A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 60 Rizla® Papers
Months ago, Peter and Brigitte had discussed his potential disguise as a girl in depth. In Peter’s first two weeks of dressing and disguising himself as Jane he’d only gone out in public once dressed as a Jane.(1) He’d been accompanied by Brigitte and had spoken to none else, and both considered it fortunate that none had approached them. Neither had been totally satisfied with Jane’s appearance, and they’d created a list of clothes, make up and mannerisms that Jane needed to acquire or she needed to improve before they considered she’d be ready to go outside the Dragon again dressed en femme. Both were taking the matter seriously, for their dad, granddad and Sasha whom they both regarded as their great granddad took the matter seriously. Brigitte had remarked to Peter that there were any number of XY girls who were far more natural at being girls than he was despite he being XX. Peter had caustically replied that that was hardly surprising because they were girls whereas he was not. Till then Brigitte had always believed that she had little to learn concerning Peter’s gender identity because she had known about her brother’s dysphoria since long before they had gone to kindergarten. Peter’s remark had been a surprise to her and she realised it had deepened her understanding of gender identity in general and of her twin brother’s in particular considerably.
To his sister’s surprise, Peter had decided to put off starting taking male hormones and any consideration of GRS(2) and that meant Dr Wing had to know about what was going on. Sun had not been totally happy about the matter because he considered it was not medically, especially psychologically, in Peter’s best interests, but Peter had argued that whilst that was without doubt true it was in Bearthwaite’s best interests and that had to come first, not least because it was the environment that enabled him to be himself. It was one of the few places he’d heard of where everyone was prepared to accept him for who and what he was, Peter, Harriet and Gustav’s son. Sun couldn’t argue with that, for he knew that was exactly how his wife Elin had felt about Bearthwaite from the moment she’d moved there in the days when she’d believed she was an effeminate gay male, which was some time before she’d realised she was trans and elected to undergo GRS which had made her life dramatically better. Peter spent a lot of time with Brigitte dressed as Jane practising to do her own makeup and hair which Peter had allowed to grow. They spent a lot of time discussing how Jane should dress and act to maximise her female character and prevent any one even considering that she was owt but what she appeared to be, and more to the point how Jane could if necessary transform from Peter to herself in the minimum time possible. Not having been through a puberty of either sex Peter had neither breasts nor hips and his backside and musculature were those of a child. For sure he certainly couldn’t be said to look particularly masculine. “How do you really feel about all this, Peter? You don’t seem to mind, and you turned your back on the male hormones willingly enough. I expected you to resent that quite bitterly.”
Peter thought long and hard before replying. “I know exactly how I feel, Brigitte, but it’s kind of difficult to put into words. I telt you what Dad said,(3) and I agree entirely with him that I have to be ready for whatever happens. I hope to hell we don’t suffer a successful invasion and that all this,” he shrugged, his hands indicating Jane’s lingerie and the dress she’d just taken off to swap for a skirt and blouse, “will prove to have been a complete waste of time and money. The idea of Mum, Dad, Gran, Granddad and Elle and Sasha and lot of our friends and neighbours dying because something I dreamt up for a model railway layout is wanted that badly by the psycho military of even more psycho goverments because it can be turned into a horrific weapon of war makes me feel physically sick with guilt. If it happens I’ll want to slaughter every last one of the bastards who killed my family be it however indirectly. I’ll feel far worse about them than I did about him and her.” As usual Peter referred to their biological parents, from whose abuse they’d been rescued, just by pronouns. “So I know I have to do this. It’s just life and I don’t resent it because there’s no point. We got a better deal finding Mum and Dad and a decent family and life here that we could ever have dreamt of before it happened. I did resent life before that and I know you did too, but if the only way I can protect the folk who love us and we love is to dress like a girl then I need to be able to do it as convincingly as possible, but for me that is hard because I have to learn it all and none of it comes naturally.”
“Sometimes it seems that you almost enjoy doing it which is weird considering what you went through from him when you refused to be a girl. Are you still the same inside your head? Or is a little bit of Petra coming out?”
Petra was the name that Peter had been given at birth, his dead name, and he took even longer to reply than he had before. “I’m still completely Peter, yet I do enjoy it in a weird kind of a way. At least I enjoy the idea of being able to stick the finger up to the enemy by means of this trick, even if it means having to learn how to behave like a girl. I don’t have the repugnance about skirts and dresses that I used to have. They’re just clothes and for me are a means to an end, no more. Even make up, perfume, lingerie and wearing a bra with fake boobs in it. It’s like doing drama at school, or being in a play, it’s just acting. A lot of actors make huge money out of cross dressing in movies and on stage. I imagine they think more about the money than the clothes. I’m the same except the payoff isn’t in money. If I have to be able to do this for five or even ten years no doubt I’ll get used to it and a little bit of Petra will emerge even if only to be able to play the part better, but I’d be gutted if I ever started growing boobs and hips, or even worse having periods, because I couldn’t get hold of the blockers. I’m definitely not like Jordan or Stephen, who without doubt are men who enjoy cross dressing, and even less like Mum and Elin, who were unfortunately born in male bodies but are without doubt female in their heads, and I have no understanding of any of them at all. Fact is none of us have any idea where this will take us. Nowhere I hope, because I really don’t wish to have to do this for real. The only thing that bothers me right now is how it will affect Violet. I can’t keep this secret from her for much longer. It just isn’t right.”
Brigitte was surprised that Peter had contrasted himself so starkly with male cross dressers and trans women which didn’t even recognise his genetic make up, but saw himself wholly in male terms. Saying nothing in response to that, she nodded and asked, “How do you think Violet will react?”
“She’ll be fine if she finds out from me early enough. If she thinks I’ve been deliberately hiding it from her she’ll go ballistic. I want to tell her, but at the same time I don’t want to tell her, so as to protect her, which she’ll resent and that’s fair enough. I know I’ll be telling her soon, but before I do maybe I should let Dad know that I’m going to. Whatever he says, I’ll still tell her.”
“Once Violet knows, we can do this better. The whisper is already out that there are any number of boys and girls who have to be hidden deeper than the usual hidden kids though none is certain why. If Violet and I are seen with you dressed as three obvious girls eventually we’ll be asked who you are. If we reply that we call you Jane that will put it out that that’s not your real name and that you are one of the deeply hidden kids who do all their lessons over the net and are someone not to be talked about. If you wear heels, have bigger boobs and use make up so it makes you look older the questions will soon stop. What do you think?”
“Okay, if you say so I’ll buy into it. How soon do we start doing this?”
“No time like the present. You can tell Dad when it’s convenient. If I go and borrow one of mum’s bras that don’t fit her because she’s nursing the babies we can pack it with tights till we can order some forms to fit a thirty-six C bra off the net. That’s what she is normally, but if it’s not big enough for the purpose we’ll have to buy some bigger bras and forms to suit. Thinking about it we may as well order some thirty-six D cup stuff now just in case because it’ll save us some time. I suggest we put off buying a lot of the clothes till we decide what size bust we’re going for. We’ll need to buy some more lingerie anyway, clothes too because you’ll have to have an entire wardrobe of clothes, shoes and everything else a lass needs long before it hits the fan if it ever does, and you’ll have to be familiar with your new wardrobe. That means a fair range of make up and hair accessories too. Let’s hope it is just a waste of money. For the meanwhile you can wear a pair of my four inch heels with a long skirt, a stretchy, clingy tee shirt to exagerate and draw attention to your boobs and a heavy, yoked, woollen jumper and by the time I’ve done your make up you’ll look nowt like yourself. One good thing about living here is you won’t need to think about trousers which would show off your lack of a female bottom and hips, though maybe some culottes for warmer windy weather would be useful. You can wear your long wig and learn to do your new hair styles and makeup when we get back. Okay?”
“Get back‽ Where are we going?”
“We’re taking a walk down to Violet’s house to bring her back here.”
“That’s right through the village which is a mile and a quarter at least which will tek us ages. Why don’t I just ring her up and ask her to come here?”
“Because I know and you know that you can pull this off, but we have to be able to convince Violet that you can. Okay?”
