Country Diary: 6
The Idler’s Editor, Tom Hodgkinson, has retired to a Devonshire farmhouse in order to write a book. Here is the sixth installment of his fortnightly diary.
LAST WEEK I held a little homebrew sampling evening. My neighbours came round and three other friends. My neighbour Rick brought round a huge trout which he had caught. I got a few bottles of ale out of the larder and we looked at them. Certainly, whatever was in the bottles had the appearance of beer. The colour was a deep nut-brown. And when we opened the first bottle, there was a satisfying fizz. I have to say I was initially a little disappointed on tasting my creation, as it seemed a bit watery and yeasty. But soon I realised that I simply did not have a sufficiently well developed palate to appreciate the complex bouquet of flavours that my beer was presenting. Drinking more of it, though, appeared to improve my appreciation of the ale tremendously. After three bottles, the beer started to taste very good indeed, and after five I was congratulating myself warmly for completing such a successful project. Rick and Alan seemed suitably impressed, too. Alan wondered if perhaps I should have put a little more sugar in the mix, as the beer was certainly on the bitter side. I am now planning to make beer in more traditional fashion, with malt and hops and barley. This move was partly inspired by Nick, who, when I explained that the process involved pouring hot water on a tin of sludge, adding sugar and leaving it in a bucket for two weeks, accused me of doing something no more complicated than making Ribena. This jibe stung, and I plan a visit to the home brew shop in Barnstaple so I can get more authentic. Any beer recipes welcome.
IDLER contributor and friend Pete Loveday finished the pub sign, and arrived with his wife Kate one evening to show it to us. You may remember that my pub is to be called The Green Man and Pete - the artist well known for his Russell comic strip - was charged with the task of painting the sign. Pete put in an awful lot of work on the project, reading up on the history of the Green Man (he apparently appeared first in Iraq). The sign was stunning, the man full of mischief and fun and the lettering superb. The best pub sign ever made, I should think.
ON SUNDAY, we had a few friends round for the official pub opening. The party turned into quite an elaborate affair, with pony rides, a marquee and PA and a spin painting machine. I had also bought a barrel of Jester Ale from the Reform Pub in Barnstaple, which hosts the Barum Brewery. We hung the pub sign on the wall outside the house and it looked superb. Ale flowed, country jigs were played. I had invited Jock Scot, legendary poet and drinker, to open the pub. At 6pm, he made the following speech:
“UNACCUSTOMED AS I AM to PUB-lic speaking at this hour of the day, may I take this opportunity to welcome y’all to the opening of the Green Man Public Hoose. Hours are and shall remain flexible. And I believe it is my accomplishments in the fields of drinking and bad behaviour in pubs that has prompted the management to invite me here today to officially declare these premises open, but I’ll come to that. As well as shove ha’penny, there is a Maypole in the garden where would-be drivers can test their hand, eye and feet coordination before offering imbibers a lift home. I trust you will all behave y’self on t’premises and hope sinhsherely you will all become regulars and buy me many drinks. I now declare the Green Man open.”
WE DANCED around the Maypole, lit the bonfire and behaved in pagan fashion. And we saw the first swallow of summer.
THE FESTIVITIES LAID me low, and I spent two days in bed this week. It was cheering, though, when padding round the kitchen to make some hot chocolate, to see a GOLDFINCH land in the garden and I was lucky enough to be able to contemplate him yesterday for some minutes from the kitchen window. This sighting inspired me to compile a list of birds so far spotted this year in and around the front garden, and I present the list here:
House sparrow
Dunnock
Blackbird
Chaffinch
Greenfinch
Goldfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Sparrowhawk
Blue tit
Great tit
Swallow
Pied wagtail
Pheasant
Robin
Crow
ON A SADDER note, a cow died last week. Its pelvis had broken while calving, and the vet carted the poor beast off to the knackers.
"I do nothing and then I do something. But it's taken years of investigating idleness in all its forms to be able to achieve this. My discipline is borne out of concerted study of idleness."