When I announced I was going to write a book lots of people – friends, contemporaries, academics, mentors, historians, craftspeople and writers – offered suggestions on what should be included. If you were one of them, thank you. Through you I disappeared down delightful rabbit holes of research and became completely distracted by early medieval Wales, heritage crafts and geopoetics. My intention for part of the book was to wander around Pembrokeshire, describing what I saw in words and crafted illustrations. What I failed to consider in this grand plan was cucumbers.
Llandissilio
The llan of Llandissilio church is still clearly defined as a low stone wall with a stepped cross-over stone alongside the porched gate. Originally the site was an Iron Age enclosure but now the llan encircles a peaceful graveyard with a tranquil garden of remembrance. In the south wall of the church are early medieval inscribed stones which luckily escaped the attentions of the Victorian renovators. My route led from the churchyard towards the ford at Vicar’s Mill but after about a kilometre I turned left at the crossroads and strolled up a gentle slope passing old stone cottages, 1970s bungalows and posh new builds every few hundred yards – all of them set in the sort of garden that would put Monty Don to shame.
Becky
One of the things you notice everywhere in rural Wales is the entrepreneurial nature of gardeners. At the first sign of a glut a table with produce and a sign to entice buyers is propped outside the garden gate. I always stop and browse out of envy rather than interest because I live in a not so rural part of Wales where indicating that you are prepared to sell surplus vegetables is frowned upon by the local council. I know this because I once sent them an email asking if I could put such a notice up when my summer harvest had gone into overdrive. The very next day a power dressed young woman called Becky arrived and told me that as I would be in competition with the nearest supermarket – Sainsbury’s, about 2km away on the other side of the M4 motorway – I would have to adhere to the same legal requirements as them, vis:
- Provide parking spaces for customers including separate, marked ones for the disabled and parents with children
- Provide toilet facilities for customers
- Provide hot and cold running water for people who wanted to handle the vegetables to assess their quality
- Ensure that all vegetables were thoroughly washed in anti-bacterial liquid before and after the people assessing quality handled them
Sadly – for Becky and, it turns out, for the prospect of selling my surplus salad vegetables – I have a medical condition which is worsening with age. It’s called Maturity Onset Intolerance of Stupidity Syndrome and the main symptom is that the filter between what I’m thinking and what comes out of my mouth now fails to operate. So after I suggested that Becky took into consideration that I only had two – albeit productive – cucumber plants, that the corner shop at the end of my road had no parking, toilets or hand-washing facilities for customers, that I grew everything organically so immersing the vegetables in chemicals would be counter- productive and that I thought most of the world’s problems could be laid fair and square at the door of supermarkets and the local government sycophants that empowered their policies of economic and environmental exploitation, I asked Becky what the council’s position was on dealing with excess cucumbers.
“Build a compost heap,” she said sweetly.
Back to Llandissilio
It was obvious that there were no Beckys in the lanes around Llandissilio. I had passed multiple opportunities to buy eggs, honey and jam but the prospect of dealing with breakages in my lovely new rucksack was too horrible to contemplate. Then I noticed a table in the front garden of a small whitewashed cottage and read the black felt pen scrawl on the back of a turned inside out Cornflakes box. “CUCUMBRAU AR WERTH!” it said, “MONEY/ARIAN PAROD AM HEDGEHOGS!” Then underneath as an afterthought, “I RESCUE HEDGEHOGS!” I felt around in my pockets for a couple of coins, went in through the creaking gate and chose a fat, juicy-looking cucumber. I thought it would make a thirst quenching afternoon snack which wouldn’t break, smash or otherwise ruin my rucksack and my day. The glum face of the old man who was sitting inside the house staring out of the window at me suddenly broke into a toothless smile of utter delight and I felt guilty as I looked at the collection of shrapnel I’d chucked in the empty margarine box on the table. I searched my pockets again, drew out a two pound coin and dropped that in the box too. This sent Mr Toothless into paroxysms of joy and while it turned out to be a relatively expensive but delicious cucumber, my purchase brought us both a level of pleasure and satisfaction that no-one ever gets from Sainsbury’s.
Epilogue
I’m sorry to disappoint all the encouragers and supporters of my book who wanted me to only write about early medieval Wales or about heritage crafts or about geopoetics. I really did try to take a serious approach but the long and short of it is that I find the people I meet on my walks through Wales are interesting, entertaining and often, downright weird. I think my destiny is to share those anecdotes so they’re going to get a section in the book as well. And if you’re wondering what happened to my own harvest surplus, as soon as Becky left I put a crate of cucumbers on the village bench with a cardboard sign saying “FREE!” Within an hour they had all gone and no-one had asked for parking, toilets, hand-washing facilities or anti-bacterial vegetable wash.