Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country (33 page)

It was impressive. Without the use of any pesticides, Sam, Lucy, Kate, Becky and Joe, who’d met each other on a co-operative farm where they’d been volunteering, were growing a vast range of vegetables, some that I’d never heard of. According to Sam, livestock were to follow, but only in a way that would help create a sustainable farm. (He explained briefly that keeping a few pigs meant you could get land turned over that would otherwise have required a tractor and fuel.) I admired the way five ‘thirty-somethings’ had upped and left city life to follow a dream – to live and work on a sustainable farm.

They were doing something that most people in society would describe as ‘mad’. Not least because the chances of economic success were so slim. Margins were tight for this kind of farming, and myriad things could go wrong. Theirs was certainly not the kind of risk-taking whereby, if they were successful, they would become extremely rich. The most optimistic prognosis was that they would tick along nicely. But surely that’s the point? Wasn’t that why Fran and I had been drawn to this place? So we could tick along nicely? London had taught us that life was a competition, and the prizes were property and lifestyle. We were rejecting that, trusting that a simpler life could offer different, but ultimately more fulfilling rewards.

‘All of us have got part-time jobs, so we’ve got income outside the farm,’ said Sam.

Very wise. Not a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket – at least until you have ensured that the basket doesn’t have holes in it.

‘I think it’s brilliant what you’re doing,’ I said. ‘I hope you guys are successful.’

This wasn’t just polite conversation. I really meant it.

***

‘Do you think we should hire a doula?’ asked Fran.

Fran was now nicely rotund, but she still maintained her petite grace. Hers had not been a troublesome pregnancy, and the general consensus amongst friends and neighbours was that she had blossomed during it.

‘A what?’

‘A doula.’

‘What’s a doula?’

‘She supports us through the whole birthing process. Physically and emotionally, before and after. She’s kind of like a coach.’

‘Like a tennis coach?’

Fran looked at me blankly.

‘But with no need to explain topspin,’ I added.

Fran ignored my frivolous remarks and went on to explain that a doula would try to guide her through labour without recourse to painkillers. She would be our ‘representative’ for the natural-birthing approach, in the event that the midwife was putting us under pressure to go down a route that involved medical intervention.

‘Do you have anyone in mind?’ I asked.

‘Well, Patricia, my pregnancy yoga teacher, is a doula.’

‘And do you like her?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, let’s hire her.’

What was happening to us? Were we becoming New Age, home-birth junkies? As well as having booked ourselves on a hypnobirthing course, we’d now also taken the decision to hire a doula. What next? Were we getting carried away? Perhaps we needed something to bring us back down to earth. Something like a good old-fashioned night of bingo.

***

I arrived to find a packed house of all ages. It seemed that the prospect of winning some food items that were readily available on supermarket shelves was enough of a draw to lure people away from their television sets. (TV is OK up to a point, but let’s face it, an evening’s viewing will win you very little meat.) The prizes – neat little supermarket cartons of packaged meat cuts – were laid out on trestle tables, in an alarming number of rows. My initial thought was, my word, we’re going to play an awful lot of bingo here tonight. Claire, the evening’s organiser, and a genteel lady of an age consistent with those who seemed to volunteer to help with the village hall, took me through the rules. She explained that each game had three prizes – minced beef when one line was filled, chicken thighs for two lines, and a rib of beef for three lines. I was also reminded of a couple of the stylistic tricks of the trade for the caller – ‘88’ as two fat ladies, and the like.

‘You turn the wheel,’ explained Claire, ‘then you take out a numbered ball, read it out and place it in the numbered grid. When someone calls “House!”, I’ll bring their cards up for you to check off, and then we crack on.’

‘That’s all there is to it?’

‘That’s it, in a nutshell.’

‘And how many games are we playing?’

‘Eleven. Ten normal games and one Golden Game at the end for the big prize of the full meal – a complete chicken with all the accompanying veg.’

