Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (4 page)

I've no doubt that Bramble and Guinness's piglets will grow up to become fantastically tasty pork roast and sausages, and
I will eat them with enjoyment and the knowledge that they had a good life and as humane a death as possible. We'll eat every
bit of them too. At his home in Great Tew, my old friend John Mitchinson keeps pigs. He well remembers the night he took his
first two pigs to slaughter. They spent their final night sleeping in a comfy trailer and John went with them on their journey
to the abattoir. Over the coming weekend, they processed every scrap of meat from the pigs. 'They had done a good job for
us, and I wanted to do right by the pigs,' he says. 'That means not letting anything go to waste. We made stock out of the
bones, brawn from the head, pate from the liver; we ate brains on toast, grilled ears, and we kept the fat for lard. We also
made chorizo, salami and hams which will be ready to eat in three months' time at Christmas. Rearing animals should be based
on respect, not exploitation. I liked our pigs - if you gave them a football they'd play ball with you.'

Luckily for us, David's other skill, apart from gardening and animal husbandry, is as a butcher. On the site where the small
Ilminster cheese shop, Sarah's Dairy, now operates there, used to stand Bellew's Butchers, owned and operated by David's uncle.
When David left Holyrood Comprehensive in Chard in 1984, aged sixteen and armed with seven 0 levels, he went to work in the
family business. He didn't last long: in late 1985 he chopped off his finger while slicing up a ham into bacon rashers. It
took the doctors in Taunton's Musgrove Hospital five hours to stitch it back on. He moved on to a job boning pigs at Hygrade
Meats in Chard. Pigs would arrive as carcasses, ready to be turned into tinned and packet ham. Once boned, the meat was shovelled
into great big tumblers made of stainless steel. Water and brine would be added and the whole lot churned up into what David
describes as a 'load of pink mush'. The mush is then fed into square metal moulds, cooked, carved and sealed in plastic bags.
'I never ate processed ham or meat again,' he told me, as we stood watching Boris practise having sex with his male chums.
'I could bone out forty-five legs of pork in an hour. I'd start at five in the morning and work until two. We were meant to
get through seventeen in an hour, but if you could do more, it meant you could go home early. Most weeks, I'd take home three
hundred quid, although you earn more on piecework. Sometimes I'd work on quarters of beef. We were paid six quid for each
one and I could do four in an hour. But you need to have a good steady input of cows to make that profitable.' David grew up
with animals - chickens, geese and sheep - and before long he couldn't take Hygrade Meats any more. He left to become a gardener:
now he's part-owner of his own farm, where all the animals have a life.

Hygrade Meats processes pork and beef for Tesco. If there isn't enough local meat they buy it, frozen, from Holland. The big
frozen slabs have to be chucked in water to thaw out. Given the way the majority of pigs are kept, it is possible that Hygrade's
pigs have been born in farrowing crates (designed so the mothers cannot move during pregnancy) and kept indoors throughout
their lives, in temperature-controlled, permanently lit units, so that the pigs eat solidly, twenty-four hours a day. The
babies are weaned from their mothers at three days old, at which point the mothers are put back to the boar. A modern farm-reared
pig can have forty piglets a year, an amazingly proficient baby machine. She can keep this up for four years, after which
she is slaughtered before productivity declines.

The piglets have their tails docked and their teeth broken with pliers when they're two days old. Even so, cannibalism breaks
out in overcrowded pig pens and pigs have been known partially to eat each other in the crazed desperation that results from
living in such unnatural conditions.

In
the autumn, we connect the duck pond up to the spring which flows under the farm, so the water is now clear and moving freely.
The ducks instantly appreciate the change, wagging their tail feathers in glee as they glide on the water's surface, black
feathers turning blue and green in the changing light. Even the chickens seem to enjoy the pond, tip-toeing down the wooden
ramp to drink instead of using their water containers. The geese continue making their enthusiastic racket, screeching and
hissing whenever anyone comes through the gate and keeping up the din as you walk alongside their wire fence. Once you are
inside the chicken run, they waddle quickly towards you, beaks ajar, blue eyes steady. If you turn round and walk away, they
come up behind and peck at the backs of your legs. But at heart they're just bullies and cowards: swing back to them and start
walking forwards and the retreat is rapid.