An hour and a half later Violet answered the door to Brigitte and an older looking girl who she thought could be anywhere between sixteen and nineteen or possibly even twenty. “Peter’s not here, Brigitte, if you’re looking for him.”
“I know, Violet. Jane and I would like you to come with us back to the Dragon. Please be quiet and don’t ask any questions till there is none in sight nor earshot of us. Just go and get your coat and meet us at the end of your lonning. Okay?”
Violet knew that something important was in the air, so she just stared at Jane, who so far had said nothing, before doing as asked. At the end of the lonning that led to her parents’ smallholding she said, “I presume Jane is one of the deeply hidden folk whose existence we’re not supposed to even give a hint that we are aware of?”
“Kind of,” replied Brigitte. “Jane is the most deeply hidden of the deeply hidden folk at Bearthwaite, and you are one of the very few who are even aware of her existence.”
“Why me?”
“I suggest that Peter explains.”
“Okay. I can wait.”
“No need, Violet,” said Peter. “I can explain it all as we walk.”
Recognising his voice Violet immediately retorted, “Bloody hell! This had better be good, Peter.” Peter explained what was going on and for how long it had been going on and how he’d wanted to involve her right from the beginning. As he finished his explanations Violet asked, “How many folk are aware of how serious the Beebell Directorate reckon this could get?”
“Not even the entire Directorate yet,” Peter replied.
“I’ll ask again. Why me?”
Jane looked very uneasy, so Brigitte replied, “The most important reason is because Peter loves you and couldn’t live with keeping you in the dark. Too, he needs to be able to pull this off under appalling circumstances, though we both hope it never comes to that. He needs help, mine and yours, to be a convincing female. To be honest he’s pretty clueless about being a girl of his own age, and I don’t think he’ll ever be able to masquerade as one with any degree of conviction. That’s why I think he needs the height, the boobs, probably thirty-six D, and the more mature looks of a young woman rather than those of an older girl because I reckon that’s doable for him with help. He’s clever and has always acted years older than his age, so it’s not as big a stretch for him as acting like a young teenage girl would be. You can help more than I can there. I’m pretty good at being a girl of my age, but you’re three years older than I am. Jane has to be seen around the village from time to time, so if we are invaded none expresses surprise at seeing her in our company. Will you help?”
“Aye, obviously. The most glaring defect in your plans so far, which in the main are spot on, is if we stay with boobs like those Jane needs a bigger backside, even more so if we go for a thirty-six D. With a big bum [US butt] the boobs will be in proportion, and none will say owt because it’ll be obvious that Jane is just a big built lass all round. If Jane has a bum the size of Peter’s those boobs will seem to be outrageously large and will be constantly commented on. We don’t need any anomolies, everything has to appear to be in keeping. Silicone thighs and bum cheeks we can get off Ebay. To keep things straight in our heads and prevent any of us ever giving owt away, we need to keep Jane completely separate from Peter. Peter is my significantly younger and physically immature, but incredibly clever boyfriend who all know I’m mutually in love with and we have been seen kissing and holding hands with each other all over the spot for a long time. Jane is a tall, ripely mature, much older, new member of Bearthwaite folk who you and I are aware of and are looking after and keeping deeply hidden. Someone whom in the not too far distant future all will be aware of but will be reluctant to mention in conversation. There has to be an absolute separation of the two identities.
“That means we only ever talk about Jane’s clothes, Jane’s hair and Jane’s make up, for they are hers and nothing to do with Peter. We have to create another person altogether. I suggest that before going to the Dragon we take a walk and go the long way around the green which will raise a small amount of questioning later, probably just enough for the two of us to be informatively evasive, if you get my meaning. Then we can return to the Dragon for Jane to get undressed. Talking of which have you a decent sized room available for Jane? Somewhere she can keep all her clothes, make up, scent and owt else we can think of because we don’t want any of that stuff in Peters’s room ever. A room Jane can sleep in if necessary. While Jane gets undressed I’ll nip to Peter’s room for a set of clothes for him to wear. Peter can then get dressed and then, and only then, he can kiss me properly and tell me how much he has missed me because I don’t wish to hear owt like that ever coming out of Jane’s mouth. We can’t afford it to if we are to keep Peter as safe as we can. Okay? Sure, right now it’s okay, but in the long run we have to have it all perfect in every detail. All our reactions have to be automatic and in keeping, for it could get Peter killed if we screw up by even a tiny detail. Doubtless Peter will start to suffer from schizophrenia, but I’ll ask him when I see him.”
“How come you know about silicone breast forms, bum cheeks and hips on Ebay, Violet?”
“I know I’m a big girl now, Brigitte, but I only started to grow up not that long before you came to live here. I was very self conscious about being flat chested when most of the other girls in year seven [11-12 year olds] had at least started to develop. I’d heard about breast forms, so I looked on Ebay where I came across all the other stuff. Mum said she was a late developer and she bought me my breast forms and I felt a whole lot better about myself. Daft thing was I discovered a bit later that over half the girls in my year at school were wearing forms and padded bras too for the same reason that I was.” She shrugged and said, “Once I did start to develop I changed from having a chest like an ironing board and a bum as flat as a slate to more or less the figure I have now almost overnight. Certainly in the six weeks between breaking up for the summer holidays and going back to school in September for year eight and I grew four inches in height at the same time too. I’ve still got the forms in a drawer somewhere, but they’re nowhere near big enough for Jane.”
As Violet had said would happen the three girls were seen walking around the green and over the next few days Brigitte and Violet were indeed offered opportunities to be informatively evasive which was immediately understood by all adults and older children. Children too young to understand were told she was just an older friend who was staying with them for a while. They’d decided, that if asked, for practical reasons it would be best to say that Jane was seventeen and in year twelve [16-17 year olds] remotely studying for her first year of A’ levels at the Bearthwaite Educational Establishment. Jane being even older than Violet meant she was completely uninteresting to young children, so was instantly forgotten about. However, once inside the Dragon, Jane led them all up a set of narrow back stairs which avoided meeting anyone and went to a decent sized room which had a double bed and all the appropriate furniture for a couple at the back of the inn near to where the family’s rooms were. Unless the inn was completely packed the room wasn’t normally used so as to provide the family with more privacy. It was a room that they planned was to become Jane’s bedroom where Violet said to Brigitte, “I’ll take it from here, Brigitte, and get back to you concerning Jane’s requirements later.”
Brigitte smiled mischievously and said, “I’m missing Ron, so I think I pay him a visit. Enjoy yourselves. I’m off to have some fun too.”
“Right, Jane, let’s have you undressed. I’ll go for Peter’s clothes.” When Violet returned Jane was only half undressed, so Violet assisted her to complete the process. As Violet had insisted they only began once Jane had shed every stitch of her clothing, by which time Violet had done the same, or at least she was only seconds behind Jane. It was the first time either had seen the other completely naked, and though Violet had insisted in the teenage vernacular that Peter had copped a feel from time to time over the last few months, out of respect for his masculinity, she hadn’t even tried to avail herself of the same pleasures. It proved to be a far less awkward experience for both of them than they had envisaged their first truly sexual encounter would be. “You know, Peter, since you are deferring your GRS, perhaps we should look into things that could assist the physical aspects of our relationship. I know you are a boy into lasses, well just one lass I hope, and have never considered yourself to be a gay lass, but if something is rewarding we would be foolish not to take advantage of it now that we have each other naked and available for exploration. I truly don’t have a problem with it, but I am desperate to touch you. What do you think? Would that be okay?”
“I agree, but I’d like us both to do some of that exploration before we go looking on the net for assistance, though I don’t have a problem with going looking. Brigitte has admitted to me that she has been making love with Ron for months and she said it was mind blowing. I certainly wouldn’t have any objection to us trying to blow each others’ minds,” Peter chuckled and added wickedly, “or anything else that occurs to us. You know being trans is a pain sometimes, but growing up is becoming fun at last. I suppose one good thing about us being together is we don’t have to worry about me getting you pregnant. Brigitte has to go to the nurses that do the women’s clinic to get the pill. She said she’s getting an implant as soon as this batch of pills are used up. At least you won’t have to bother and you won’t ever forget taking the pill. You know I don’t have any body or pubic hair because from an endocrinological point of view, I think that’s the word Dr Wing used, I am still prepubescent, though he said puberty is partly a mental thing too that happens as you get older with or without the hormones and that the blockers won’t prevent me intellectually and emotionally maturing. Why don’t you have any either, do you shave?”
