Christmas 2010

41 Albion Street,
Stratton,
Cirencester,
Gloucs.
GL7 2HT

December 2010

Hello Everybody,

“No .. o .. ël! .. Baaa!” “No ..o .. ël! .. Baaa!” “No ..o .. ël! .. Baaa!” “No .. o .. Baaa! .. ë ..ël!” … “Quick! Get the ear plugs!” For ‘tis the season when little knots of woolly-fleeced local Mafiosi gather outside pubs, singing menacingly, in order to fund their gamboling (!) habit come the Spring. For the unsuspecting, beware, for they are devious and will try anything .... the sob story (tearful eye, baleful expression, sound of ghostly violins) “Pity us poor starving….etc.” .… the violent (knitted brow, teeth bared) “Gi’s yer cash Jimmy, or we’ll jump up and down on yer ..” … the intellectual (furrowed brow, earnest gaze) “We have the U-value, we could insulate you to death! (sweat! sweat!)” … (?) Oh, come on! Surely you’ve seen ‘Black Sheep’?? No? Welcome to rural(ish) life, Gloucestershire style .... (cackle!) ...

The Allotment Wars of the last three years finally came to a head at the end of last year when the totalitarian land-owners, with their Hoplite phalanx of neat ‘n tidy, kill-everything-in-sight accomplices of crazed herbicide obsessives, finally evicted us laissez-faire landless peasants, i.e., our neighbour Eve (who actually rents the plot), from the fruity half of her allotment. This was most definitely the last straw for us sub-lettees, and we decided not to re-engage in battle this year. Just when you’re developing long-term plans to improve your little plot, you realize that the annual insecurities induced by the November Visit of the Weed Police only encourage the gardening equivalent of strip-mining. Pieces of old carpet and print-free cardboard weighted down with some good chunks of Cotswold stone may not look pretty, but do slow the oxidation of compost and moisture-loss, and keep the soil weed-free come the Spring. But .... it doesn’t look tidy! So .... “off with their heads!” (sigh).

The dawn of agriculture may have enabled a surplus production of food and the ultimate rise of civilization, but this year we decided to shed the odd shackle of civilization and take the ‘uncivilized’ route towards hunter-gathering .... well .. maybe just gathering ... or foraging ... after all, we are veggies! Big Fruit Hunting has never been popular (though see apple-rustling below ... makes a change from sheep-stealing ..’Ere .. gerroff! We’ll bite yer bums!”) .. it just doesn’t give one the same frisson ... Now, squirrels ....hmmm ... maybe we could be veggies that just eat squirrel ....There are some interesting squirrel recipes from trigger-happy Americans on the web .... but I digress. This is all part of the movement called ‘Transition Towns’. Not heard of it? ... but it’s mainstream ... it’s been on the Archers .. you have to have heard of it!

The basic idea is that the local community, town or village, should help to make itself as resilient to outside forces as much as possible, such as the chaos that would ensue from a shortage of oil, or climate change, or food, or any future problems that may arise, and that are currently outside of our control ... which in fact, is most of modern life! We must grow more local food, map local fruit trees on common ground that no-one makes use of, including those in people’s gardens, distribute to those in need, put people who would like to grow veggies, but have no gardens, in touch with people who own gardens, but who don’t make use of them, foraging of wood for fuel, find out what and where we can obtain things for free, teach each other skills such as knitting, how to make do and mend, and ultimately to re-educate people into a non-throw away mindset, that doesn’t require people to buy ‘loads-a-stuff’ to be happy. Create a local currency to keep money in the community, keep the supply chain local, and re-use as much as possible. Hence our foray into foraging ... it just makes so much sense .... and you have to start somewhere. The downside of this is that your house fills up with ‘things that may come in handy’ ... so, no change there then ... our top floor’s been like this for years ... haven’t been up there for years ... oh, dear, I seem to be turning into my mother ... aarrgghh!!

Since ‘Transition Cirencester’ came into being in October, we’ve created a Wood Group and a Fruit Group, and subsequently have had an Apple Day and a Wood Day. One of our local landowners is an organic farmer and member of Transition Cirencester, and he owns Harebushes Wood just on the edge of Cirencester, opposite the Norman Arch which used to be part of the old Abbey, and is a favourite place for dog walkers. He invited people to come to a specific area of the wood, to gather or hand-saw as much firewood from fallen trees as they could get into a car or trailer. Once upon a time, foraging was common, and it should be still. It should not be viewed as trespassing. It would be rather good if this altruistic act spreads to our other big, but aristocratic, local landowner .... but ...

Another small landowner on the edge of Cirencester who owns an orchard, suggested that we try out our skills in capturing apples ... tricky beasts, apples ... waving a 2 metre pole with canvas bag at a refusenik apple is definitely a skill that needs to be practised. First, the easy bit. Select your apple and position your grabber underneath. Now for the skilled bit .. a quick deft turn of the wrist with the apple grabber, and tug at the recalcitrant apple. A heavy bombardment of all other apples on the branch, if not the tree, will ensue .... chosen apple may or may not lie in canvas bag ... lie stunned under tree until help arrives ... apples and head bruised (groan), fit only for juicing (the apples, that is) .... repeat until you gain the upper hand (sigh) ..... Told you those apples were tricky ...