My heart sank at the prospect of eleven games. It did seem an awful lot. Still, perhaps the time flew by once you got started.

I sat at my table and watched as the clock ticked round to 7.30 p.m., and I was given the nod to start proceedings. The gentle murmur of conversation died away as I explained the format of the evening, and a feeling of great expectancy filled the room.

‘OK. Eyes down!’ I announced, with as much passion as I could muster. ‘If the numerical gods shine on you tonight, then some of you could walk away with chicken thighs.’

Several titters, and one comment about someone nearby having pig’s thighs already. Good, I thought, we’re off to a very good start.

Unfortunately, the lyricists of ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ and ‘The Only Way Is Up’ were once again going to be exposed as fantasists.

I cannot think of a better way of enabling you, dear reader, to empathise with the experience of what followed, other than to ask a small favour of you. Could you please read the next paragraph out loud? Thanks.

Two and four, twenty-four. Seven and nine, seventy-nine. On its own, five. Four and three, forty-three. One and six, sixteen. All the fives, fifty-five. Eight and five, eighty-five. Two and nine, twenty-nine. All the fours, forty-four. Nine and zero, ninety. Three and eight, thirty-eight. Two fat ladies, eighty-eight. On its own, nine. Five and nine, fifty-nine. Seven and six, seventy-six. Three and one, thirty-one.
(Are you still doing this?)

OK. Now imagine doing that for two hours.

By my calculations, I must have read out around seven hundred numbers in all the eleven games. No excitement. No variation. The only momentary respite from the tedium came in the form of the numbers eleven and twenty-two. For the first of these numbers, convention has it that the caller announces ‘Legs eleven’, after which the bingo players, should they so choose, offer up a wolf whistle. For twenty-two, the caller adds the wildly creative description of ‘Two little ducks’ into his patter, which is enough to cause a voluntary response from some players of ‘Quack, quack’, such are the levels of euphoria now being reached. I cannot tell you how welcome these sounds are when you have just read out 640 numbers back to back. They are the audio equivalent of visits from loved ones for prisoners with long sentences. They sustain you. They give you hope. Without them, you wither, you suffer, you decay.

‘Two little ducks, twenty-two.’

‘Quack! Quack!’

A feeling of hope. I can get through this.

I am now of the opinion that bingo is evil. The thought that up and down the country theatres and cinemas have been converted into bingo halls simply appals me. Once there was entertainment that challenged, titillated, amused, inspired, moved or scandalised. Now there’s some poor sap reading out hundreds of numbers, one after the other, so that a room full of administrators (that’s right – they’re not players, they’re administrators) can stand a reasonable chance of winning some soulless prize. There may be something wrong with me, but I just cannot see the point of it.

Why not shorten the whole procedure and reduce the suffering? If the ‘players’ are up for winning prizes based on the random drawing of numbered balls, then why not pare down the misery by having one ball in a sack for each player present, and draw out one ball to provide a winner? OK, I know that makes it just a raffle, but it’s fundamentally the same as bingo in
spirit
, only so much quicker. And better. And more
humane
. It spares condemning a human being to a life of misery as a bingo caller.

The evening drew to a close at around 9.30 p.m. I was truly exhausted. Chicken thighs and ribs of beef had been redistributed amongst ‘lucky’ members of our community, and the ritual (what would anthropologists make of this?) had ground its way to a routine and inevitable halt, leaving people to make their way home with deadened senses and the sound of my monotone voice ready to haunt them in their sleep.

A word of advice. If anyone asks you to call bingo – say anything to get out of it. If you have never called bingo in your life, then you are very lucky. You have something over me, and you should do everything in your power to preserve that advantage. I will bear the scars forever. Any situation where I have to read out numbers, for any reason, will bring me out in a cold sweat. Never again will I be able to pass chicken thighs in a supermarket without breaking into a run. And if I happen upon two fat ladies, then I might need to be restrained from attacking them with a rib of beef.

