Our fresh young forward, the two-year-old, was causing a few problems but mainly for his own side, as he was constantly wandering off and having to be rescued by one of the team. What a brilliant game football is. I’d forgotten just how much more fun it is doing football than watching it, especially with girls playing. There were frequent bouts of hysteria and a lot of running commentary. Claire, in goal, got a muddy one on the nose from the opposition, which galvanised the team spirit and took the competitive element to another level. The two-year-old found a big puddle that fascinated him and he sat down to play in the mud. Once he had stopped running away we really rubbed their noses in it. It felt good afterwards, the winter sunshine was warm and you could see for miles and miles. Far more people watch football than play it. Watching the best team in the world is nothing compared to playing in the worst. Football made me feel good.
We were nearly ready to decorate. ‘Who can paint?’ I asked.
‘If you can piss you can paint,’ said John, slowly and wisely, and everybody cheerfully agreed. We were sitting in the static caravan, me, John – the semi-retired chippy with a lifetime’s worth of breaktime wisdom to draw upon – and Blackie and Doa. Blackham and Doa were the only idlers left in the village, or had been until they started working for me. I felt slightly guilty for steamrollering their idyllic lifestyles. They were happy chasing barbel, growing their own vegetables and going to see Motorhead occasionally but due to the buoyancy of the local economy it was no longer possible to live here and not have a job, even if you’d retired. I suppose I thought I’d come here to retire, after all.
I was quite absorbed in village life, but it was surprisingly easy to stay in touch with people I cared about from the past too. In fact getting some distance from everything had helped me realise who I did care about. We were far enough away from London for people to think about staying the night if they came to visit, and even though everyone had said we were mad to do it in the first place, all the ones who had been the most indignant about what we were doing, were the ones who wanted to come and stay now it was Britain’s ‘Best Village’.
I was living in a different world. Most of the time I didn’t have any cash or any keys in my pocket. In the summer I didn’t wear shoes. In a way living on a farm was a return to a childlike state. There were far more exciting things to spend money on than comfy chairs or plasma screen tellies: now there were pergolas and gazebos, cherry pickers and mini diggers. I liked the places where they added the VAT on afterwards and sent you a monthly bill: builders merchants and plant hire companies. The countryside is not known for its shops. Stow-on-the-Wold sold fudge and antiques. Bourton-on-the-Water just sold fudge. Most of the villages didn’t even have a shop at all any more. I remember going to the country when I lived in London and feeling there was nowhere to spend my cash: it’s quite a nauseating feeling, when your money’s not worth anything or it won’t get you anything.
That wasn’t a problem in Kingham, because of Daylesford. The reason people wanted to come to Kingham was because of Daylesford.
I only discovered Daylesford by accident. My dad spotted it actually. Daylesford is the poshest organic farm shop in the world. There are shops I have to go to, and shops I like to go to. Daylesford Organic is one of the latter. More than a farm shop, this is a farm shop so fabulous that it gentrified the whole neighbourhood. It probably added more to the value of houses in the area than having a member of the royal family move in would have done. It really is a spectacular feat of fantasy, realised. Organic principles bundled up with glamour, off pat, tied with a ribbon into a retail experience every bit as sensational as Bond Street or Liberty. It was like accidentally wandering out of the economy cabin of grocery shopping into first class. The place was full of blissful-looking yoga chicks and anxious-looking husbands. The only problem with it, was that it was expensive. But how expensive can a carrot be? I have to say, I don’t care how much a carrot is. It can’t be that much and if it is really good, I’ll pay. Daylesford was incredibly popular with Cotswold high fliers, and a whole scene and mythology grew up around it. People who live in the Cotswolds don’t tend to go to other villages. It’s like London, people who live in Clapham never go to Camden. But everyone goes to Daylesford. There were credible reports of local movie stars spending thousands of pounds per visit, and aristocratic ladies unable to control the frequency of their trips to the holistic massage parlour. To shop there cost the earth, but it was heaven. The place radiated prestige and dispensed comfort.
It was all the dream of Carole Bamford, the wife of a local billionaire. People laughed at her, said she was losing money, that it was a hobby and that it was ridiculous, but somehow she had actually created the most desirable food brand there is. She didn’t particularly care about making money. She wanted to make amazing food. That was why the brand was so powerful and so valuable. It was food couture. I could see the Bamfords’ land from my bedroom window. I’ve never seen grass as green as that. It was a bit like the rest of the local countryside, but it was slightly neater and greener, even from a distance you could tell how tidy it all was. Part of the shop’s charm is that it was just nestled away in the middle of nowhere: rolling countryside at the heart of the next-door estate. The first time I went to the shop was on a Saturday. People had flocked in from all points west: on foot, on horseback, by motorbike and sidecar, in Bentleys and 4x4s. I parked my bicycle between some kind of dragster and a convertible BMW. There was nothing ugly and not a single reminder of any of the bad things about the world, not the merest hint. Even the car park was a beautiful thing, full of other beautiful things.
The renovated farm buildings that housed the shops were beautiful. I realised they were just like my buildings, probably built by the same builders at around the same time, but these had the benefit of a brilliant redesign. The perfect balance of rustic and contemporary. It was like strolling into Belgravia ‘en pays’. To enter was to be overwhelmed by a sea of beige punctuated by topiary splodges.
As a rule of thumb you can tell how affluent people are in the Cotswolds by how skinny they are. Everyone was skinny in Daylesford. As I arrived, two latte-sipping gymkhana mums in full regalia – knee-length riding boots, thigh-clinging jodhpurs – climbed aboard their supercharged Range Rover, happily chattering in fluent New Age. I passed a conspicuously gay man in a cravat carrying what might have been a cabbage – or could have been a large, unusual flower – to his car, a pristine vintage E-type Jag. He exuded great hauteur, incredibly managing to suggest that the whole experience was beneath him. And that’s how posh the Cotswolds are. There is always someone who thinks they are above the situation, no matter how spectacular it is.
There is never anything in the food hall that it would not be nice to take home. Once inside it’s irresistible, spellbinding. Buying food elsewhere is just unthinkable. It’s not that cheap, but a crisp paper bag of groceries from there was enough to keep me happy for quite some time. What meats! Everything from snipe to sausages ranged alongside unrecognisable vegetables from abroad and perfect specimens of familiar ones fresh from the market gardens right outside. The bread counter was piled high with rye loaves, batons and soda whoppers. There were pastries. There were tarts. There were full-on legs of ham, cheeses I’d never seen before. Everything was beautifully wrapped, perfectly lit and immaculate. There were even copies of Dazed & Confused and Wallpaper magazine at the checkout. It was all absolutely ridiculous and fantastic and sexy. I spotted a cruising Bentley bachelor who was unable to remember the name of the cheese that he liked, but the man on the cheese counter knew, and he knew the gentleman’s name, too.
Daylesford is a place that all women like. At least there seemed to be more women than men there. A lady of indeterminable age, wearing a denim mini skirt and looking very good, whilst rather nonchalantly buying truffles, was talking on her mobile. ‘Darling, I’d love to but the Clarksons are coming for dinner and the cook’s freaking out again and I’ve got to go to New York in the morning. See you in LA. Bye, darling.’ It was more glamorous than Cap d’Antibes and it was November and we were only thirty miles from Coventry. I was distracted by another lady in her forties in another short skirt–bare legs combo carrying a huge pot of tall flowers, so that I couldn’t really see her face.