Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (32 page)

We lose the war of the one-way system. After it is over, it becomes clear that it wasn't a contest at all, that minds were
made up long before the meeting takes place at Dillington Park on that Tuesday afternoon. The Battle Bus set off from Ilminster
town square shortly after one 0'clock with seventy-eight people aboard. It rained heavily over the weekend, but by Tuesday
the weather is turning again, and the sun feels hot when it breaks through the scudding clouds. Twenty years ago the council
converted the old stable block into classrooms and one long hall, which can seat almost two hundred people. Wayne stages concerts
there, and I've once given a talk about newspapers and on another occasion interviewed Fay Weldon in front of an enthusiastic
local crowd. That day, the room is packed when Charlie and I walk in. Bryan has saved me a seat next to him in the second
row. Charlie stands at the back. I look around; it seems that everyone I know in the town is there. There is Henry Best sitting
next to Mr Bonner. Mr B is wearing smart mustard­coloured trousers, a yellowy tweed jacket, a blue shirt and a red tie.
In
front of them sit Dave Bailey and Jennifer. Aaron Driver is next to Elizabeth Ferris. Everyone nods and smiles, most are holding
bits of paper on which they've written what they want to contribute to the meeting.
In
the front, on a small raised stage, sit the Somerset councillors in whose hands the decision rests. Two women and one man
and, on one side, members of the transport group and, on the other, three men, including the clerk of the meeting, who are
supposedly responsible for ensuring that all legalities are followed. Hazel Prior-Sankey, the senior councillor, occupies
the middle chair.

She opens the proceedings: 'This meeting might get rowdy, please don't boo or cheer or clap and don't intimidate anyone, we
want to be able to hear.' She says it with a smile but she's addressing the room in much the same way as a head teacher might
scold a group of unruly ten-year-olds. Hazel is about my age and I think she looks friendly and open-minded. 'We cannot alter
the planning - all we can do at this meeting is deal with the TRO' - short for traffic regulation order - 'We only have a
small remit. We're elected to represent the public interest, but what is in the general public's interest may not be in the
interest of a small group.' The small group means all of us, sitting upright on smart metal chairs covered in blue velvet.
Bryan stirs beside me and mutters, 'Oh God . . . that means she's upholding the decision.' His pessimism seems premature,
but I can see other faces droop. The councillor to Hazel's right, a blonde woman in her thirties called Cathy Bakewell, speaks
up: 'Why has it all taken so long? When this was first agreed there weren't many protests, just twenty-seven people against
the traffic scheme and of that fifteen were against Tesco.' She doesn't invite any answers and her words hang in the air like
ominous clouds. 'I'm going to allow an hour for people to speak,' Hazel announces. 'Two minutes each, that's all.' She's increased
the time allowed, but Ihave no idea if this is a good sign or not.

Henry Best goes first. He's written out his short speech in his spidery handwriting and he towers over the seated rows like
a benevolent giraffe. 'I represent the Somerset branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and our job is to protect
the market towns of England. You may not have to consider the controversial decision of a superstore. The laying of that cuckoo's
egg has already been settled. But you must deal with the consequences - more traffic, longer journeys, higher pollution, disruption
of community services, turning an old, workable street system into one huge roundabout. The majority of people do not want
this TRO. They said so in a petition: we have signatures representing 3,540 souls and Ilminster's 200I population was under
4,000. Please heed the cry of those whom you have been empowered to represent. More would have been here but for having to
earn their livings or care for their children.'

As Henry speaks, Dave Bailey waves a copy of the petition in the air. He is still waving it when Henry sits down. There is
a burst of noisy applause. People stamp their feet on the floor. Hazel and the other councillors look annoyed and tap their
pencils, points down, on the table in front of them. 'Can I ask you to refrain from applause as this will intimidate anyone
with a different point of view,' she says in a school-mistressy tone. The stamping increases, accompanied by loud boos.

