THE HONKEYMOON CAFE

Constance and Bernard have been an item ever since he didn’t win the Longest Carrot competition. They eventually decide to marry and move in together. They have been single for a good few years and the prospect of being part of a couple again is exciting. What could possibly go wrong? You may recall my next door neighbour is Constance, a retired horticulturalist, whose small garden puts to shame most of us in the village. You may also remember Bernard, who’s garden I likened to the gardening version of an intensive case unit, his enthusiasm was for vegetables, the bigger, the better. He was expected to win the longest carrot in our annual produce show, as he had done for several years before, but when he didn’t, the shock was such that Constance, having been a member of the St. John’s Ambulance, had to come to his rescue and nurse him back to health. Judging by the creaking gate that Bernard built between their two gardens, the nursing has been continuing ever since.  You see, Bern...

A very large animal, a cat perhaps, or a dog, seen at night could just be imagination. Shadows cast by a bright silvery moon and a gently breeze can give the impression of something huge moving silently through the countryside. But if a victim of the beast proves its existence, what a story that would make! Not far to the south-west of our village on the edge of a vale stretching almost to the coast, is Black Fenn Common, as its name implies it was once a rancid stretch of bog and peat marsh. Drained and cultivated over the years it is now a productive region with a fine reputation for what the area produces.   Flat lands are regularly the source of rumour and superstition and the Vale is no different. Swirling mists over dark pools, dancing marsh gas and those who lost their way never to be seen again, were more than enough to give rise to all sorts of superstitions. Vale folk were inclined to encourage the tales, so as to discourage the casual visitor. The mists are now mostly li...

Spring and summer heralds the season for garden parties and open air events, but with our weather, success or failure is in the lap of the Gods. Some can afford to take no chances but others risk it and the results can be a calamity or great fun, and divide the village forever. In like a lion and out like a lamb, goes the saying regarding June, supposedly the first month of Summer. ‘Ne’r cast a clout till May’s out’, is another which supposes overnight on the 31st a revolution takes place in the weather. Stranger things have happened, which is what makes our weather a popular topic for conversation. Taylor Bradford, who with his wife ‘Babs’ moved into the Old Mill, is a Californian and found the British pre-occupation with the weather baffling, until he realised you could hardly tell from one day to the next what it was going to do. Not something he’d experienced in L.A. I look forward like most people, to warmer weather and longer days, but I nearly always forget, so does everything e...

Whether you walk just to walk, or just to look and listen, the countryside is a beautiful place to explore, and we are lucky to have it, but there used to be more of it, and it’s there, the other side of a wall. The ‘Enclosures Act’ robbed the people of one fifth of the whole country! It was the common land that ordinary people had used and enjoyed for centuries, but the gentry put a wall round it and called it ‘theirs’. Our small village numbers four or five keen walkers, and their emphasis is walking. They are members of various walking organisations and take walking very seriously. There are others like myself that do not take walking seriously, instead we take looking and listening much more seriously, and use walking merely to get us to places where we can look and listen. If I was walking with serious walkers I would be left behind staring at a view, trying to identify a flower, or what bird it is I can’t see, whilst they have disappeared into the distance. I would catch up just ...