ONE
Oh
to be in England…..
“You
can fuck right off” shouted Harry Ecklethwaite as the Chairman struggled to
restore order to the annual general meeting of the Allaways-on-Cock
Horticultural Society held in the small but well-used village hall. “Big
marrers have been on the show schedule of classes since my dad were winning
everything afore me and the public like to see ‘em, and you aint gonna delete
‘em as long as I’m around! Am I right George or am I right?” he said gazing down
to a rather feeble looking chap in a trilby hat sat next to him, and who was nodding
compliantly.
“But
Harry,” interrupted John Simmons, the Society Secretary “for the past ten years
you’ve been the only entry in the marrow class and we need to make some
changes. We can’t keep asking local residents to sponsor classes of vegetables
that no-one is interested in growing except you.”
“Bollocks,”
screamed Harry again. “Take some o’t domestic classes out of the fucker then.
There’s way too many of them twattin’ things. Who wants to see fuckin’ cakes
and jams anyways?”
“Actually
Mr Ecklethwaite,” piped up Mrs. Dibble, former village postmistress and local
baking goddess par excellence, a slim lady of advancing years with grey hair in
an immaculate bun (what else?), “all cookery and preserve classes have been
well supported with many entries for several years, unlike some of the
horticultural classes. They attract entrants from WI members from many miles
around and Show day is their biggest event on their calendar. We always have to
bunch up the jams and wines to make room for your enormous marrow and no-one
can read the labels properly because they’re all so close together. And might I remind you yet again to moderate
your language?” she said with her customary grace and elegance, but firmly and
directly.
The
Chairman, Bill Grudge, a tall, rotund man formerly the local beat bobby finally
managed to make himself heard. “Okay, okay, Harry, we’ll keep the marrow class,
purely for educational purposes. But something has got to give so instead I
propose that we ditch the class for three onions as grown…..”
“Fuuuuuck
ooooff,” roared Harry, standing to his feet and pointing excitedly at the
committee on the top table. Papers went flying from laps onto the floor as
several others stood up among the assembled membership wishing to make their
point. Bill Grudge banged the table furiously calling for quiet, and school bus
driver Ted Grangeworthy’s faithful Labrador barked and howled with a loudness
that was totally out of character.
Towards
the back of the crowded room Jim Lightfoot sat quietly in staggered bemusement
at the proceedings cracking off in front of him. He had settled in the village
over the winter after several years working in the Emirates project managing
large building constructions. Having made a small fortune and now in his late
forties, he had decided to move to a quintessentially English village in the
Midlands to indulge his passion for growing vegetables and flowers, walk idly
in the surrounding countryside and maybe, just maybe find a little light
romance. As a teenager he had spent many happy hours during summer holidays
helping his granddad out in his back garden up in Yorkshire, and had
accompanied him when his granddad entered his own prize vegetables in the local
town show some thirty years before. It had not been like this as far as he
could recall. He could only remember shiny cups on the presentation table, the
smell of newly cut grass in the marquee, a brass band playing and friendly,
smiley faces as the winners (often his granddad it has to be said) were
politely congratulated on their achievement.
Thus
far he had managed to settle into the village with the minimum of fuss and only
some mildly annoying interrogation from his immediate neighbours and the
landlord of the local pub where he retired each night for a couple of pints of
the house ale. He had spent the long winter months renovating ‘Peony Cottage’
which had suffered several decades of decay. The previous incumbent had died
the year before, a Mr. Tallboys, for a long time Harry Ecklethwaite’s only
serious competition in the annual show. But even he had tired of Harry’s
constant moaning and belligerence. Poor health had led to him being unable to
keep his garden tidy many years ago which subsequently left the coast clear for
Harry to sweep the board ever since.
One
evening in late January after finishing decorating the final room to be
tackled, the kitchen, Jim’s eyes had alighted on the poster on the pub notice
board announcing the AGM of the local ‘hort soc’ and so he thought he might pop
along to see what it was all about. Having been made very welcome by Bill
Grudge and the other committee members, Jim had settled down at the back of the
village hall expecting friendship and camaraderie to flow forth from this
assembled group of pensioners, housewives and local bigwigs. When the subject
of the annual show was reached on the agenda Jim’s mind went back nostalgically
to those sweet days with his granddad and he started thinking it might be nice
to wander down the road one balmy day in early September to the village green
and throw a few nibbled vegetables onto the table in the horticultural marquee.
