THE HONKEYMOON CAFE

Industry is not something always associated with the rolling hills of the Dorset countryside,  but when research for the village museum turns up something of national importance,  it could make the village famous. Rachael, who as you know is our local historian, has been researching the village’s industrial past for an exhibit in the village museum. It may seem odd as such a thing hardly exists other than the occasional tech firm re-locating for the ‘mindfulness’ of their employees, and why not. No one would discount the village blacksmith as a manufacturer, he, or she, in their time have produced far more than horse-shoes and garden gates. Chairs and tables were often produced locally and the legs as well as staircase spindles and other turned parts were produced sometimes on a ‘pole lathe’ by the fine skills of a ‘bodger’. Not at all the careless, half hearted, temporary work with which the name is now associated. The farming landscape has changed over the years so that smal...

A celebrity stays in the village but only so long as she can go for walks without  be hounded by the press.  She likes the one but not the other. It's a deal you can get caught up in. On my way to the shop late one morning a neighbour told me there was a limousine in the street. I presumed she meant ‘Limousin’ as a local farm had a herd, and it was more likely than a stretched taxi, but I was wrong. Awards ceremonies and opening nights would have limos queueing up to discharge their celebrities onto the waiting red carpet, but nowadays it would be more likely to be a hen party bent on clubbing. The limo had become commonplace, but not during the day, and certainly not in our village and certainly not parked outside our village shop. As I walked past this stretched monstrosity, I heard a gentle hiss and the one of several darkened windows slowly lowered revealing, from what I could see beneath large dark glasses, a tanned woman’s face and therefore probably not a local. ‘Hi, ca...

A stage magician and clairvoyant begins to wish it were possible to be at one’s own funeral,  to hear the kind words, and find out what people really thing.  Surely with his skills anything is possible. It’s a shame that funerals happen when they do, when those for whom the funeral is held is not there to appreciate those that have made the effort to turn up, or all the kind words that are spoken. There is deep sorrow of course, but also sadness amongst some that it takes a funeral for them to make contact, renew old acquaintances, meet the relatives they haven’t seen since a wedding, or a previous funeral. As opposed to the subdued and melancholy post committal events of the past, a wake has become a more relaxed affair with entertaining remembrances of the deceased. It can give a truer picture of the dearly departed and a genuine celebration of that person’s life. Rose, who used to be the village post lady, died three years ago. Her grandson was a regular drinker at the Dru...

A mirror frame rotting in The Old Drum and Monkey’s cellar has been there for a century or more.  It’s history as a mirror reveals it’s witnessed some horrific acts.  Can mirrors really show us what horrors they remember? Dave at our local asked me during a busy Sunday lunchtime whether I knew anything about ‘gilding’. A frame had been in his cellar ever since he had been given the pub to run by the Blythe Estate. Diane, Lady Blythe’s secretary had told Dave that if it was the same frame, it was the frame of a mirror purchased from the Connaught Estate by Lady Blythe’s father-in-law. No sooner had it been installed in his Lordship’s dressing room, it was removed but she didn’t know why. When his lordship found out it had been stored in an outbuilding, he instructed a couple of gardeners to destroy it and to put anything that remained onto one of their regular bonfires. Obviously that hadn’t happened. A few days later I was examining the mirror frame which was in a very poor st...