The only one who is really scared of the geese is our black Labrador, Dylan. He's actually frightened of the low-lying, green
electric wire which encircles the coop, but he pretends it's the geese that cause him to tremble. One afternoon in the summer,
when the wire was being redirected to go round an extra section of cage, it was lying only a couple of inches above ground.
In his eagerness to annoy the pigs, he went too close to the fence and sat down bang on the wire, only to leap up immediately,
yelping, after being zapped by a powerful electric charge. Now he flattens his ears as we approach the gate and will walk
up the gravel track that separates the chicken coop from the vegetable garden only if he's safely on a lead. But, once at
the other end, he more than makes up for his attack of the jitters, rushing frantically towards the gate into the ladies'
pen, barking furiously and making attacks and feints at the curious sows that seem to look scornfully on his manic behaviour.
I'd
trust Dylan to defend any child, or grandchild, of ours to the point of death, and his huge anxiety about the fence is both
touching and endearing.

3

The Luck of the Tailor of Gloucester

It's a very clear, still day in the middle of November. Last night there was frost and the water is still frozen in the puddles
at three in the afternoon. From inside the Dairy House it looks as though the day should be warm: the trees still have most
of their leaves and the sky is a deep blue, not yet the watery thinness of winter. In
the nursery, the vegetables look limp and defeated after three nights of hard frost, but there's no frost for a full metre
inside the north wall of the garden. The bricks retain sufficient heat to keep it at bay, which is good news for the newly
planted fruit trees, espaliered against the wall. Dillington House has been ordering thirty kilos of sprouts a week and soon
we won't be able to keep up with the demand. One big patch of carrots is useless because of ringworms eating away at their
surface, leaving little thread-like black lines running through the orange flesh. They're unsightly and we won't be able to
sell any of them, so the pigs are getting a treat and we're all going to be eating carrots at every meal. David has just learned
that the worms stay away if you plant onions in between the rows of carrots: great information, just much too late for this
year's harvest. But, to date, November has been a good month: by the 18th we've sold £504.02 worth of produce to Dillington
House.

The chickens, however, have not been doing so well. We have two breeds as layers, born a couple of months apart, so that as
one age group enters its brief, non-laying period, the other will take over. Theoretically, this should mean that we have
140 chickens laying between five and six eggs each every week. Our first group of 140 Silver and Brown Neros started laying
in September, but now, two months later, they're producing only twenty to thirty eggs a day. They peaked at forty. We don't
know whether it is the food, the cold, or what. David has installed lights in the chicken shed as the long hours of darkness
mean the birds sleep much of the time. A friendly egg producer, plus information gleaned from a chicken-keeping manual, suggested
extending the chicken's day with lights. Now, a light switches on at 5 a.m. and another turns on just after 4 p.m., when the
birds return of their own accord to their shed as darkness falls. It hasn't made any difference. Now we're wondering whether
we ought to change their food. Their eggs are delicious and we have plenty of orders - not just the 750 that Dillington House
will consume every week, but orders from colleagues of David's brother Julian at his office in Taunton and orders from neighbours
in the village. As with the vegetables, we could sell far more than we are managing to produce.

