Som­er­set saves the day

Here we are, in the grayest of Feb­ru­ary weeks, liv­ing through weeks and weeks of rain punc­tu­at­ed by the rare after­noon of dry, if not out and out sun… just dry, at least.

Feb­ru­ary is light­ened for me by my birth­day, which far from becom­ing less impor­tant as I get old­er, real­ly does pro­vide a moment of excite­ment in this dull month… then we res­olute­ly ignore Valentine’s Day because we hate 1) pink, 2) ros­es, and 3) choco­late.  Then we wait until the end of the month for John’s birth­day and then at least we can stop pre­tend­ing to enjoy Feb­ru­ary and just move onto the Sea­son of Mud That is March.

Which is why it is so impor­tant to enjoy the school Half-Term break.  You might well ask: how on earth can there be a BREAK from school when we just returned from Christ­mas a month ago?  And yet, this Feb­ru­ary, with var­i­ous pres­sures brought to bear on us, and no one feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly cheer­ful, the idea of a week off was strange­ly welcome.

Avery had been invit­ed out to the coun­try­side (“expect con­stant rain, bring Wellies and warm lay­ers”, oh joy), so John and I dropped her off at Euston Sta­tion into the wel­com­ing hands of her hosts and we our­selves jumped into the car, laden with can­dles, warm sweaters, and drove off to Somerset.

We drove through the after­noon, lis­ten­ing to an Agatha Christie mys­tery on some incred­i­bly com­pli­cat­ed elec­tron­ic sys­tem of John’s devis­ing, and mar­veling at the aston­ish­ing, var­ied beau­ty of the coun­try­side.  Rolling hills, bil­low­ing pil­lowy clouds releas­ing rain show­ers in the dis­tance, black skies to one side and shim­mer­ing blue to the oth­er, and all around the unbe­liev­able Eng­lish GREEN of a win­ter landscape.

We arrived at the Parish House of Bal­tons­bor­ough, Som­er­set, in near twi­light to unload our bags full of such essen­tials as a soup blender, votive can­dles, piles of all the books I’ve been mean­ing to read since Christ­mas.   The house nes­tled adja­cent to a gor­geous 14^th cen­tu­ry church and its atten­dant creepy graveyard.

And out of the wan­ing light came an enor­mous­ly fluffy, thick­ly puffed-up lead-col­ored cat!  He wove around our ankles, purring mad­ly at my first touch.  The per­fect start to our holiday.

I quick­ly ran upstairs to the high-vault­ed recep­tion room to see if the instruc­tion books to the house men­tioned a place to buy food, and saw the nota­tion, “The local shop will pro­vide most basic require­ments.”  So off we went, hop­ing to catch it before clos­ing time, and dear read­ers, I must tell you, should you end up on hol­i­day at the Parish House, unless your “basic require­ments” begin and end with sliced local tongue (I actu­al­ly did buy this for John’s lunch!), white bread, pack­aged Scotch eggs and the more lurid tabloid news­pa­pers, you’ll need to find anoth­er source of food.

So off we went to, I hate to say, Tesco in near­by Wells and stocked up.  That’s always one of my favorite moments of a Land­mark Trust hol­i­day when I know I’ll be cook­ing at least two meals a day in a strange and emp­ty kitchen and I can buy ingre­di­ents to start from scratch!  We shopped hap­pi­ly and drove home in the spit­ty dark rain, to come into a warm, com­plete­ly spot­less kitchen and unpack.

That first night: had­dock fil­lets wrapped in streaky bacon, put under the grill and served on a bed of but­tery leeks.

Tues­day found us wan­der­ing around the beau­ti­ful church and its ceme­tery, where we were greet­ed by the love­ly church­war­den, a man who had come home after a career all over the world as a naval offi­cer and For­eign Office chap.  Oh the church with its touch­ing plaques and embroi­dered kneel­ers, its hour­glass for the par­son to know how long to speak, its ancient font.

After a tongue lunch – seri­ous­ly! – we head­ed off, top of the Cinque­cen­to down even in the chilly misty air, to arrive at the church at Butleigh.

This was the home of the local squire for gen­er­a­tions until the 1970s.  We are still Amer­i­can enough to be over­whelmed by a list of the vic­ars of the church dat­ing back to 1203.  Heavens.

From there we repaired to the ruins of the Glas­ton­bury Abbey, a per­fect­ly gor­geous and evoca­tive spot, over­run at the moment with shout­ing French teenage tourists.  But gorgeous.

Glas­ton­bury itself is a most pecu­liar town, filled to the brim with shops sell­ing mys­ti­cal items like crys­tals with var­i­ous heal­ing pow­ers, books about find­ing your inner uni­corn, incense of every descrip­tion.  Every­one walk­ing down the pave­ments seemed to have signed an agree­ment to wear match­ing flop­py, flow­ing trousers gath­ered at the ankle and to leave hair to form dread­locks.  We went home.

I put pork bel­ly in a slow oven to roast for the rest of the after­noon and set­tled down, while John napped, to try to make a dent in my read­ing pile.  Sebas­t­ian Faulks’s “Faulks on Fic­tion” is a bril­liant read, most­ly for his intel­li­gent intro­duc­tion, but also for dip­ping in and out of the chap­ters devot­ed to “heroes” of fic­tion: every­one from Becky Sharp to Sher­lock Holmes, with Jeeves and Mr Dar­cy in between.