No wonder George had said he was too old. He was probably only twenty-two.
4

***

‘You should come with us on a tractor run one day,’ said Ken.

‘What’s a tractor run?’ I replied.

‘We raise money for the Devon Air Ambulance by a load of us all taking our tractors out on a road run, and then parking up somewhere and having a good natter.’

Ken’s suggestion had been raised at one of my many morning visits to his workshop to ask either:

(1) How something worked in the house that I ought to have known already.

(2) To ask how to fix something that I ought to have known how to fix already.

(3) To ask Ken to fix something for me that I ought to have known how to fix already.

Ken had been busily working on the Massey Ferguson, replacing a sprocket or adjusting a back axle, or doing something equally abstruse.

‘When is the next tractor run?’ I asked.

‘Sunday. You could join us if we could find a tractor for you to drive.’

‘I could borrow Reg’s,’ I suggested.

‘What? His Zetor? Do you think he’d lend it to you?’

‘No harm in asking.’

So it was that I found myself in Reg and Ann’s kitchen – on the pretext of buying eggs – raising the subject of borrowing a 46-year-old Czechoslovakian tractor.

‘I need a run out in it, before I take it from Lands End to John O’Groats,’ I said, dangling the carrot of a trip in which Reg’s tractor could achieve greatness by featuring in a one-minute segment on a regional news programme.

‘HOW LONG WOULD YOU WANT IT FOR?’ bellowed Reg, as if I was at the other end of an extremely long corridor.

‘Just a day.’

‘WELL, I DON’T SEE WHY NOT, AS LONG AS YOU LOOK AFTER IT.’

Ken was most surprised that Reg had agreed to this, but seemed delighted that his incompetent townie neighbour was going to join in with a traditional rural pastime.

‘Trouble is, I don’t think he’s got insurance for his Zetor,’ said Ken, ever the pragmatist.

‘Ah,’ I replied. ‘Leave it with me.’

Another visit and twelve eggs later, Reg had agreed to insure the tractor, provided that I sorted out all the paperwork on his behalf. I took the tractor’s registration details and diligently completed my homework after a half-hour phone call to the broker which, once my life is completed, will not rank as one of its more exciting highlights.

‘I thought he’d back out at that point,’ said Ken, when I reported the news of the successful insuring of the tractor.

‘No, he’s on for it. He just wants me to come down in the morning and give it a little run, so he can see that I’ll know what I’m doing on the day.’

‘That’s a good idea. Do you want me to come with you?’

‘Yes. I’ll pop round in the morning and we’ll head down together.’

***

Reg may have been eighty-six years old, but he was eighty-six going on thirty-six. He always seemed to be pottering with farm machinery whenever I went round, just as he was on this occasion when we pulled up in Ken’s pick-up truck. He moseyed out of his workshop and glared at us. No hint of a smile. His was a face with a default setting of grumpy, but there was usually a distant twinkle in his eye that seemed missing this morning. I countered with an ebulliently cheerful tone.

‘I’m here to put the tractor through its paces.’

‘YOU’D BETTER BE BLOODY CAREFUL WITH IT. IT’S VINTAGE, YOU KNOW. FORTY-SIX YEARS OLD. I DON’T WANT YOU RUINING IT.’

‘I won’t ruin it.’

‘YOU’D BETTER BLOODY NOT. I LENT THAT SAM MY HAY BAILER AND HE BUGGERED IT UP.’

‘I won’t bugger it up.’

‘YOU’D BETTER BLOODY NOT.’

I figured that Reg had read very little Jane Austen. For him, no doff of his cap followed by:

Ah, good morning, Master Hawks. ’Tis indeed a fine morning for you to be embarking on your maiden journey upon my trusty four-wheeled companion. May I wish thee the finest of journeys, albeit only brief and primarily educative in nature.

‘I’LL GET THE BLOODY THING STARTED. BUT DON’T BUGGER IT UP. YOU’D BETTER NOT BURN THAT CLUTCH OUT.’