Bluebell has been moved out of the all-girls' enclosure and in with the boys. The oldest boys, who arrived before Boris and
his brothers, are now over three months old, the age at which pigs reach sexual maturity. Female pigs come on heat for a few
days every three weeks and so the plan is to leave her in there for six weeks and hope that she gets pregnant, if not at the
first opportunity then at the second. Afterwards, it will be Bramble's turn. Bluebell isn't at all happy about the move. The
first two days she hardly left the gate, nuzzling up to David, making sad little snuffles and noises. When I walk over to
see her this afternoon, I find her standing on her own near the entrance to her run. She comes over immediately I call, and
leans against the fence to have her ears scratched. She seems a very subdued version of her normal bumptious self, her head
held low and her eyes downcast. The moment I turn to go, she squeals softly and follows me along the fence. One of Boris's
unnamed brothers appears from the undergrowth and makes a beeline for Bluebell's rear end. I stop and resume scratching her
ears while the little fellow clambers up her back, his muddy cloven hooves just tall enough to reach on to her back, his eager
little face pointing skywards above her tail. With a determined expression, he rocks backwards and forwards, mimicking having
sex. Bluebell pays no attention at all. She doesn't move away or swish her hips to knock him sideways and rid herself of the
irritating presence he surely must be. Instead, she leans more fully into the fence and thus closer to me, eager for more
pats and scratches. The off-white hairs of her coat feel thicker than normal and I wonder if she is growing a winter coat.
Poor Bluebell, she seems lonely in with the boys, desirous of her sisters and fellow females for company. I feel an enormous
wave of affection for her and want to take her back to her own run. David says she is more cheerful than she was a couple
of days ago; nevertheless, she seems a shadow of her former self.

Tonight I'm
judging the Christmas windows in the town. It's been an extraordinary autumn, the warmest on record, with bulbs shooting up
in November when they should be sleeping quietly for at least another month or two. In
our wood, primroses have been flowering since the end of October. But today, although it's sunny, it's very cold; under the
trees on the far side of the park the grass is still white with last night's frost. At four o'clock the sky is pale blue,
fading into white, but perfectly clear. There is no wind, and as the light disappears the cold starts to bite. Perhaps winter
is really coming at last.

I meet my fellow judges at the Meeting House, a converted chapel at the top of the town which now houses the IIminster arts
centre, of which I'm a trustee. I was brought on board by Di Gallagher, who until a few weeks ago was the centre's efficient
and committed manager. Since she gave up the job, Di's been to Ladak, one of the most inaccessible of India's northern states,
and now she's raising money for an orphanage out there that she is passionate to help. Di is already in the tea room, along
with Bryan Ferris, who, with his wife Elizabeth, owns Lane's Garden Shop in Silver Street. As head of the Chamber of Commerce,
Bryan is responsible for organising the Christmas Shopping Evening. He's also the most vociferous town campaigner against
the proposed supermarket and the one-way system that the planners are demanding so that supermarket traffic doesn't snarl
up the small town streets. Di and I are to be judges, along with Wayne Bennett from Dillington House.

By the time we set out, it's dark and freezing. Wayne is wearing a blue hat with long ear flaps and has remembered to bring
his gloves. But even though Di and I, hatless and gloveless, are cold, we're all cheerful as we walk off down East Street
towards the market square. Bob from the
Chard and Ilminster Gazette,
or the
Chard and Illy
as it is known locally, is with us to make sure that we judge the windows correctly and to ensure that his paper is first
with the results.

In previous years, the theme for the windows has been something along the lines of an old Victorian Christmas, but Bryan has
changed that this year to classical children's storybook characters. The first shop we encounter is the Sue Ryder charity
shop, which has an arrangement of yellow teddy bears in its window and a banner saying 'Pooh and Friends say Happy Christmas'.
A few doors along and we're outside the Ile Dental Centre. There's a narrow inside hall between the front door and the main
door to the surgery and this has been transformed into an underwater scene: Ursula the Octopus sits on a chair (all long black
floppy legs with a cardboard top half), stuffed fluffy fish swing from nylon wires, a mermaid smirks from the corner, sand
and shells cover the floor, and over it all a small machine emits translucent bubbles which hover in the air before bursting
away into the ether. We all agree that it's great: full marks for effort and imagination, something that kids will stare at
and go, 'Wow, look at
this!'

I know my daughter Daisy would have liked this window and for a moment I imagine her standing there, an eager six­year-old,
wearing her grey school coat and dark red hat with its long tail and a bobble on the end. She would have had her nose pressed
against the glass. Maybe we would have just read
Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie,
the fantastic Australian children's story which features two fishy heroes - John Dory and Ann Chovy - and she would have been
telling me of their exploits, wondering if they could have fitted in alongside Ursula and the colourful stuffed fish. But
she's twenty-two now, studying for an MA in International Relations at Johns Hopkins University which entails spending a year
in Bologna followed by one in Washington; as I stand there feeling the cold seep through to my skin, my sadness for time passed
is momentarily overwhelming.