“Yeah, and you can help now can’t you? I always fancied waxing like Mum, but I never had the nerve to do it to myself. I know Dad helps her because she telt me so. She pointed me in the direction of a good Youtube instruction video, but it didn’t look exactly pain free. I reckon I could stand it if you were doing it, but no way could I do that to myself. What you said about puberty being mental. That didn’t come out right, but you know what I meant. Does that mean you have dirty thoughts about me? And you’ll help me?”
“Yeah to both.”
Violet smiled and said, “Good and Good. And you were right growing up is becoming fun at last. Does you being prepubescent mean I’m becoming a kiddie fidler?”
“Yeah, I suppose, but I’m enjoying it, so if you don’t worry about it I won’t either.”
When the couple had decided their explorations into adulthood had progressed far enough for the moment they dressed and went to Peter’s room to remove every trace of Jane’s presence, which they took to Jane’s room and put away. They discussed what they considered Jane would need and wrote lists. “Hell, Violet, this is going to cost a fortune. I’ll talk to Dad about it.” Later in the day Peter explained to his father what had occurred, though he left out all to do with his relationship with Violet.
“Wise decision, Son. I’ll credit your account with a couple of thousand quid to be going on with. Let me know if you need any more. Perhaps not the best choice of room though, but your mum will know. If Jane has one of the family’s guest rooms behind our suite, one right at the back of the building not even any of the cleaning staff will be any the wiser since your gran won’t allow any other than herself, your mum and Brigitte to enter that part of the building to do any cleaning. Perhaps her obsessive insistence on privacy in the family rooms isn’t so daft after all. It looks like I owe her an apology. I’ll have her decide which room Jane should use before her new clothes arrive so they won’t need moved twice.”
Violet had given Jane a box of tampons with instructutions to put a couple in each of her handbags and the rest in her bathroom. That was all months ago. Jane had moved into the room at the back of the Inn and she’d become an accepted but barely ever mentioned member of Bearthwaite folk. That she was interested in girls was accepted. When she was seen holding hands with twenty-five year old Gretchen, who was in fact only twenty-two, the required impression had been created. Violet and Brigitte were much relieved for it meant if the worst came to the worst Jane had an identity that would hold up to scrutiny, after all no girl wished to be thought of as totally unfeminine and despite the silicone Jane had the proof of her femininity that was as Peter had said the ultimate lie. Gary had been wanted by a criminal gang for appearing as a witness against five of their members who were currently serving long prison sentences. He was twenty-two, extremely clever and had worked as a trainee manager for a large supermarket. Arathane had found him not very successfully cross dressed as Gretchen in an attempt to hide in Crewe Cheshire.
Once at Bearthwaite Gary had realised she much preferred to be Gretchen and with some help she became a very successful Gretchen which was far better than being the very unsuccessful Gary who’d been told all his life he needed to be more of a man, which he’d finally realised wasn’t doable because he wasn’t a man at all. Murray had realised that Beebell needed someone to keep track of all the food stored in the valley including all of Vincent’s meat and meat products which as a result of the sheep clearance on Needles Fells and the seventy-two tons[72000Kg, 158400 pounds] of venison brought down from the highlands had proven to be a nightmare for the best part of a twelvemonth. Knowing that both Carolyne and Gretchen had worked in management for large super markets he’d approached them with a view to finding out what they thought needed doing. Carolyne said that it would be too much for her because she now had a full time teaching job at the BEE,(4) but considered Gretchen would be ideal. She’d added that the job would entail managing all the other household goods, both bought and sold by Bearthwaite, as well as food. Once aware of the scale of the responsibility that would be involved Gretchen wasn’t convinced she had enough experience to take it on, but Carolyne had said that if a problem arose she could always contact herself, Murray or Chance, for even if they couldn’t help at least they would know who could. She also agreed that she would step into Gretchen’s shoes when she was away having her GRS.
Gretchen was clever and interested in microprocessor control, and had worked with Pat on some of the electronics for the animated models at the model railway society’s layout, notably the two swing bridges over the ship canal and the water craft, vehicles and pedestrians associated with them designed and built by Peter. Peter had been impressed by the model built by Gretchen of a woman pushing a pram accompanied by two children because their legs moved as if they were walking and the children’s arms swung in a realistic manner. A group of modellers was currently working on the creation of a working model of the Bearthwaite water system which included the drinking water distribution, the two mills’ water supplies, the fish farm’s water supply, the water Bearthwaite sold to the utility company and the pumping of the flood water from the Bearthwaite Beck onto the Calva Marsh, as well as the handling of the Bearthwaite village gray and black water effluent systems. Aware that Peter was trans she’d asked what it was like to be the other side of the coin from herself. They’d talked about it and come to the conclusion that there was no answer to her question because it boiled down to what was it like to be male which Peter couldn’t explain any better than Gretchen could explain what it was like to be female. Eventually Gretchen became one of the deep conspirators regarding Jane, and she had long since come to an agreement with Jane to appear to be a lesbian couple till she worked out what was going on in her head as to whether she preferred boys or girls though she had said for the moment she was just enjoying being herself and wasn’t even looking. Jane had been worried that she was curtailing Gretchen’s opportunities, but Gretchen had admitted that being seen to be Jane’s girlfriend kept the other girls, and boys too, away which at the moment she considered to be plus rather than a minus. “The moment it becomes inconvenient I’ll let you know, Jane,” had been her concluding remark on the matter.
“Good afternoon, Mr McCuillin. How do you do?” Annalísa offered her hand.
“Good afternoon, Annalísa. How do you do? It was good of you to agree to meet at such short notice. Would I be correct in thinking you would prefer to be so called rather than Miss Þórsdóttir or Mrs Younghusband?”
“Indeed, for that is in keeping with Icelandic custom.” Annalísa was not surprised that Edward McCuillin had pronounced Þórsdóttir(5) correctly nor that he was aware of Icelandic naming conventions, for he had the reputation of doing his homework.
“In that case I am Edward.” He chuckled, “It does seem only fair. Tea?”
“Please.”
Edward rang a small bell and said, “I read your proposal with a great deal of interest. You were correct in surmising that things have been left too late. That was I hasten to say deliberate on my part. I of course shan’t be here to worry about the death duties and my greedy idiot descendants, who prevented me from taking the appropriate steps two decades ago because they were all frightened they wouldn’t receive what they considered to be their fair share, are now bleating like sheep about it. I had a meeting with them last week and put your proposal to them. All they did was bleat some more. I told them I didn’t care what happened because it wouldn’t affect me in the grave and gave them an ultimatum, they signed the paperwork then and there or I’d wash my hands of the entire matter and let them watch the thieves in government force them to sell up the house, land and entire contents collected by a dozen generations of McCuillins as soon as I were dead. I added that my only regret was that I would not be there to see the looks on their faces when the government reduced them to the stupid, poverty stricken peasants that they deserved to be. Too, that was when I told them I’d left it so long because I was sick, wearied and tired of their decades of infantile behaviour and that now they had no choice but to do as I told them or they would lose it all. Needless to say that bleating all the while as to the unfairness of it all they signed. Now all that remains to be done is for we two to reach agreement. My legal advisors have looked over your proposals and given me their understanding of them, but I would like you to explain why you have done what you have done in the way that you have done it which is to say the least extremely convoluted.”
Just then a tiny but straight backed maid who looked to be well into her eighties arrived with a tea tray. She said quietly, “Some of the family wish to see you, Sir Edward. I said I would inform you.”