Then someone had dared to venture that they might omit marrows from this year’s
show and the blue touch paper that was Harry had been well and truly lit!
The
argument showed no sign of abating, for Harry was not to be turned. “Unyuns as
grown are part and parcel o’t village show. You might as well get rid of the
class for five coloured tatties and that aint gonna happen ‘cos Lady Belton
sponsors that class in honour of her husband who won it one year when me and
Dick Tallboys both had a bad dose of potatie blight and couldn’t enter,
warren’t that right George?” George
nodded.
Someone
ventured to suggest that globe beetroot could be deleted instead, which
prompted more expletives from an increasingly apoplectic Mr. Ecklethwaite, more
frustrated and urgent table banging from the Chairman, more nodding from a
seemingly mute George and just about everyone in the room to rise to their feet
seeking a platform to be heard. Jim quietly slipped out of the village hall
unseen, into the damp night air, a hard frost starting to creep across the
perfectly clipped village green on which the show that was causing so much
argument would be held in approximately eight months’ time. He had decided
entering vegetables into the show didn’t quite fit into his idyll of blissful
village life and resolved to just grow for the kitchen pot instead.
As he
walked briskly over to the Dog and Gun for a nightcap he wished he had bought
his overcoat as it did not take long for the cold to penetrate his lightweight
jacket and start to chill his bones. Upon entering the pub at the opposite
corner of the green, landlord Bob Dillage immediately went to get Jim’s pewter
tankard but Jim stopped him in his tracks. “Bugger that Bob, whisky on the
rocks please”.
“Orty
soc tonight was it then Jim?” said the publican, a knowing smile breaking out
across his hairy face. “I’ve been here twenty two years and I’ve seen that same
look on your face miraculously appear on many other folk after an AGM. Let me
guess……they want to change the schedule and Harry Ecklethwaite threatened to
stick his cock up the vicar’s arse if they so much as altered a word of it?
Vicar’d probably enjoy that mind!” he chortled to himself.
Bob
Dillage was a typical publican, loud, brash, larger than life, a caricature
almost. Blunt to the point of rudeness, locals took him in their stride but
visitors passing through who had just stopped for a bite to eat had often been
known to storm out in disgust at an alleged insult. It must have cost Bob
thousands in lost sales over the years but he always laughed it off. He was not
computer literate or else he might have taken a different view had he known how
bad his online reputation was according to those websites that scored an
establishment’s performance. He was so tall he had to duck under the several
wooden beams that crossed the bar area, his large bushy beard often betraying a
morsel or two of the evening’s meal that he had rushed in order to open up in
time for his many regulars. Allaways-on-Cock and its environs was a farming
community and the local farmers did like to fill their bellies with Bob’s
immaculately kept ale of an evening, often falling into the nearby River Cock
on their way home. Bob did not much care when a man had had enough, he was
quite happy to take their hard earned wages until they could stand no more. He
was also a nosy bastard and took great pleasure in finding out as much about
the villagers as he could so that he might drop a tasty piece of gossip into a
bar room argument to slap someone down. In other words, he could be a bit of a
bully.
Bob
liked to think he knew everything about the villagers and missed nothing,
although he remained blissfully ignorant of the fact that his wife Deirdre
Dillage had been shagging Pete Greensleave, a local farm labourer for the past
six years. The aforementioned policeman Bill Grudge had witnessed her being
nailed by Pete against a combine harvester one afternoon several years earlier
when he had been on his rounds pre-retirement. Bill had jumped over a fence
into the corner of a field for a crafty sleep, hiding his police issue bike in
a hedgerow and was zedding away blissfully unaware that Pete’s one hundred and
twenty decibel combine harvester had come alarmingly close to mincing him on a
couple of occasions. What had actually woken Bill were the manic cries of
Deirdre’s orgasm, a nightmarish noise that several villagers had since heard
for themselves. Those same villagers were now keeping their secret trump card
close to their chest for when the publican’s verbal badinage became too much to
leave unopposed.
Deirdre
now came into view in the bar area from their upstairs living quarters. She
never appeared downstairs until eight o’clock after her fill of the evening’s
television soap operas. In truth her life was a mini-soap opera on its own.
Pete Greensleave was in the corner of the bar playing a very raucous game of
darts with some of his farming cronies and Deirdre made her way over to collect
some empty glasses, making sure she brushed against Pete’s chest with her ample
bosom as she did so. The other boys stopped their throwing and drinking
momentarily to admire Deirdre’s hard nipples stretching the thin material of
her blouse several millimetres out of shape, nudging each other with their
elbows like schoolboys.