Next, the juicing ... hard physical work, unless you have ‘a scratting mill’, which be Zummerzet for a machine that mills your apples into little pieces to make them more amenable to being juiced, as in cider-making. We didn’t! The ‘scratting’ and juicing was truly a team effort, though. Those of us who survived the attack of the killer apples, were determined .... it was them or us .. hack! hack! ... pound! pound! .... creeeak! .. the turning of the screw.. (the juicer, not Henry James) ... until the juice flowed .. and flowed ... about 5 gallons worth ... and oh, the flavour! ... no pasteurized juice could ever compare with this ... the taste buds were zinging! Because it was unpasteurized, it probably wouldn’t have survived more than a few days. We took away 4 litres of the brown nectar. It was gone in two days ... never stood a chance! Cider? What cider?

A good morning’s work. But what to do with all these bruised and blemished apples? First the segregation into good apples for storing or apple rings, and the rest for chutney or fruit leather. I had to work fast ... it was only a matter of time before the evil ones would take over ... For the next few hours, all was a blur of fingers, apple corer and knife .. not too much blood ... until ... (sound of fanfare) ... 2 x 4 feet of dowel with apple rings considerably enhanced the decor of Tamsin’s sometime bedroom. After a week, we dared to peak into the gloom, fully expecting to see two rows of furry rings (?), but .. prod! prod! .. pinch! pinch! ... only two rings showed any sign of furriness, the rest were dry. After a week in the freezer, they’re now in the cupboard waiting to infest Bob’s muesli. Not only do they taste good ... they were free!

This has been such a bountiful year for fruit of all kinds, but because of the myths and legends that have accreted around almost any food from the wild, people’s fear and suspicion has ensured that it has mostly been left to rot on the trees and in hedgerows ... only food from a supermarket shelf is safe. Bob and I got odd looks from people when we were gathering a ton of elderberries ... aren’t they poisonous? They just need a good wash to remove airborne pollutants, but otherwise, no. Self-set damsons from the allotments ... grapes from our neighbours’ vine ... apples and elderberries from down the road ... nothing has been safe from the scavenging ravenous Irving beast .... that’s an awful lot of ice-cream ... rhubarb ‘n ginger, anyone?

We didn’t entirely abandon the growing of food. Four runner bean plants very nobly struggled against the shadiness to produce some beans before the October frosts. Around these and our neighbours’ vine twined the very tasty nasturtiums from last year’s self-set seeds, and then a few desultory radishes appeared, only to be much molested by molluscs. Indoors in the conservatory we had high hopes ... actual tomatoes! ... maybe even healthy tomatoes! As the summer progressed, the plants looked suspiciously healthy, the leaves even developing a silver sheen, which upon closer inspection, appeared to be delicate spotting ... ah! how pretty! A couple of weeks later ... an interesting silver filigree pattern .. a cloud of tiny, tiny, evil insects ... an interesting curl to the leaves ... Hmm .. what may we deduce from these clues, Watson? I fear that this may be the dreaded scourge which afflicts many an indoor plant .... leaf curl (gulp). The tomatoes struggled manfully ...er .. tomato(fully) on, desperately producing tomatoes, all the while growing weaker ... and weaker ... producing a reasonable crop of little tomatoes, before nobly giving up the ghost (cut to the Dead March). The evil insects packed up their belongings and moved to the aubergine plants, and even though the aubergines were in .. out ... in ... out ... (of the conservatory) and shaken all about ... nothing we could do would prevent their little flowers dropping off (do evil insects have flowers?) ... where were those pesky pollinators when they were needed? ... (sigh) .. Just when we were about to evict it, the pepper plant knowingly started the production of peppers ... hmmm ... there’s a lot we don’t know about plants ... could it be (gulp) ... reading my mind? Perhaps Prince Charles is on to something ...

Following on from the repatriation of ancestral remains back to their homeland, the Museum has released a few of us oldies back into the wild, but, like the institutional beings that we’ve become, we just have to keep returning for intellectual and emotional sustenance. As you’ve probably realized, ‘normal’ people who commute to work don’t really have much time for the hunter-gatherer life-style ... it’s hell trying to lassoo coffee beans ... So, yes, I decided to take the money and run ... to early retirement. There were many, many reasons for this, and it was a very hard decision to make .. but it seemed like the right time .... and the monetary inducement was a nudge in the right direction! But I do volunteer one day per week, mainly to carry on with those projects that work always seemed to get in the way of ... Let’s hope that Ye Olde Rusty Brain Cells can be cranked back into life after being much abused during The Cancer Treatment Wars.

Being free to do what you want curiously has the opposite effect – you try to impose discipline on yourself, but not always successfully ... ah, a nice warm duvet in the deep gloom of winter .... zzzzz! But the internecine strife, misunderstandings, no proper accountability and consequent stress of life on the Committee of the regional Green Party does get me out of bed ... well, almost ... (yawn) ... zzzz!