All through the after­noon the aro­mas of car­rot soup with gin­ger, and siz­zling, salty pork bel­ly, float­ed through the house as the church bell chimed the pass­ing hours.

Car­rot and Gin­ger Soup

(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter

4 cloves garlic

1 white onion, quartered

8 car­rots, cut in large chunks

chick­en broth (or veg­etable broth) to cov­er, per­haps 3 cups

1 tbsps (or more) ground ginger

1/2 cup dou­ble cream

skimmed milk to thin to taste

sea salt and pep­per to taste

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and saute gar­lic and onion till soft.  Add car­rots, and pour over chick­en broth.  Add gin­ger and sim­mer for about 30 min­utes till car­rots are soft.  Puree with hand blender and add cream and milk and sea­son to taste.

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This soup is thick, so add as much milk as you like.  It is gor­geous­ly orange, huge­ly spicy and the health­i­est thing you can imag­ine eat­ing.  The smell of it sim­mer­ing is heavenly.

And then, halfway through our deli­cious sup­per, there was the per­sis­tent, clash­ing sound of bells.  A sort of sense­less clang­ing that spoke of bell-ring­ing prac­tice!  “Chew and swal­low and let’s go see if they’re prac­tic­ing tonight!” John urged, so I did, putting my jack­et on over my apron and grab­bing a scarf.

We came close on the heels of a gen­tle­man walk­ing slow­ly up the church path, and fol­lowed him in, return­ing his incu­ri­ous, polite, Eng­lish greet­ing of “Good evening.”  As we entered the church, I asked him, “Would it be all right if we lis­tened?”  “Cer­tain­ly, make your­self com­fort­able,” he said, and dis­ap­peared through a tiny doorway.

From behind drawn ancient vel­vet cur­tains up above the nave came the clang­ing again.  I lis­tened, rapt, and then a man came through the door­way again and with an invit­ing ges­ture of his hand said, “Why not come up and lis­ten while we practice?”

HEAV­EN!

We climbed the nar­row, sharply curv­ing stone steps with their worn treads, fol­low­ing him into a tiny cham­ber FILLED with peo­ple, and bell ropes, the walls cov­ered with fad­ed pho­tographs of celebri­ties stand­ing with bell­ringers, and tablets recall­ing past peals.

In short, as was my adven­ture last spring in Sal­is­bury, the whole set­ting and its char­ac­ters were the exact enact­ment of every one of my favorite Eng­lish nov­els.  Sim­ply mag­i­cal.  An man with the face of an intel­li­gent, humor­ous elf sat down next to me and John and said, “The one rule here, no crossed legs.  Don’t want any ankles caught in the ropes, do we?”  Cer­tain­ly not!

There fol­lowed the most enjoy­able two hours I have spent in a long time: embraced by these strangers who smiled at my hap­pi­ness, lis­ten­ing to their descrip­tions of what was hap­pen­ing with the bells, try­ing to fol­low the arcane and impos­si­bly com­plex cours­es , absorb­ing the instruc­tions of var­i­ous ringers, “Treble’s going, treble’s gone,” and “Stand down,” look­ing from one sharply con­cen­trat­ed face to anoth­er as they fol­lowed their intri­cate assignments.

I WILL learn to ring!

Love­ly John.  How many hus­bands would put up with such a crazy enthu­si­asm in his wife, much less urg­ing her to go pur­sue it, and sit with her, smil­ing at my joy.  I am very lucky.

And for any­one who thinks the Eng­lish are chilly, removed, unfriend­ly: I wish you could have been there to see how they treat­ed us.  I was allowed to ring a bell myself!  And they took us up into the bell cham­ber after, to see how the swing­ing mech­a­nism works.  I had nev­er thought before about how the bells are brought up, 361 degrees to begin swing­ing, and then are brought down to swing a slow 180 degrees and on down to silence.

Amaz­ing.

And after­ward one of the begin­ning ringers, who had been alert­ly fol­low­ing all the activ­i­ty with the aid of a lit­tle book­let, turned to us and said, “I’ve just become a grand­fa­ther yes­ter­day, and we’re going down the pub for me to buy every­one a round.  You would be most wel­come if you’d like to come along.”

So we did, me still in my embar­rass­ing apron, but feel­ing com­plete­ly at home in the pub’s warm inte­ri­or, embraced by the ringers, hav­ing a pint.

Sim­ply love­ly.  I wish I had pho­tos to show you, but it wasn’t that sort of occa­sion.  But I promise that when I learn to ring myself, I will take plen­ty of pic­tures to record the fact.

The ringers are going to look into find­ing a church here in Lon­don where I can learn.

Home in the chilly, star­lit dark­ness to our lit­tle house, our aban­doned din­ner.  We made pop­corn, mad­ly but­tery, and chat­ted.  “Can you believe they invit­ed us to the pub with them?” was a ques­tion that mer­it­ed being asked sev­er­al times, always with the answer, “They were SO friendly.”

“I think that when you have an unusu­al enthu­si­asm like bell­ring­ing, you’re nice to oth­er peo­ple who share your inter­est, even if they’re strangers,” John said.  I also think that bell­ringers are just nice peo­ple, full stop.

And that was the first half of our Som­er­set adven­ture.  Stay tuned for Wells Cathe­dral and a ver­ti­cal walk…