The Idler

A Country Diary - 28

14 September 2005

ON ONE HOT SUNNY DAY LAST WEEK, I went for a walk through the green lanes, up to the cliffs, along the coast path and through the wood. The two cats Milly and Mandy came with me on this walk. This is a strange habit of theirs. Although they pretend to be aloof and independent, you will suddenly notice that they are following you everywhere, like dogs, even to the cliffs. When you say to them, “I thought cats were supposed to be independent,” they look away, as if to say, “we just happened to be here. A mere coincidence, that’s all.” The three of us picked a big basket of blackberries in the lane, topped up with a few elderberries from the trees that grow around the house. Blackberries apparently freeze well so we should really make the most of September’s huge harvest. Up on the field by the coast path, we found four or five perfect parasol mushrooms, which I put in my basket. Mushrooms and blackberries for dinner. Milly by this stage had vanished, perhaps she’d gone back home.

On the coast path the whortleberry grows. This is a sort of bilberry which is native to Exmoor. In the olden days, the villagers used to come out with a special comb to pick the tiny berries. I scrabbled around with my fingers in at least twenty whortleberry plants but managed to find only one single whortleberry, which I ate and which was completely tasteless. I suppose it was too small to get a sense of the flavour. Where have all the whortleberries gone? I can’t work out whether I have missed the whortleberry harvest or whether it is still to come.

Further round the coast we came across a startled fawn standing right in the middle of the path. Mandy and I stood still to watch the little bambi-like thing. It ran forwards, ran backwards and ran sideways, then stopped and stared, wondering where to go. When I eventually moved forward towards it, it did one of those amazing little leaps into the air and shot round the corner.

A little further round the path, where it turns into oak wood, Mandy decided she had gone far enough and wanted to go back. I tried to explain that we were on a circular path and so in fact we were on our way home. I walked ahead and she simply sat where she was, mewing piteously. Eventually I felt sorry for her and went back to pick her up, but she kept scampering away, so I got fed up and told her she could find her own way home.

That evening there was no sign of either cat, and I began to fear for them, shivering under a gorse bush and not knowing how to get home. Everyone else was away so I was alone. I ate some of the parasol mushrooms fried in bacon fat, dried the rest, and held a little impromptu solo beer tasting session. I have recently been sent a crate of 24 Harveys ales as a thank you for giving a talk to the Headstrong Club in Lewes, home of Harveys. I tried the Tom Paine and the Armada Ale before moving on to Chimay, the one brewed by Belgian monks, and the Fuller’s new St George’s Ale. By my side I had the excellent 300 Beers To Try Before You Die by Roger Protz, so spent the evening going, “hmm, blackberry fruits on the palate, hmmm hints of apple, hmmm spicey finish, hmmm intensely hoppy” while getting completely hammered.

The cats came back the next day at about lunchtime, the clever things.

YESTERDAY the weather was good so after lunch, even though I really wanted a nap, I loaded up the wheelbarrow with hammer, nails and saw and went up to the vegetable patch in order to build a second compost bin alongside the first with a couple of old pallets. All afternoon I banged away, dismantling the pallets and then hammering in each plank in turn to make walls for the compost bin. I even improved the system for holding panels in at the front, and so now we have two giant wooden compost bins built at a cost of nought pounds. I am still not managing, though, to get the compost heated up. I turned the existing pile over with the fork and it certainly looks pretty well-rotted — bar the nappies — but it has taken months and months, and according to Lawrence D Hills in How To Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables, compost should break down in a few weeks, and the heap should get so hot that it steams and is too hot to touch. Apparently urine, grass cuttings or a stake down the middle are the answer. Clearly I am doing something wrong, and perhaps you can’t just fling household waste in a pile and hope for the best. I’m going to have to get one of those composting books, unless any readers have some tips. Truly, it is hard learning how to be peasant from scratch.