But what of Tamsin (who?), musician (?), sound artist and anti-capitalist, back-to-the-land hippy. She seems to divide her time between Germany, home of her boyfriend, and Holland, home to her and about a dozen similarly-minded individuals with whom she shares the ‘official squat’ smallholding, together with the usual assortment of animals. She mostly lives in the farmhouse, but retreats to live in her bus when life just gets too much (empathetic sigh). This year she’s fought off an angry frustrated ram (!) ... they don’t have any ewes (mistake) ... helped to grow a massive crop of hallucinogenic hemp (?), produced the music for the ‘house film’, which was entered for a nation-wide competition (they didn’t win ... but hey ...), held an open-day for the local community, and leant how to make felt straight from the ram ... bzzzzz! ... minngg! .... clip! clip! ... baaa! (worriedly) ... hence the strained relationship ram-wise. The last we heard was that she was using home-made plant dyes and selling her own felted jewellery in the local craft market. Ever resourceful is our Tams ... whenever she’s in the U.K., we usually find her under a bus ... our neighbours are peculiarly tolerant in this respect .. but the sighs of relief, when her bus departs down the street, are palpable! We won’t be seeing her for Christmas, sadly, as she’s organizing the squat’s 10th anniversary party in January ... and of course, she’s too poor .... plus .. a kitten has made her life more complicated (sigh) ... It will be strange without her ... but there’s always Skype.

Rupert is leaving home ... shock! horror! Well .. not quite! He’s actually giving up his sound technician job at the college to learn to be a better drummer at the Brighton Institute of Music in Bristol (?), funding it by carrying on with his part-time job as care assistant. There is no going back, he’s now paid the course deposit ..... correction ... we’ve paid the course deposit. The plan is to share the daily commute to Bristol with fellow band member Jamie, but I wonder how long it will be before Bristol’s tentacles reach into his soul ... or the Ice Queen lobs an ice crystal into his heart (??) (hmm .. not sure about that analogy .. error! error! .. re-boot the brain cell!).

The fast pace of Rupert’s life became ever more frenetic this year ... opera, musicals, music gigs ... fitting in his two jobs .. No wonder he has to go to the gym ... suddenly I feel knackered ... zzzz! Playing minor evil characters seems to be his thing .. lots of acting and not too much learning of lines. First he played Spoletta, the evil henchman of Scarpia, the even more evil Police Chief in ‘Tosca’, which played to a full house at the Pittville Pump Rooms in Cheltenham, an appropriately magnificent grand opera venue. And then almost at the same time he was ‘Injun Joe’ in the musical ‘Tom Sawyer’, which also played to a full house, but at a typical village hall, where size constraints meant that the action took place amongst the audience. This was such great fun! River mist ... cicadas ...watery eyes (?) .. (cough! cough!) .. “Where’s the stage?” .. “Isn’t the smoke machine up a little high?” ... much shouting .... members of the audience trampled to death (slight exaggeration) .... shots ring out ... Injun Joe leaps out of the window at the back of the hall ... pandemonium! Later, a large boulder (part of the scenery) falls on Injun Joe and appears to crush him to death ... audience cheers wildly! This was one of those totally unplanned but serendipitous moments, when everything fell into place (!) ... with poor old Rupert pinned to the floor, pretending to be dead, whilst in pain!

But, out of Rupert’s many gigs, my favourite was at the reunion of ‘Dealer’, a local rock band, who last played together in the ‘80s and had a large local following. Lacking their original drummer, they drafted in Rupert, and the gig was amazing!!! The hall was stuffed to the rafters with a good mix of old and young rockers, and ‘Dealer’ then proceeded to raise the roof! With all the heavy duty electronic kit they were using, a fuse blew at one point, and whilst it was being fixed, Rupert improvised on the drums for about ten to fifteen minutes. This was awesome!!! Rupert is soooo talented!!! Dealer will soon be doing a tour of Greece ... yes, they have fans in Greece ... (???) ...

‘Carmen’ is the next opera on Rupe’s ‘to do’ list, but he’s currently having a break from learning his lines, as it’s Rupe and Lizzie’s fifth anniversary since they first met, and they’re just off to Paris for a romantic weekend (ahhh ...).

Bob is still slogging his way through the Ph.D. I don’t see much of him ... he’s usually to be found in the dark lit by an evil, eerie glow, and accompanied by the tapping of keys ... cogs whirring (!) .. occasional mutterings ... curses ... before emerging, now and again, blinking into the light to hunt the biscuit and cup o’ tea. “Yee harr! Them dang tea leaves sure do put up a fight ...” .... erm .... sorry ... mental aberration ... only another three months ... (sigh) ...

Random favourite saying of the month : ‘To hellenikon’ - ancient Greek for ‘The Greek Thing’. Anyone else been watching Richard Miles?

Sorry ... incoherence setting in ... time to wish you all a Merry Christmas (if I actually get the cards written on time) or at the very least a Happy New Year!

Lots of love from

Bob, Joy, Rupert and Tamsin (very much in absentia!)

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