I separated from her father when she was six and I worked every day from then until the beginning of 200I. Daisy had a succession
of nannies, some brilliant, but others too young and self-obsessed to care adequately for a growing child. Working wasn't
an option for me - I had to, in order for us to survive but I know that I also worked to fulfil myself, rattling up the career
ladder as though my life depended on it, while the most precious thing in my life laughed, cried, learned, discovered and
grew, much of the time when my back was turned. There's nothing unique in this story: women of my age were seduced into believing
that they could have it all and do it all too, and even if I could put the clock back I wonder how differently I would have
lived as a mother. But I mourn those lost times of my daughter's childhood and, as I turn to leave the fishy world behind
the plate-glass window, I wish she was with me, laughing and eager, bouncing with delight, the red woollen bobble of her hat
swinging jauntily across her back.

Twenty-one shops have entered the competition, almost all the small shops along the three main streets which branch off from
the market square. The main street, Silver Street, which is home to the pharmacy, the hardware store, the cheese shop, Mr
Rendell the greengrocer, Mr Bonner the butcher and Aaron Driver at the wine shop, runs alongside the wall of the minster.
Roughly halfway along Silver Street, you come to the minster, set back behind a wall on a slope above the road. In
the fifteenth century, when the minster was built, there were four resident priests, under the patronage of William Wad­ham,
whose descendants founded Wadham College, Oxford. Six hundred years ago, the church was part of the diocese of Wells, and
the builders of the minster apparently wanted to create a microcosm of the magnificent cathedral. It doesn't look much like
Wells, but it is a beautiful church, built out of the honey-coloured local Ham stone, with a stately central tower which tonight
is hung with a Christmas star.

Harriman's, the men's outfitters, has erected a tiny but near­perfect display, sandwiched between men's Sloggi underpants,
a couple of tartan shirts and pairs of brushed-cotton pyjamas. A silver backdrop shows off a small mouse made of a brown woolly
material, perched cross-legged on an outsize reel of thread. He's reading a book and sports a pair of fine wire glasses. Behind
him, a giant pair of scissors proclaims his trade:
The Tailor of Gloucester.
In
front of the mouse, leaning against a large silver thimble, is a white card with the words: 'And from then began the luck
of the Tailor of Gloucester: he grew quite stout and he grew quite rich. He made the most wonderful waistcoats for all the
rich merchants of Gloucester and for all the gentlemen of the country round.'

Next door, Town and Country Hardware has gone for an elaborate Winnie the Pooh display, complete with a house and Pooh himself,
stuck by his bum midway out of the window. A home-made Christopher Robin is tugging on his arms, Eeyore is tugging on Robin,
Tigger on Eeyore. It's brilliant.

Walking onwards, we pass Snow White, Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts, a depiction of
The Secret Garden,
Puss in Boots and a fabulous set for
Treasure Island
which has been erected in the windows of the St Margaret's Hospice shop. John and Mary Rendell have set up a Paddington Bear
display in the front window of their greengrocer's. Paddington has a jar of fine-cut Chivers marmalade beside him, but no
sandwiches. As we pass by the first time, John tells us not to judge the window until Paddington has been equipped with supplies.
Sure enough, on our way back, there's a plate of buttered brown bread triangles, liberally covered with marmalade, right by
the bear's left paw.

Back at the Meeting House, we count up the points and decide that the
Little Mermaid
display at the dentist's is the winner.
Winnie the Pooh
is second and
Treasure Island
third.
The Tailor of Gloucester
and an excellent
Alice in Wonderland
window in the RNLI charity shop both receive highly commended certificates. Wayne points out that in a small market town like
Ilminster, the windows actually serve a different function from displays in larger towns or cities. 'Everyone knows exactly
where they're going, don't they,' he says. 'I mean, you know where the butcher is, the baker and the greengrocer are. The
window doesn't make that much difference. '