Looking upwards across the old stable courtyard, I can see a thin sliver of blue sky where puffy white clouds are moving eastwards,
like giant tennis balls pumping out of a machine. Down in the courtyard, the flagstones surround a small pond, dense with
irises and water lilies: it was once the main water trough for the horses, the place where Lord North's sweating animals must
have come after bringing their famous master back home from Westminster when he was prime minister. Local legend has it that
he once delayed so long at Dillington that he was too late to warn George III that he was about to lose the American colonies.

The meeting wears on. One by one the town's traders stand up to make their pitches. The room grows hot and someone opens up
the big doors out into the courtyard. 'This will result in degeneration, not regeneration,' says Mike Fry-Foley. 'You do not
need the wisdom of Solomon to realise that this will split the town in two,' says Clinton Bonner, whose shop, being the furthest
from the car park and the supermarket, is likely to be hardest hit. There is a catch-22 element to the proceedings. The issue
under debate is not the supermarket, but the supermarket is the cause of the proposed one-way system. When planning was granted
for the store, no one knew that it would be Tesco, or that by some sleight of hand the car park would be pushed out of the
town and into the fields to accommodate the needs of the supermarket. The town seems to be fighting with one hand tied behind
its back. Standing at the back of the room, looking over the shoulders of the two councillors who were for the one-way system,
Mike Henley and Richard Jacobs, Charlie watches them writing notes to each other on a pad of paper. After I finish speaking,
Mike Henley scribbles 'yet another supermarket ranter'.

We hear about the elderly, we hear from a driving instructor, we hear from someone in the first response unit for the emergency
services. Next to me Bryan slumps lower in his chair. I am exhausted: I came that morning from the Hay-on­Wye book festival
where the previous night I'd listened to Al Gore's impassioned speech about the environment. Dealing with climate change,
he said, promised us a chance to create a better world where communities pulled together, united by common purpose. My ankle
is hurting, my cheeks feel hot and, as we wait for Hazel to pronounce her verdict, I feel like crying.

'I want you to know that our decision has not been cooked up in advance,' she says, casting her vote in favour of the one­way
system but noting that things could stay as they are until building work starts. Cathy Bakewell concurs, but says the one-way
system should be implemented immediately, and the third councillor, who has sat silently throughout the proceedings, votes
with Hazel. And that's it. We file out into the late afternoon sun, past the entrance to the main house and towards the park.
I can hear the pigs grunting in the wood and the geese are making a racket from the other side of the trees. The Battle Bus
is waiting in the car park, its engine already running, ready to take everyone back to town.

Charlie and I wave goodbye as the bus sets off down the single-lane track, scattering a large herd of sheep that are sleeping
on the hot tarmac. We turn off the lane and down the path leading to the farm, where David is preparing the pigs' second meal
of the day. The pigs start squealing, kicking at their metal feeders and pushing past each other in their anxiety to get to
their food. Charlie gives my shoulders a rub as we watch the pigs guzzle up their dinner. 'Maybe it won't be as bad as everyone
thinks,' he says, 'We've already got the Co-op and that hasn't caused any problems. Maybe it
will
stop some people going all the way to Taunton to go to Sainsbury's. We've got good shops in Ilminster. They'll be OK.' I'm
grateful for his optimism, but at this moment it seems impossible to share.

At the Hay festival I interviewed James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory and one of the world's leading climatologists.
Professor Lovelock will be eighty-seven on his next birthday but he looks much younger. He's small, trim and energetic, asking
where he could go walking around Hay, saying six or seven miles along the river was just the ticket. He smiles a lot and it's
impossible not to be charmed by his warmth. Even when we were on stage and he was delivering his apocalyptic message, the
smile is still there, completely out of keeping with his words. If Professor Lovelock is right - and all the evidence suggests
that he is - there is now no chance of reversing the climatic disaster that is engulfing the world. By the end of the century,
the central latitudes will be uninhabitable, reduced to deserts where the wind howls and the dust blows. Nothing will be able
to live there and the human population will be forced to flee north, where the climate will still sustain life. The British
Isles and everything north will be habitable, so will New Zealand and the southern regions of South America. Lovelock was
unfailingly bleak, delivering a message that no politician hoping to get elected or re-elected would dare to utter. He was
telling us that all we can do is hunker down, start going back to the land, live more simply and set up small farms to provide
food on a local basis.

