled egg draped in soft fillets of room-temperature smoked eel, the boisterous oils encouraged out by the warmth beneath. On top is a teaspoon full of shiny smoked herring roe. It’s surrounded by pale green fronds of frisée, like a choir boy’s ruff, and dressed with dribbles of spiced oil.” And the immaculate front-of-house Cedric duly delivered the described to the missus and my table. “Your Devon smoked eel and scrambled eggs on fresh bread with curry oil, sir.”
It was just a tad of a downer the eel came from Brixham and wasn’t more local. Like from the Somerset levels up the road.
Best not dwell on them once having been an eel hotspot of wondrousness. Enough for them to be used as medieval currency. 14,000 eels a year, I’ll have you know, being the tenants’ rent to Glastonbury Abbey monks. Shoddy numbers they weren’t. Yet, five hundred years after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries boffins can’t now even find eel DNA. Flood barriers and a pumping station station, the said culprits. Thus, of the 100 million eels that annually writhe up the Bristol Channel, the vast majority are moseying to Wales.
Good news is a body calling itself the Sustainable Eel Group is now working with keen Somerset folk to weave traditional ropes. To sling hopefully over the cursed barriers. For eel crowds to slither up and come and say ‘Hi!’. Chance then that the Levels anglers might again be calling out “Bootlaces!” as small eels tangle around and knot lines. So maybe next year, Augustus.
The missus spoke over my purring as I genteelly wiped my mouth with a starched napkin: “My love, what else would you like to do with your day?” It was as if she’d flicked a switch.
Subconsciously rubbing my shoulder, I replied I dearly wanted to give Luke our friendly carpenter a ring to pop round with his plane and get the annoying door sorted. After that, I added, “I think I could actually write a catch-up”. Such is the effect of just a little eel fuel.
Illustration & text © 2023 Zum Beamer/Charles Wood.
Zum Beamer 