Edward chuckled and said, “I’m sure you did, Lucy. And you already know what my response is going to be. However, I shall say it so that you can in truth report it as my words. They do not wish to see me. They wish to interrupt my business meeting concerning the sale of the Barra Fell Estate and the house and contents so as to try to swing matters to their advantage. Well they screwed things up twenty years ago and I am now trying to pull their chestnuts out of the fire of their making in the last stages of my life and I neither require nor wish for their presence. Tell them I’ll see them tomorrow if I feel there is any benefit for the family to be gained from it and if I can be bothered to listen to their whining. Please tell Roberts that I shall dine in my rooms on my own and I’ll be wanting some of the best port and brandy to celebrate with. I shall leave it to you as to how to convey my sentiments to my idiot relatives.”
“Oh yes, Sir. I know exactly what to say and how to say it. I’ll tell Roberts to have the staff ready things for you dinner. Cook has some Aberdeen Angus fillet beef and a whole local salmon ready. She said to ask you which would you prefer? And will that be all, Sir?”
“The salmon please, and yes that will be all. Thank you, Lucy.” Lucy smiled and left.
“Lucy was my wife’s companion. Much to the resentment of my family and their servants I have ordered that Lucy and my man Roberts run the place now because they are the only persons who live here that I trust. I made it clear that none of the family have the authority to give orders to them because they are paid as my personal staff, they are not servants of the house. I’ve told my family that if they don’t like the domestic arrangements I have made in my own home instead of free loading off my money they are free to leave and pay their own bills somewhere else. Lucy and Roberts should have retired years ago, but they won’t leave till I’m gone. You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this aren’t you?”
“Not really, Edward. As per our telephone conversations I know that we have all the major issues resolved. The inventory and valuation of every artefact in the house has already been taken along with all necessary photographs to prevent their sale, and all your family have been made aware that should something be missing at the annual inventory ten times its value will be donated from your funds that provide their incomes to the charities you have designated. There yet remains the final details concerning terms and conditions and price to be settled. I assume that you wish to make some settlements on Lucy and Roberts that you don’t trust your family to honour and you wish me to see to it that your wishes are carried out.”
“You’re damned sharp aren’t you gel‽(6) Yes that’s it exactly. Here read this and tell me if that’s acceptable.” Edward slid a piece of paper across the table for Annalísa to read.
After reading it through twice Annalísa said, “I know what you mean, but this is neither strictly speaking legal, nor is it unambiguous, Edward, but if the accounts referred to were to be trust accounts with Lucy and Roberts the sole trustee each acting for herself and himself there would be no legal issues that your family nor indeed the government could challenge. Once that is the entire document has been cast into appropriate legal language explicable to only to those fluent in legalese jargon and other similar nonsense. All of which I can arrange with no problems at all for your legal representatives to look over in a couple of days. Is that your only outstanding condition. I was expecting more.”
“No. That’s it. You were correct in that we need to act quickly on the Barra Fell Estate and the house and contents transaction. Your idea of a gradual mortgage agreement that immediately makes the land, house and contents your property, so not eligible for death duty in exchange for repaying the family at a rate that wouldn’t be excessively taxable is one that made my advisors sit up in admiration. Your suggestion to buy a piece of land of my choice that the family could earn an additional living off which the fell land does not provide with you acting as the landlord with money only changing hands on paper is a clever idea. Giving us the land registry deeds and the transference documentation and agreeing to formalise completion of the transference deeds at some future date once probate has been long done and dusted will indeed save us several million on the deal, but none of my family would play an appropriate part, so I’m asking your company, Beebell, to hold the paperwork and all of my funds and wealth in trust till you feel it appropriate to hand it over. If that takes a century then so be it. I’m told that it’s barely legal but that it is. Would your company be prepared to do that?”
“Certainly, but you are taking a lot on trust here, Edward.”
“I know, but what’s the option? Allow the government to take it all? No, I’m not going there. You and your colleague Adalheidis Levens have a reputation for straight dealing as does Beebell. We all know the government are the biggest thieves in the land. The only reason they don’t approve of house breaking and burglary is because they don’t like the competition when they wish to steal the entire house. I feel far better about taking you and your colleagues on trust than his Majesty’s licensed privateers. Your suggestion that in ten years the land is transferred into a lifetime entail for one of the younger family members is good, but I do not wish it to be controlled by any family members alive at this moment. I would rather that control were vested in Beebell and when a suitable family member became old enough to be seen to be suitable in your eyes then you create the entail. Take your time because it doesn’t matter if it takes a hundred years or even two. If the family, by which I mean all of my direct descendants which does not include any of my thankfully now dead siblings’ descendants none of who have been here for decades, dies out before the entail is created as you can see it is my wish that the land, property and such monies as remain shall be inherited by Beebell who I know will at least look after it all properly. Should you decide to never create the entail because the land and property would be better looked after under Bearthwaite stewardship that is more than acceptable as long as my direct descendants are looked after as well as possible. My only question is what will your fee for managing the matter be? I do know by the way which piece of land I’d like you to buy for us. Before you answer me concerning your fee cast your eyes over these documents. One is a copy of the land registry deeds of my preferred piece of land. The other is a recently drawn up document to go with it. The land is not yet on the market and if a suitable offer is made it will never go on the market. These documents may alter what you wish in exchange for managing my families affairs for a century or two.”
Annalísa looked at and read the deeds to the Ffolliot Estate and the accompanying documentation carefully before beginning to chuckle. “And you Edward are every bit as sharp as I was told. Yes you are correct. Tell your contact to name his price and get in contact with myself, Adalheidis, Murray or Chance and as long as it’s not fantasy money we’ll have it finalised inside a week. And you are correct in what you didn’t say, a right of way across the land will be a suitable recompense for managing your family’s affairs for however many generations it takes. I’ll have a document drawn up for your solicitors to look at which will make that a binding legal obligation on us.”
“I take it this will now put you in the position to rip the throat out of SPM?”(7)
“Oh yes, and your land and documentation makes my ability to do so absolutely cast iron. I always said it pays to have a reputation for straight dealing. You can be as tough as you will and none thinks the worse of you as long as you are honest. Thank you.”
“You, my dear have just given me the incentive to live for at least another decade. I want to see Clive Amhurst taken to the cleaners, and I wish to read about it in the papers. I went to school with his grandfather, or maybe it was his great grandfather, the Amhursts are not a family I ever wanted to keep tabs on. However many generations back he was, Geoffrey Amhurst was a stupid arrogant fool too. As for Malcolm Menzies the only decent thing he ever did for humanity was die. I derived a considerable amount of satisfaction from reading his obituary in the Times. What gave me the most satisfaction was the realisation that despite being three decades older than he I’d out lasted him. I won’t sully the ears of a lady with why I despised him, though I’m sure you probably already know since you or your colleague have met him. His wife was a friend of one of my gels. She was a decent gel and I assisted her to reëstablish herself after she dumped the cad she’d married. SPM seems to attract idiots like Amhurst and Menzies. The only sensible thing you ever did there was leave. My contact is Julia Fitzgibbon, and I’ll ask her to contact you tomorrow if you don’t mind? Julia is a granddaughter of Malcolm Menzies’ ex wife and her second husband. You’ll like her.”
“Certainly tomorrow will be fine. I wish all my business were so easy to conduct. I look forward to meeting Julia.”
When the police had asked for permission to take photographs of and send drones up over Soft Moss Green to record footage Sasha asked John Finkel, the Bearthwaite conservation officer, to arrange for the same to be done at the same time. When John had examined the video footage taken by Abigail he spotted what he at first thought looked like Alpine salamander Salamandra atra, which were usually found in the French Alps and the mountainous areas of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Hersegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. It was a stunning surprise for as far as he was aware there had been no salamanders in the British Isles, other than recent releases or escapees for geological time periods. The small specimens seen on drone footage taken over the Needles Soft Moss Green area looked similar to some Alpine salamander, but instead of yellow markings they had bright orange markings from which he concluded they were probably a different species. When he asked some of the children about them and shewed them the footage the children who’d been up there said that they were common and were great crested efts.(8) The children said they’d always been up there. John then talked to Granny Dahlman and she said that the efts had been common up there when she was a girl, some seventy-odd maybe even eighty years ago and some of the boys she’d gone to school with had kept them as pets and they lived a gey lang(9) time. Whatever they were John knew that they weren’t one of the three native efts that were known to inhabit the British Isles. When he looked up the matter he discovered that all efts were a type of salamander, belonging to a subfamily called Pleurodelinae of the family Salamandridae. Essentially, all efts were salamanders, but not all salamanders were efts.