I'd recently seen pictures of the deepest coal mine in the world, an open-cast mine in China where the coal had lain buried
for fifty million years. Was this part of what Lovelock meant by Gaia's Revenge: that we were burrowing deep into the earth
to extract waste that the earth had stored away so well, confident that it would never be brought to the light again? He nodded.
I then asked him if, as we came to the end of the world's fossil fuel supplies, climate stability would be restored, that
Gaia would somehow, in the nick of time, regain stability. He smiled and shook his head. 'It's too late for that.'

I told him about the farm and my plan, if we succeed in becoming economically stable, of trying to establish other small farms
to feed other institutions, such as hospitals, large schools and prisons. As I push the gate open to allow David access to
the pig feeder, holding it back against a small army of porcine strength and greed, I think about what he said. One day, in
the not too distant, we're all going to be living off small farms like ours. I'd
just read a news report from Japan, where the government is so worried about the potential collapse of the meat market that
it is warning people that, within ten years, they may have to return to a largely vegetarian diet. It takes two kilos of grain
to produce one kilo of chicken, but a huge seven kilos of grain to produce one kilo of beef and the world has only a limited
supply of land on which to grow feed to fatten animals, rather than growing food which humans consume directly. About-to-retire
Japanese baby boomers are being encouraged to start small farms in their retirement as they may be feeding their country in
years to come.

I go back to the store house to fetch a plastic tray to collect the eggs, 129 of them requiring five trays and as many trips.
Some of the chickens have become broody and, every morning, David sprays those that are sitting on their eggs with purple
paint and then, if they're still there in the evening, turfs them off and out of the hen house. The eggs are warm, and so
many different colours, some as dark as an autumn chestnut, through shades of toffee, cream and white. As I collect the eggs,
I worry: will Daisy really grow old in a world where no one can live in Africa, or India, or the Middle East or the southern
states of the USA?

In the office, next to the slogan about pigs being ready to fly, David's brother Julian has pinned up a picture of David holding
a huge, ugly, ruddy coloured carp. The fish weighs thirty-four and a quarter pounds and it dwarfs David, who is kneeling down
on one knee, holding the giant scaly beast towards the camera. David caught the monster on his week's fishing holiday to France.
He'd gone there with Julian in 2005 and reckons he caught the same fish then also. 'A great way of making money,' he said.
'They cost about £ 500 but they get caught over and over.' It is the end of the second week of June and it's hot: 80°F and
more by midday. The heavy rains of May seem like a distant memory. From the office where we're sitting, I can hear the thwack-thwack
of the sprinkler systems as they pump water across the rows of carrots and beans. So far this morning, I've eaten a handful
of small snap peas, a tender broad bean, its flavour sharp yet delicate, a couple of indoor flat climbing beans which are
big enough to sell at £4.50 a kilo, a juicy spring onion and a still­too-thin though delicious carrot which is a week or so
away from being ready to harvest. Fat-Boy has shown great interest in the proceedings, especially in the carrots: he loves
all vegetables except for onions, garlic and cucumbers, and carrots are one of his favourites. I pull one for him and he chews
it enthusiastically, thumping his shiny black tail on the baked earth before carefully dropping the spidery green leaves on
to the ground. In a week, they'll be ready to sell, along with the beans and the peas, the turnips and beets. In the polytunnels,
the tomatoes hang heavy and green, needing only days more sunshine to ripen them into delicious redness. Dark green cucumbers
hang down under their big, ungainly leaves. Minute peppers are beginning to show beneath the foliage. The straggly leaves
of the garlic plants have grown to two feet and the bulbs beneath the soil are swelling and ripening. Safe from slugs in boxes
on top of straw bales, the strawberries are beginning to change from white to pink; soon, like the tomatoes, the sun will
bring on the rich colour and the sweetness.