Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (30 page)

Shortly after 9.30 a.m., still half asleep, I climb into the old white Transit with Bob. David has built a precarious arrangement
of shelves to enable us to transport hundreds of plants and herbs, but as we bump over a small bridge on the drive across
the Levels the table lurches to one side, sending a tray of lavender plants flying. Half a dozen of them come loose from their
pots and earth scatters over the other plants and the bottom of the van. The marquee is almost empty when we arrive, a clear
advantage as we set up shop in a prime location by the entrance. After shaking off the soil, I arrange fifteen different herbs,
petunias, hostas, rosemary plants, lavender, marigolds, geraniums, sedums, grasses, lupins, busy Lizzies, and royal blue irises
on a rickety wooden table. I make a pile of copies of the herb book which has turned into a steady seller, earning us 50P
on each sale. We've also got three boxes of different lettuces - Webb's wonder, lollo rosso and unico - on sale for 60p each.

Next to us, Angela Davage from nearby Curry Rivel is putting out her stocks of homemade pasties, sausage rolls, bacon and
tomato rolls, cakes, scones, cheese scones, all neatly wrapped in cellophane and labelled by hand. She is yawning too, after
cooking till ten the night before and then getting up at five to finish the packing and sorting. Angela's husband had to stop
work at Westland Helicopters due to ill health. Now he is unemployed. Her baking hobby is the mainstay of the family finances
and she cooks for farm shops and works the local markets. Her mother helps out, and while Angela is manning the stall in Langport
her mum is doing the same thing at the nearby Drayton market.

Bob and I lug the trays of herbs and plants from the back of the Transit into the tent. I realise that we've brought no bags,
no signs and no tin to put any money in, but luckily Charlie hasn't left home yet and I am able to reach him on the mobile
and divert him towards the office for brown paper carrier bags and flat-pack cardboard boxes. By ten-thirty we are set up
and ready so I go to look round. Langport town extends into the village of Huish Episcopi, home of one of Somerset's most
remarkable churches. In 1972, when Britain converted to decimal currency, the first decimal stamps featured great English
church towers. Huish took pride of place, appearing on the 9P version, the most expensive of the issue. The tower is celebrating
its 550th year, although the church dates back to the 1200's. Huish was reputedly the model for Plumstead Episcopi in Trollope's
The Warden,
and in an adjoining tent an exhibition of paintings, photos and collages of the tower are being auctioned in aid of its upkeep.
Outside on the rough grass beside the river, nine members of the Wessex Highlanders, splendid in tartan kilts, hats and bum-freezer
black jackets, are warming up their bagpipes. A little later in the day, one of them comes by the stall and tells me that
he learned to play the bagpipes in a piggery, where the noise was sufficiently loud to drown out the shrieks and wails that
he made while trying to master his instrument. He thought the pigs quite liked it, as they'd cluster round him as he went
through his scales.

There's no formal opening of the market, but by II.30 we've already sold two herb books, twelve different herbs, two irises
and all the lupins we bought - sadly only three: we could have sold many more. David had packed the Transit the night before
and Charlie is annoyed to find that there is no coriander in with the herbs, as we've grown loads of it and it is already
going to seed. But Bob is enjoying himself. On the drive over he told me that he was particularly chuffed that Bramble had
finally started to treat him as a friend. The day before, he'd been spreading extra straw in the maternity ward and the fat
sow had shown a keen interest, helping push the straw this way and that, creating a big luxurious bed in which she will soon
give birth. Apparently, she'd nudged him several times on the leg, not her usual pushy shoves, more a gesture of thanks. She
had bestowed a little gift of grace on Bob and it was touching to see how much it delighted him.