John’s closer scrutiny of the drone footage had only shewn the creatures in the treed bracken(10) up on the Needles Fells around the water of Soft Moss Green. There was no footage of them in the water or on floating vegetation. Alpine salamander were completely terrestrial amphibians requiring only a damp environment and didn’t even require water for breeding because they were viviparous and gave birth to live salamanders, usually two, all of which was compatible with what John had seen. He reckoned it was an ideal environment for them, if indeed they were Alpine Salamanders which was what they looked like. There were no adders nor grass snakes up there, both of which preyed on young Alpine Salamanders and the orange colouration would warn most predators that they were toxic. There were, however, abundant beetles, woodlice, snails, millipedes, centipedes and spiders which constituted the bulk of Alpine Salamanders’ diet. The environment on the Needles Fells was not at as high an elevation as they were usually found at in Europe, which was typically from six hundred and fifty to nearly two thousand metres [2,100 – 6600 feet], so it had milder winters and their gestation period could be possibly be as short as a single year as opposed to the two, three or even four as found in their more typical environments. Many further hours of drone footage only confirmed what the initial footage had suggested.
After talking to some of the Beebell directorate John sent pictures and footage to Professor Dr Hans Schmidt of the University of Zurich Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies who was the world authority on European amphibians.(11) The professor believed the creatures to be salamanders and on the face of the evidence, such as it was, to be related to the Alpine salamander. How long ago the populations had diverged was anyone’s guess but there were he said other sub populations of the species in the Alpine regions that possibly became isolated at the time of the end of the last ice age, so the divergence was possibly as far back as ten thousand years ago. The discovery caused great excitement in academic circles and it was agreed the best way to protect them was to keep their whereabouts as secret as was possible knowing that sooner or later the matter would become known to the general public. That the site was privately owned and access could be forbidden to all and any if so desired would prove to be a significant help. The much more brutal minded Bearthwaite residents were of the opinion that the extreme danger that the Soft Moss Green presented to outsiders was the best protection the creatures could possibly be provided with and the word soon went around Bearthwaite. Even the children knew that none were to be informed as to how and when to navigate the sinkholes.
“So how did it go, Annalísa?”
“Remarkably well, Adalheidis. Actually far better than either of us could have dreamt of. As we suspected Edward is a remarkably shrewd man. He went to school with Clive Amhurst’s grandfather or great grandfather and said he was a stupid, arrogant fool too, and he said he wouldn’t sully the ears of a lady with why he despised Malcolm Menzies. Mind Malcolm was such a pervert that I didn’t need telling anything, so all he could have telt me that I didn’t already know would have been the names which I didn’t really wish to know. He said the only good thing I did at SPM was leave. The price he pushed for wasn’t money but service. He wants us to act essentially as trustees for his family’s resources for a century or more, essentially till we decide his family have someone clever enough to do the job. If we decide to never create the entail he is happy as long as his direct descendants are looked after. If they die out Beebell gets the lot. He also wishes us to manage his bequests to two faithful retainers because he was worried his family will rip them off. He’s prepared to pay for the trustee service with a service in return. The Ffolliot Estate, the land he wants us to buy for the family, is in what we would consider to be in a very strategic position which is the major reason why he chose it.
“It’s not yet on the market and won’t be put on the market at all now. He has a contact who is involved in the selling of the spot who is going to get back to either you or me, later today I suspect. She is a granddaughter of Malcolm Menzies’ ex wife and her second husband and Edward is fond of her. I left him with both our cards and Murray and Chance’s too. I telt him to tell his contact, Julia Fitzgibbon, to name her price and as long as it wasn’t a fantasy we’d pay it. The Ffolliot Estate and The Lower Barra Estate that we want off SPM surround the lightly wooded Hartvale Estate. If we buy the Lower Barra Estate from SPM they’ll try their usual tricks to retain various rights knowing in advance that we’ll back them down on that because yet again it’s a matter of liquidity that they haven’t got. The much better dairying land in Lancashire that is contiguous with one of their large estates we’ll be proposing to exchange at an initial price of an acre for an acre will yet again provide them with liquidity that they are desperately in need of. They won’t mention that them having no access to the Hartvale Estate gives them under the law a right of way across the Lower Barra Estate to access their shooting lodge which earns them a powerful lot of money. Clive is stupid enough to convince himself that we shall have overlooked that.
“Currently Hartvale Lodge provides them with their only source of liquidity, but they need it all to service their ongoing monthly commitments, mostly the interest on moneys they have already borrowed which they have not paid any of the capital off for years not months. It offers no headroom with which to pay their upcoming contracted fixed term loans, most of which they’ve known would be due soon for payment in full for ten and in some cases twenty-five years. The law would give them a right of way over the Lower Barra Estate rather than over the Ffolliot estate because it’s a quarter the distance on someone else’s land. We have over the years bought various parcels of land off them, most of them individual farms of anything from forty-three acres up to five hundred and ten acres. We have also bought numerous tiny pieces of land mostly to provide us with convenient access to larger parcels of land for which they charged us stupendously large sums of money and we had no leverage to insist they did not retain all their usual retained rights. However look at clause eleven. It’s payback time.”
After reading for less than a couple of minutes, Adalheidis started to laugh, “Indeed, having an existing right of way over the Ffolliot Estate, which on paper we shall own, that we allow them to use means they have no recourse to the law to force a right of way over the Lower Barra Estate. None will be prepared to drive over the Ffolliot estate roads, which aren’t even as good as farm tracks to get to some shooting staying at the Hartvale Lodge. And that’s what Auld Man McCuillin has offered for us to look after his family’s affairs for however long it takes even after the land is transferred‽ Cute, very cute. He must dislike SPM even more than we do. So how long do you wish to leave it before you tackle Clive Amhurst?”
“I don’t wish to tackle him at all. Let’s get the Barra Fell Estate matter dealt with first, and have Gervin and his teams start the fencing. Let’s allow Clive to think he’s winning. He’ll start smiling once he’s thinking we’ve screwed up by having heavy duty gates installed across the roads first. Clive’s not going to sell the Lower Barra Estate to anyone else because he knows he’ll get more for it from us. He’s not clever enough to realise that the sale of the Ffolliot Estate could change owt and he’s certainly not going to be thinking it was we who bought it via a proxy. It’s entirely possible that he’ll be unaware it’s been selt when we come to negotiate with him for the Lower Barra Estate. Let’s give it as long as it takes. I suspect that within six weeks, maybe a couple of months, Clive is going to have heard the whispers we’ve set about that we’re interested in the Lower Barra Estate and he’ll not be able to wait us out. The land is potentially worth considerably more than Flat Top Fell, but we paid well over the top for that, if you’ll pardon the pun. Let’s let him make the first move and contact us. That will immediately give us the upper hand. When we offer an acre for an acre he push for more basing his judgement of us on what we were prepared to pay for Flat Top Fell. We’ll respond by dropping our offer by point one of an acre. He’ll not have learnt anything from Malcolm and for sure he will not believe their situations have owt in common, so he’ll come up with another pointless counter offer.
“Then just for a change we’ll drag it out for a few weeks just to make him sweat before we drop another point one of an acre to point eight and insist on all the retained rights on everything we’ve already bought being returned to us as part of the price and other than the right of way over the Ffolliot Estate they have no rights of way over any of our land. We’ll offer to allow their customers to use the road over the Lower Fell Estate, but not on Christmas day, purely so as never to create a right of access. That will be a friendly act and will not be in writing anywhere, just so that we have a sword of Damocles to dangle over their head. He’ll refuse to deal on those terms, so at that point we withdraw from negotiations. Eventually he’ll get back to us. Even at point seven of an acre for an acre and returning the retained rights he’ll not get anything like that kind of money from anyone else. We’ll stipulate selling the entire parcel of dairy land and the remainder over and above the exchanged land he has to buy at land registry valuation on the day and the contract is essentially the same as what we used for Flat Top Fell. I suggest we deal with Анушка Ющенкова(12) [Anoushka Yushchenkova] (13) as the finance broker again. How does that sound?”