One of
the farmhands cheekily piped up “Oi Deirdre, did you see that quiz show on
telly the other night? They got stuck on that question about chapel hat pegs,” much
to the amusement of the rest of the puerile agriculturalists.
The
landlord remained oblivious to all this as he was too busy pressing Jim for
information about his life story. Thus far he had become annoyingly frustrated
at finding out any nuggets of scandal about Jim’s existence prior to settling
in Allaways.
“This
Emirates place then Jimbo”, said Bob, “sandy was it?”
Bob
had insisted on calling him Jimbo almost since day one of his settlement in the
village, as giving nicknames was something Bob liked to do in the hope it might
pique them. Jim had let it wash over him and not shown any annoyance, but it
did not stop Bob trying. “Well, it’s a desert Bob, so yes there was a bit of
sand about,” he said sarcastically.
“Bet
it got in all yer cracks and crevices when you wa’ shagging all them camels eh,
then Jimbo?” said Bob very loudly so that all the dart players stopped what
they were doing to shout appreciation at their hero landlord.
“Well
not really Bob, as a very important foreign worker I was put up in the
presidential palace and had my pick of the Sheik’s wives and daughters every
night. We left the camels for the local publicans,” said Jim drily, looking
down at a bar menu as he nonchalantly took a swig of his whisky.
The
pub roared. “Awwwww he’s got you a good ‘un there Bob” shouted Pete
Greensleave, as Bob Dillage bristled and turned a shade of embarrassed red that
was different to his usual ruddy complexion.
Once
cornered, quick-witted comebacks were definitely not Bob’s forte. “Cunt”, he
muttered, retreating to the other end of the bar to serve one of the
horticultural crowd who were now piling in from their meeting. The voice of
Harry Ecklethwaite was once more to the fore.
“I
told ‘em Bob, they can’t go around messin wi’ tradition. This show’s been going
for nigh on oondred year. My names graced the Cock Cup for most points in show
on nineteen occasions, including the last eleven on’t trot, a record I might
add, and we an’t messed around wit schedule in all that time so why start now?
En’t that right George? Eh…..where the fuck’s he gone now?”
Jim
did not wait around to listen to any more of Harry’s triumphalism and for the
second time that evening slipped out of a gathering quietly and unnoticed.
Peony Cottage was off Cock Side, a cul-de-sac off the Main Street and a brisk
six minute walk from the pub. Jim had placed a pin on a map of Britain when
deciding where to live once he returned to England and had actually come down
upon Tithampton the large town some twelve miles away. Exploring the area for
property his eyes had settled on the vacant cottage in an estate agent’s window
which had only just come up for sale that morning. At least that’s what he told
Bob Dillage. The late Dick Tallboy’s niece wanted a quick sale and Jim had
offered more than the asking price without even viewing it, concluding the
transaction in record time before anyone else even got the chance to bid for
it. It had initially caused quite a stir amongst the villagers as outsiders
were viewed with serious suspicion, especially seemingly affluent ones. When he
finally got to walk into the place he had been immediately captivated by it and
knew this was where he wanted to see out his final years. Dick’s niece, a
rather slight yet exceedingly pretty girl, mid-twenties in age, had been
similarly captivated by the mysterious stranger and tried flirting with him as
she showed him around the dilapidated property. Jim had humoured her as they
sauntered from room to room.
“Uncle
lived here all his life Mr. Lightfoot, but he went downhill fast after a bout
of flu winter before last. He loved his garden so much”, she said as they
approached a decaying garden annexe attached to the house and stared out upon a
large but greatly overgrown jungle of brambles, thistles and bindweed. “I hope
you’ll both be very happy living here.”
“Both?”
enquired Jim?
“Oh,
yes, Mr. Lightfoot. My uncle is still here. Only last week Jimmy Duggan the
village garage owner saw uncle looking down at him from an upstairs window as
he passed on his way home from work one evening. I’ve seen him a couple of
times. He never says anything these days though, he just waves.”
Jim
had been thinking about acting upon the girl’s flirtations and taking her
upstairs for a swift knee trembler against a wall, but now hastily decided
against such a plan for she was quite clearly retarded and any act of
copulation would surely open an almighty can of festering worms.
No comments:
Post a Comment