'Make eye contact and smile,' Charlie says. It's late in the morning and, exactly as happened at the Montacute market, the
stalls selling food are doing a roaring business while trade on our plant stall is lurching along in fits and starts. Mark
and Sue Tutton of Orchard Old Spots are nearby. Since opening time, Mark has been frying pork burgers, bacon and sausages
on a portable gas grill and one of his daughters has been stuffing the meat into buns, adding fried onions or generous dollops
of Sue's home-made apple sauce. By twelve-thirty there's a queue and the smell is mouth-watering.

I go back to the car park to fetch some more parsley plants from the van and when I come back Charlie is talking to a couple
about the value of sorrel: great as soup, brilliant in omelettes, grows all through the winter; he's got his sales patter
down to a fine art. The woman is in her forties, pretty and vivacious, and she is laughing at something Charlie has said,
her husband leaning forward across the table to join in the conversation. I look at her and I shudder. She is in a wheelchair
and it is a serious wheelchair: not the kind I used to have, which was a one-size-fits-all model, the sort you have if you
are unable to walk only on a temporary basis. This chair has been customised and fitted with a motor and gadgets to steer
by.

As the days approach the third anniversary of my accident, the second anniversary of when I finally put down the booze, I
find myself thinking a great deal about the car accident and about how I very nearly became permanently disabled. I have no
idea how I would have coped. I make myself busy at the far end of the stall, moving pots that don't need moving, keeping my
hands occupied, acutely aware that I am standing upright, able to fetch parsley plants from the van. If you are given a diagnosis
for any condition that is going to last a lifetime, you have to grieve for the future you will never have. I nearly had to
face a future of never walking freely again, of never being able to carry a cup of coffee across a room or board a train without
help or just walk down a street, blending in unnoticed with the crowds. People used to tell me that I was brave and I am sure
that people tell the woman in the chair, who is counting out some money to hand to Charlie in return for a couple of basil
plants, the same thing, over and over again. It is not about bravery though, because you literally have no choice but to keep
pushing forward and making the best of things. Bravery is about doing something over which you exercise a choice, being the
first one, so to speak, to charge over the barricades, or risk your employment in order to tell the truth, or standing up
to the bullies in the school playground who are making another child's life a living hell. That's being brave.

I now think that I was given an extraordinarily precious gift, that almost losing my leg, almost dying, has put beauty back
in the heart of everyday life. To see my child grow up and blossom, to be able, in my fifties, to start a whole new life with
a partner I love, is priceless. When I was a young woman in my twenties, inspired by the rallying cry of the 1960s that everything,
in order to be anything, must be far out, extreme, on the edge, I rebelled against any notion of settling down and leading
a life that was ordered, that had routine. Routine smacked of boredom and compromise. Knowing what time you would go to bed
at night meant your life was dull and proscribed. I never for one moment dreamt that what I thought of as stultifyingly boring
would, in years to come, become so extremely rich and satisfying. The woman in the wheelchair and Charlie are still laughing,
turning a brief encounter into a moment of uncomplicated pleasure. I wonder what trials she has been through, how she has
come to terms with her life of immobility. What is so clear from her merry deep laugh is that it is a life rich in things
that matter: in human connection, relationships and nature.

On my travels through recovery I met a young rabbi called Shalom. On the day before I was due to get the final verdict from
my surgeon as to whether my leg would survive intact or face the chop, he sat with me in the garden at the clinic and said,
'Don't ever forget that the adventures of the mind are always far, far more rewarding than the adventures of the feet.' My
experience was nothing compared with families facing a terminal sentence on one of their own, but my brief glimpse into the
abyss of disability has made me truly thankful for so much we all take for granted.
In
my case, sometimes just the act of getting out of bed in the morning, unaided, unimpeded and, above all, without a hangover
is enough to carry me happily through the day.