“Excellent. I’m sure Anoushka will enjoy it again because it will be a bit of a change from her usual line of business. That lass is insatiable, she’s certainly a glutton for punishment. Last time we spoke she telt me she was seven months pregnant again, with her fourth, this one’ll be her third lass. Анастасия [Anastasia] her younger sister has six, so perhaps she’s chasing her. I’ll invite her and Suleiman her old man to stay with us for a fortnight. Longer if they like. They enjoy staying at the Green Dragon because it’s a pleasant change for them and they can leave all their hangers on behind, except the nannies, and just be parents for a change which is something they enjoy, but rarely have the opportunity to experience. Suleiman may be a middle eastern Islamic, but he’s not exactly what you’d call a hard liner. He’s knowingly eaten bacon sandwiches at my place with Matthew after an early morning of wood pigeon shooting and as long as there’s plenty of decent brown sauce to go on the bacon he swears by them as a shooter’s breakfast, and I know he brings a couple of cases of fifty percent Russian vodka to drink with Sasha when he has the opportunity, so we should have a good time. I reckon Bruce will get on with Suleiman like a house on fire and both get on with Matthew, so if we send them off shooting we can enjoy ourselves without the harassment of the men. As long as there’s no serious money involved Анушка is really good company just don’t play cards with her, or any other gambling game either.
“In the meantime we can be looking for what we wish to buy next, for though there’re no large, suitable parcels of land available this side of our horizons we should keep looking to see if we can acquire owt useful that’s near any of our other holdings and keep our eyes open for anything else we can use as currency for barter in the future, because as sure as god made little apples we’ll be dealing with Clive and his merry band of sycophants again. As soon as those long term loans they took out become due for payment in full for certain, but I suspect before then too.”
Clive messed Annalísa about yet again and as a result her offer then stood at point six of an acre per acre. After that it all came to pass exactly as Annalísa had predicted, and in a face to face meeting with Clive Amhurst she said, “That’s it, Clive, you either sign right now that you agree to the terms and that if you pull out the costs incurred fall due to SPM to be paid within two working days, or my offer drops from point six of an acre to point five. It’s your call. When we were on the same side I explained over and over again to you how this works, well I’m not on the same side as you any more and I’m not prepared to do any more explaining. You have about twelve minutes of my time left because then I have a meeting with Анушка Ющенкова who is representing your financiers and Adalheidis Levens where either I tell them this deal is on, or it’s not and they’ll have to wait till you get back to me on the basis of point five of an acre with the rest of the terms remaining the same. They’ll not be bothered and I sure as hell am not. You need the liquidity, I want your land and the extras outlined on the contract and I’m only prepared to do business on the same terms as last time. Like last time if you go up to the wire you’ll lose and have to pay the price. You are now in Malcolm’s shoes. If you stall I’ll just get what I want cheaper. If you stall long enough I’ll negotiate the price with an insolvency adjudicator or a high court judge.”
“This is just spite.”
“No it’s Monopoly the way the big girls and boys play it. You are not important enough to me to be spiteful to. I’ve told you before to grow up, Clive, and I’m telling you again.” Annalísa poured a cold drink out of her flask and said, “When I’ve drunk this I’m leaving.”
Clive visibly collapsed and signed.
Six days later in the bank vaults there were Annalísa, Adalheidis and Anoushka with their security mercenaries and Clive with a team of three nonentities for support. Annalísa correctly deduced they had been chosen simply because they’d never challenge Clive’s decisions no matter how stupid they were. Half of the security checked that all was done as had been agreed, and all was done as before in the same order as before which provided SPM with no room at all for chicanery. The other half with weapons ready were there to ensure it was all done as stipulated using force if required. The money SPM would owe to Beebell at the end of the arrangements was paid to Beebell first along with the necessary reserve contingency funds. The land registry deeds were exchanged with the necessary exchange documentation signed complete with the mechanism for taking enough of the land to pay the financiers should SPM default or delay on paying the interest owing and finally the bulk of the loan was transferred to SPM. There was hatred in Clive’s eyes as he shook hands with Annalísa who smiled and said, “I love you too, Clive, but you really are out of your depth playing with the big girls. Doubtless we’ll meet again, for nothing is more certain than that you’ll run out of money again. I’m sure this is just au revoir rather than adieu.”
The usual Saturday evening events in the Green Dragon at Bearthwaite were taking place. The ladies were settling down in the bestside with glasses of warm punch of various persuasions and their usual ginger bar snacks that were made on the premises looking forward to an evening’s gossip. Mostly the gossip was of pregnancies, births, occasionally deaths, and most especially of youngsters pairing up and most interestingly of marriages.
Outside the weather was cool but dry. The autumn equinox had come and gone a couple of weeks before and the children had two weeks to go before their week off school for half term arrived. The last of the harvest was still to be gathered, but the dry weather would enable that over the next few days with little effort or fuss. What damp was on the grain would be blown away by the cold air fans once it was safely in the silos. Over the last twelve months there had been a few scores of new colossal silos erected at farms all over the valley and some outside the valley too. The silos at the Bearthwaite mill had been replaced with the much larger ones and the original ones reërected elsewhere. The Bearthwaite silos like elsewhere were galvanized, but unlike those elsewhere they were powder coat painted on top of the zinc in shades of dark greens and browns and blended into their backgrounds. Some of the children enjoyed painting trees, tractors, cows, farm buildings and the like on them which enhanced their ability to merge into their backgrounds. The Bearthwaite farmers were storing all their harvest and selling none of it, or at least they weren’t selling it for money to outsiders. They would be paid as and when they needed it and most probably not in money but in goods and services. The internal accounting that went on within the Bearthwaite valley coöperative was fiendishly convoluted, but it worked and more to the point it worked to keep the haemorrhage of money that the taxation authorities demanded down to the absolute minimum.
In the taproom the men had removed and hung up their coats and collected the first of what would prove to be the many pints of the now county famous Bearthwaite Brown Bevy that they would consume over the next few hours. Bearthwaite Brown Bevy was what it said on the adverts and labels that were familiar for a couple of hundred miles. The men’s dogs had already investigated the bowls of table scraps and kibble and after jostling for the tastiest morsels had jostled for their preferred positions in front of the fires. Now lined out with noses on the hearth fenders the dogs would be unlikely to move for an hour and a half. The outsiders some of who preferred one of the Bearthwaite brewery’s lighter ales were settling down too. The new men who were paying their first visit to the inn couldn’t help but gaze up in awe at the fifty foot long five foot high green dragon that hung over them, or perhaps loomed over them would be a better choice of phrase, gazing back at the customers standing at the bar.
The bottom edge of the painting was four feet above the edge of the bar they were leaning on and the painting leant out into the room an additional two foot nine inches with its upper edge touching the ceiling. Daphne McKendrick (14) the creator of the magnificent beast had visited the taproom once Alf and his assistants had hung it in its temporary position and had said that once the extensions were completed and Alf had rehung the painting upon red, tropical hardwood framework to match its framing she would blend the sky scenery into the ceiling by painting extra clouds and sky on the ceiling itself. “You know, Pete,” said Dave, “I always thought of the taproom as a gey high ceilinged room for a pub as auld as the Dragon, yet now with that girt,(15) monstrous bugger up there, not so much. Twelve foot from floor to ceiling it is in here, but now it has the feeling of being about eight like in a farm cottage, the like of which you struggle to get furniture in because you know it will fit, but you carry stuff in flat only to find you can’t turn it vertical because the diagonal is three inch longer than the ceiling is high.”
“Aye,” said Alf. “Twelve foot ceilings. The bar is at three foot six. We left a forty-eight inch gap for service over the bar which put the bottom of the painting at seven foot six above the floor. The painting is about five foot three and a quarter wide which means it’s leaning out about thirty-three inches.
