Sales shopping

It’s been a busy weekend here in Great Somerford. I counted seventeen horseboxes on my walk down to the shop this morning – there may have been more, but Brown Dog was distracted by one that seemed to be whinnying rather loudly, and I found myself wondering what villagers of past centuries might have made of horses being shipped around the village in motorised metal boxes on wheels. Of course they were all bound for the Dauntsey Park Horse Trials, which are held here, at Brook Farm, and down the road in Dauntsey.

In addition to all the horse boxes, the roads were also lined with tractors and pick-ups with trailers bound for one of Graham Singer’s famous sales in the show field at Great Somerford. And as if that wasn’t enough, someone had decided this would be a good weekend to cut the maize. Heaven help anyone who might be trying to get anywhere in a hurry.

Graham Singer’s sales are fantastic – but be prepared for disappointment if you were hoping for a pair of killer heels or this season’s latest handbag. Whenever I see the sign go up, or hear the familiar trundle of ancient tractors and clanking trailers trundling down the road, I perk up and find some excuse to go down there and have a quick shufti.

There are tractors, trailers, mowers, sprayers, discers, spreaders, mixers, feeders… Contraptions for weighing pigs, charming little henhouses, horseboxes, toolboxes full of tools, rusty old milk churns, bits of cattle grid, wheelbarrows, girt big stone water troughs that could only have got there by magic or the brute force of about 30 neanderthal henge-builders; an ancient plough, a once-loved painted pony trap (without the pony)… There are several things that look like – well, I can’t seem to work out exactly what they look like…








“What do you suppose that could be?” I ask Julian, who seems to be examining something that looks worrying like some kind of medieval instrument of torture. Julian looks as stumped as I am, but just then a burly looking farmer who looks as though he might know comes striding over.
“Is there a catalogue?” I enquire, trying to look as though I could well be in the market for a 1950s tractor or a few lengths of fencing.
“Catalogue?” he asks, looking slightly perplexed.
“Yes,” I’m trying to sound like a serious salegoer. Someone who knows the difference between one end of a combine harvester and the other. Which I don’t.
“We were wondering what this – er – thing was…”
Julian looks at me as though I’m trying to rope him into some kind of transaction he had no intention of getting involved with.


The farmer sucked his teeth for a minute or two.
“If you don’t know what it is, chances are you don’t need it.”

I suppose he had a point.


Other little bits of local news

 I popped over to see Jane and Guy the other week in Draycott Cerne. They’re in a lovely cottage in a most picturesque spot, and I must say I can’t remember either of them looking so relaxed and happy.

 Charlotte the spider’s babies finally hatched – what looked like about 50 of them. I must say, I let Charlotte disappear beforehand. I read in Alex’s spider book that the baby spiders often eat the mother if she’s not quick enough off the mark, and poor old Charlotte only had five legs, so I didn’t altogether fancy her chances.

 John tells me they were his bees. I thought they were…

Feeling smug as a slug in a spud

It’s almost been like Spring Watch at our place this week, although admittedly it’s the wrong time of year and we haven’t got Bill Oddie in a hide down the bottom of the garden. Alex’s friend has got a hedgehog in his garden, and she’s just produced a couple of tiny, prickly babies. As far as we can see, there’s at least two, although we don’t want to get too close.

And as I walked over to Little Somerford to pick up my car from Richard on Friday, I noticed a pair of velvety ears poking up through a sea of barley in one of the fields by the railway line. A young faun, which could only have been a couple of meters away, suddenly noticed he was not alone and turned tail, bouncing gracefully away towards cover. The dog, at silly mid-off, gave chase, but he wasn’t nearly quick or tall enough – his wildly flailing ears bounced ridiculously through the long grass before he reluctantly gave up the ghost.

Later that day, Alex found what looked like a very fat tube-web spider under the sofa. We spooned it up into his magnifying bug viewer where it obligingly laid an enormous egg, which it wrapped up into a parcel. I’m not sure how the baby spiders are supposed to get out when they do eventually emerge – it says in our spider book that spiderweb is stronger than steel rope, once it’s had a chance to harden. Still, I suppose it must know what it’s doing. We’ll keep you posted.

Down on the allotments this evening, several dusky black swifts were skimming the veg patches while I dug up the last of my early potatoes. Swifts are only here for a few short months and apparently never land on the earth – if they did, they wouldn’t be able to take off again, they even sleep on the wing. I’ve been growing veg for a little while now, but I still never cease to find it amazing how just four little seed potatoes tucked away in a corner of Adam and Cheryl’s allotment can somehow manage to produce all this. I really didn’t do an awful lot – just popped down whenever I remembered and raked up the soil a couple of times.

I pedalled back home, feeling slightly smug and wobbling slightly under the weight of all my spuds, where I rustled up a courgette quiche (thanks Cheryl for the courgettes and Suzy for the eggs). I popped some of my freshly dug potatoes on to boil with a couple of sprigs of mint, marvelling at how clever I’d been to rustle up such a quick, delicious meal with just about everything sourced from less than a mile away (ok, the flour and the butter did come from Somerfield). This, surely, was what the good life was all about. It was only towards the end of supper when the rude awakening came. I’ll give you a clue – what’s the one thing that’s possibly worse than finding a slug in your dinner? That’s right: finding half a slug.

I take a little comfort from Dr Mark Porter’s comments on Case Notes earlier this week to the effect that stomach acid is actually stronger than car-battery acid, and therefore better at dissolving things. However, I’ve suddenly gone right off home-grown veg.