Outside the tent, two men are performing the Chinese Lion dance inside a brightly coloured paper lion. They've come from the
Lee Palace Chinese restaurant in Dorchester as part of a cultural initiative. Our neighbour in the tent, Angela, has been
along to a cooking demonstration held in a local village hall earlier in the week. For £7.50 they were shown how to cook a
range of Chinese dishes, which were then laid out as a multi-course banquet fit for a king. Only eight people showed up and
they all got stuffed. The Hong Kong-born owner of the restaurant used to work in London's Chinatown. He moved to Dorchester
six years ago and doing the Lion dance is now a regular, if bizarre, feature of West Country life. The lion shimmies its way
between the rows of flags stretching from the flag-pole, between the kids and their hula-hoops, the black-suited members of
the Langport Brass Band and the bagpipe players who have struck up a chorus of
Auld Lang Syne.
It should, I think, be utterly incongruous, but somehow it's not. The wind whips up the sides of the marquee tent, sending
our hanging baskets, which aren't selling at all, banging against the canvas walls. The surface of the river breaks up into
flurries and the yellow rape that grows in profusion on the far bank weaves and bends against the sudden gusts. A springer
spaniel hauls itself out of the water, dripping wet and wagging its tail. It rushes, barking, into the middle of the pipers,
scattering water on nine pairs of thick white socks. Overhead, the clouds gather and part, threatening a downpour which never
quite materialises. As we pack up to go, Charlie and I count up our takings: £164.50, of which probably less than £50 is pure
profit. As an hourly rate it leaves much to be desired: three of us have been on the stall for over four hours, which means
we've each earned roughly £4.20 an hour. But as a way to spend a day, it's been priceless.

On 10 May there is an acrimonious meeting of the town council. Fifty protesters storm out shouting 'resign the lot of you'
after the councillors block a discussion on whether to reexamine the one-way decision. Four of the thirteen councillors backed
a motion calling for the council's rule book - the standing orders - to be suspended, a necessary move in order to allow discussion
of the same item twice in a six-month period. But Councillor Adam Kennedy led the decision to overrule the motion, suggesting
that the council simply take note of the public's position. Norman Campbell, the mayor who was so sympathetic to Bryan, Mike
and myself at our recent meeting, chooses this moment to tender his resignation as mayor, citing his unhappiness at the councillors'
decision not to re-open the debate.

Now all efforts are being focused on the last-ditch attempt to make the council reconsider the planned one-way system at a
meeting that will take place at Dillington House on 30 May. Relations between the town council and the Chamber of Commerce
have reached such a low point that a new organisation has been formed called the Ilminster Democracy Action Group. The IDAG
is led by Dave Bailey, an ex-shop steward at the local Glacier Metals company. In 1995, Dave and his wife Jennifer organised
Ilminster's own special millennium celebrations, which recalled that in 995 the town had been ceded to the abbots at nearby
Muchelny Abbey, by order of King Ethelred the Unready. At a meeting at Christchurch, Canterbury, three bishops, two dukes,
five abbots, five thanes and the shepherd of Sherborne, one I. Wulfsige, signed a charter which gifted the town - and all
its taxes - to the Muchelny abbots. The charter survives to this present day, stored in the records office in Taunton, the
oldest such document in the British Isles. I have a copy of it beside me as I write. It begins, 'In the name of the gracious
one who thunders and rules in perpetuity, who guides and governs the kingdom and the three fold mechanism of the entire universe,
the lofty height of the heavens and the deepest depth of the flowing ocean, everything in the heights and depths, with the
power of his majesty, now and for ever more.' During the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII gifted Muchelny to his
wife Jane Seymour. The document disappeared, but in the late nineteenth century it was discovered at the now ruined abbey
and was moved to Taunton, where, in the early 1990's and with the help of the vicar's Latin primer, Jennifer began the task
of translating the Anglo-Carolingian script into modern English. At the celebrations in 1995 the document, which hadn't been
seen for a thousand years, was brought to Ilminster and displayed in the minster. Dressed as a monk, Dave carried it up the
aisle during Sunday morning service while a libretto Jennifer had written about the Canterbury meeting was sung by the choir.
They seem to me to be the perfect couple to help spearhead this last protest.