“How do know all that, Alf?” asked a strange face.
“Well I built the bar and put yon feisty looking bugger up there earlier this week. But it’s easy enough to work out using Pythagoras. Square sixty-three and a quarter, that’s the width of the ply, subtract the square of fifty-four, that’s the remaining height if you leave a four foot gap over the bar. Tek the square root of your answer and that’s how far it leans out over the room: thirty-three inch. So it’s leaning out at about thirty-three and a half degrees. That’s the arctangent of thirty-three divided by fifty-four.”
“’struth, and he says he’s thick! I wish I were that thick at mathematics.”
“That’s not mathematics, Lad, that’s engineering and I’ve always bin able to do that.” As Brigitte came into the taproom with a watering can of water to top the dogs’ bowls up with the question posed by Alf, to wit, “What’s for supper, Pet?” was not entirely unanticipated.
Brigitte replied, “Your supper is slices of Uncle Vincent’s cured gammon made from Gunni Gris’ Delvers with raw beefsteak tomato slices on top to tek up the salt from the gammon, though I believe these days the ladies in the back of his shop actually mek the gammon and that Auntie Rosie meks up and adds the secret Thorp family herb, spice and salt formulation to do the curing. She tellt me that the formula has bin altered recently to use the liquid sweetener that Christine and her staff now produce from locally grown sugar beet rather than bought in granulated white sugar. To call it liquid isn’t quite accurate because it looks like and handles like clear golden syrup.(16) It’s a gey sticky, viscous liquid that on a cold day is near enough solid. It thins down appreciably when it’s warmed up a bit. As it is it tastes purely of sweetness. When they tried to evaporate more water out of it it caramelised and started to taste different, not unpleasant, but it wasn’t just sugar syrup any more. I believe it’s sensitive to the heat and to reduce it further to provide some sugar crystals it is planned to warm the syrup under a vacuum and remove the crystals using a centrifuge. The engineers are working on a vacuum pan so they can produce some solid sugar for small crystals and icing [powdered] sugar, but for most purposes the sugar syrup is fine. Even the cake bakers have worked out how to use it.
“I’m telt that the tomatoes are descended from an F1 hybrid called Enorma, but the allotment folk saved seed from open pollinated plants and eventually produced an open pollinated beefsteak tomato that they call Bright Boy. There is a lot of flesh inside them and not much runny juice which makes them an ideal tomato for using raw in salads or like tonight on your gammon. Your other vegetables tonight are locally grown petit pois peas which I’m telt were once called Little Marvel, but Uncle Alf says they have been grown here openly pollinated from saved seed for over a century, so he believes they are probably different from the originals after having adapted to our soils and climate for so long. To go with the peas are cheesy onions whch is a new recipt developed in the Dragon kitchens, so opinions would be appreciated please. The onions are a locally grown heritage variety known as Green Giant because the flesh has a hint of green all the way through to the centre even when they are fully ripened and they grow to a ridiculously large size with no effort at all. All the ones we were provided with were well over a kilo [2¼ pounds] in weight, some of them more than double that.
“They were sliced and boilt and after draining had grated cheese stirred into them before being returned to the oven for five or ten minutes. The cheese is Arran Peabody’s newly created Saged Derbyshire.(17) He calls it Saged Derbyshire because he says it not right to call it Sage Derby, for that should be a name reserved for the cheese made by the folk in its homeland of Derbyshire. He telt me it was still a little soft, but for what I wanted it for it would be perfect, and I have to say he was spot on about that. The baked potatoes are as usual Picasso. These came from a field in the valley managed by the Peabody’s on behalf of the allotment folk, rather than from the allotments. That’s the way they’re growing all their major potato varieties now because it leaves them more ground at the allotments site to grow things that need more care than potatoes do. As usual the taties have bin baked, split and drowned in cholesterol rich Peabody dairy butter and every tatie comes with a free coronary heat attack. Uncle Alf telt me that the only seed tubers used here in the valley are all grown here. All taties grown outside the valley are only used for eating as a way of preventing any tatie diseases like blight or eelworm coming here. The white sauce with the gammon is made entirely with all local flour and dairy products and is based on the onion boiling water with chopped parsley and a hint of thyme. Both herbs were locally grown.
“For pudding it’s Auntie Aggie’s Tarte Tatin which as some of you know is an apple tart baked upside down that contains some of Uncle Adios’s hostage rum. The ladies are having it with whipped cream which is available to any as want it in here, but your main offering is custard. As usual six possibly eight gallons of it. The vanilla pods used for flavouring the custard are imported I’m afraid, but I’m trying to grow vanilla orchids in Uncle Johnto’s hot houses. The apples are from trees cloned from the tree outside Auntie Veronica’s farmhouse kitchen door that had those semi sweet, medium sized apples that wouldn’t fall no matter how long you baked ’em for which Auntie Aggie has always said are perfect for Tarte Tatin and French bakers use similar apples(18) to mek it with. The original tree finally succumbed two or three years since to the honey fungus it had had I presume for decades, but Thorbjörn and his staff at the tree nursery had managed to get hundreds of cuttings to graft onto dwarf rooting stocks before we lost it. Nobody knows what variety it was, nor even if it were a known variety. Thorbjörn who runs the tree nursery reckons it probably grew from a pip in a core that someone threw on the ground possibly a century ago. He telt Auntie Veronica to name it, but she wasn’t happy about that, so he named it Veronica Peabody’s Permain.(19) Her old man, Uncle Alan, is chuffed to bits, and his granddad Uncle Auld Alan reckons the core containing the pip that grew was probably threwn there by himself or one of his older brothers when they were kids because he can remember the tree not being there which must be ninety years since at least.
“The young trees are finally beginning to produce a lot of apples and Thorbjörn’s staff are planting more grafted cuttings all over the valley. He says it may be less than a century old, but it is a unique Bearthwaite heritage variety that needs tekin care of, so any who wants a tree or a few in their garden only need to say so. They’ve planted hundreds on dwarf rooting stocks at the allotments in between the plots where they serve as a good wind shelter as well as providing fruit. They’re planting some as standards in the laid hedges and some in the light woodlands as I said all over the valley, and also a lot in all the spots we own outside the valley too. As usual all the grain products used are locally grown and come to us from the mill and all dairy products used are from the Peabody dairy. The spices are maybe half local and half bought in. All the sweetener we use is now either local honey or derived from local grown sugar beet by Auntie Christine’s staff. Uncle Murray’s staff stopped buying bulk sugar for us all at the back end of last year, not long after the beet harvest.
“As a complete aside some of our carob trees have one or two pod buds on them which is years earlier than what we understood it would take to happen. We’re nowhere near to being able to produce our own carob powder, which for them as don’t know is like chocolate, but it seems that we shall be able to in a few years at most. Too, we’ve discovered that locust bean gum,(20) which goes by many names including permitted food additive E410 can be extracted from carob seeds and used as a thickening, gelling or stabilising agent in food technology. Christine and her folk are gey interested in experimenting with that. The seeds are contained within the long pods that grow on the tree. First, the pods are broken up some how to separate the seed from the remainder which is milled to make carob powder. The literature refers to that as kibbling. Then, the seeds have their skins removed by a sulphuric acid or heat treatment. Acid treatment is said to yield a lighter coloured gum than heat treatment. The skinned seed is then split and gently milled. That causes the brittle germ(21) to break up while not affecting the endosperm(22) which is much tougher than the germ. The two are separated by sieving. The separated endosperm can then be milled by any number of methods to produce the final locust bean gum powder. Uncle Phil is going to mill them for us and he says when they do it they’ll send the broken up germ of the seeds off to Uncle Greg Armstrong to mix into animal feed.
“In the acid process the carob seeds are heated with sulphuric acid to remove the seed coat, separate the seed germs and obtain the endosperm. In the roasting process the seeds are roasted in a rotating furnace to remove the seed coat, separate the seed germs and the endosperm. Auntie Christine initially was going to try the roasting method as it would be safer, easier and cheaper than buying and using sulphuric acid. She telt me she read that the main usage of the gum is in processed cheese at four to six grammes per kilo, in ice cream and dairy products at five to ten grammes per kilo, in canned fruit and vegetables at three to ten grammes per kilo. Also it can be added to dough to preserve the freshness of bakery products at one to five grammes per kilo, but Auntie Alice doubts that they’ll be doing that as our bread always gets eaten gey fresh anyway, often by kids before the loaves have completely cooled. Alternatively, the gum can be extracted from the seeds with very hot water, it only dissolves readily at above eighty-five degrees [185℉], precipitated with alcohol, filtered, dried and milled, to give a very pure clarified locust bean gum which given that the pure alcohol distillate could be used over and over again sounds like a possibility that Auntie Christine considers worth looking into. Exact processing details are hard to come by, so Auntie Christine is going to buy some whole pods containing seeds and have her folk do a bit of experimenting. She particularly wishes to know if she can extract the gum from seed endosperms milled with their skins still on which would be a lot easier. They’re still trying to find out why it is not done that way commercially, or indeed if it’s not.”
“How the hell do you know and then remember all that, Harriet?”
“Remembering interesting things is easy. Peter remembers science stuff that bores me stupid. I remember stuff like what I just telt you about. You remember about engineering and growing things too, Uncle Alf.”
As Harriet and Brigitte were clearing plates and other items from their first course, Pete was pulling pints with some assistance behind the bar with glasses and payment. Dave asked, “What did you reckon to that then, Alf?”
“Not bad. Not bad at all. The tomatoes are a regular variety that we’ve bin growing maybe twenty years. Someone bought the initial Enorma seed by accident not noticing that it was an F1 hybrid, but we liked it so decided to try to dehybridize it if such a word exists. Sometimes that works but not always. It worked and the Bright Boy which is what those we ate were are gey similar to Enorma. Those cheesy onions were excellent and not at all what I expected. I thought they’d be a bit like macaroni cheese. The sage made ’em really tasty, but I could have stood a bit more of it, so I’ll mek sure as the lasses know that. The peas were excellent as always. Little Marvel is a superb variety that always freezes gey well. That’s why we always grow it for petit pois. We usually grow three or four varieties of peas but one of ’em is always Little Marvel. Astrid is the lass that selects the plants to grow for the seed by tieing a piece of red riband to ’em. She selects all the pea and bean plants except for the soya that are field grown which one of the Peabody lasses selects hundred weights of by putting ’em through an adjustable mechanical sieve. The biggest get used for next year’s seed. As always Vincent’s gammon was superb, far better than any of those perfectly round, tasteless, vacuum packed slices selt in supermarkets. I know that some of the herbs that go to flavour his hams, gammons, bacon and the like were used centuries ago and are probably not used anywhere else now. I used to collect some of them for his dad when I was a kid. Young oak leaves that he stored under vinegar till he was ready to use ’em, was one of the things I recall. I know Vincent uses the same herbs and spices and Nicky has said he’ll keep using the same cures as his ancestors have always done, so it looks like we’ll keep eating well. I’ll just have my pint please and that’ll last till the Tarte Tatin arrives. If not I’ll need another.”
When Brigitte pushed her trolley into the taproom she said, “I’ll leave you to dish it up, Gentlemen. The tarts are already cut and the dishes are on the bottom shelf of the trolley, but I need to fetch the trolley of cutlery, another trolley of tarts and one of custard. Does anyone wish whipped cream?” She nodded and left to rapidly return with more tarts. She was followed by another girl with a trolley of cutlery. She left again to return with a trolley bearing six one gallon enamel jugs of custard.
“How come you’re short staffed, Pet?” asked Alf.
“Mum and Gran had to deal with the babies. Both of the baby monitors went off. Just one of those things, Uncle Alf, but it’s no bother. Phillippa is helping us.”
“You should have asked for help, Love,” Stan said to much agreement.
Brigitte left the men to their supper. Jeremy said, “This gets to me every time, Alf. The quality of the apples and the effect of the hostage rum on the taste makes me want to cry for folk as don’t live here, not a lot though because then I’d have to share my pudding.”
After the laughter Alf said, “Aye I agree, Jeremy, and I’m not sharing mine either.” He went on to explain, “Jeremy is a professional chef, though he insists he’s a cook because he ain’t French, who has the Granary Restaurante here at Bearthwaite. The apples are a heritage variety that we reckon grew here by accident on one of the farms. As you’ve heard, they’ve bin named after the wife of one of the farmers at that farm who cooks suppers here. The Veronica Peabody Pippin is what you have the honour to have bin escoffiering.(23) The custard is a local product from one of our custard boreholes which fortunately have at least a century’s reserves of raw custard still untapped.” The laughter lasted a long time for most were old enough to remember the comedian Ken Dodd’s famous Jam Butty(24) and Treacle mines to be found at Knotty Ash near Liverpool,(25) both of which were sufficiently well related to custard extracted from boreholes to be amusing.
In the bestside, Aggie asked gently, “I heard a whisper that Sylvia is coming home, Ellen. Is there any possibility of it?”
“You know as much as I do, Lass, because she hasn’t said owt about it to me. Presumably she’s said something to someone because the whisper had to begin with someone, but I wasn’t aware that she was in touch with anyone other than me at Bearthwaite. For years I hoped she’d come home, but even though I wrote to her about it she didn’t go to Cecilia’s funeral. I’m not sure Alf will ever forgive her for that. He never says much, but he’s got a pretty hard line concerning what is right and what is not where family members are concerned, and not going to a family member’s funeral to pay your last respects is way on the far side of that line. Cilly’s death was bad enough for Alf, but what it did to Vale and Bertie tore him to pieces inside. He was so proud of Cilly when she took up with a lad who Alf regarded as a real clever bloke, that was how he put it. Alf’s always admired folk who have what he calls proper brains because he doesn’t regard what he can do as worth much. That Cilly’s death tore the heart out of Vale, and he’s never recovered, is still tearing it out of Alf all these years later. He’s looked out for Vale ever since though he’s never needed to because Vale is fine in the sense that he can look after himself, and he’s just as good at his work as ever. He does something to do with electrics on vehicles.
“Thing is that’s all that Vale has done since he was widowered. He doesn’t even take a drink. Bertie says his dad blames himself for Cilly’s death. Bertie was still at junior school when his mum died. He’d just turned five. Vale wasn’t coping, so Alf brought the lad home. Truth is we’ve been more like Bertie’s parents than any other. It’s only these last few years after Bertie married Emily that Bertie and Vale have been speaking to each other. Bertie was too angry before, but Emily calmed him down in a way that Eloise never managed to. Mind Emily was an older and more experienced a lass than Eloise, may she rest in peace, and she’d four not two children. Emily and her girls had been hit by her first husband Dean who was an outsider who used Covid as an excuse to leave her. Alf said that Bertie sorted him out when he came back to steal owt of any value, but he won’t tell me any more, all I know for sure is that after that Dean left and Bertie and Emily tret all six kids as one family. Since then they’ve had another and Emily is telling folk that another is on the way. I know we’re more tolerant these days, but it does make you wonder whether they were right generations over when they said stick to your own.
“As to Sylvia, I’m not sure even if she returns that she’ll stay for long because I’m not sure she’s Bearthwaite folk any more. She left, married away yonder, had no kids and divorced nearly twenty year since. We never met him and all I know is she called him Sem, which may or maybe not have owt to do with his real name. I’ve wondered about her being an outsider for going on forty years and she’s sixty next new year. That’s not too auld for an incomer to join us, plenty aulder than that have and gey successfully too, but for someone who yance ower(26) was born one of us and lived here for their first eighteen years before turning their back on not just Bearthwaite but their family too, it’s a gey lang(27) stretch o’ time. I’ve never bin able to contact her other than by letter and she only gets in touch on the phone three or four time a year and then she’s always in rush and after ten minutes at most says she has to go, which is more like a lad than a lass. I mentioned that to Alf and his response was classic Alf. He shrugged his shoulders, humphed and said, ‘I’d expect any son o’ mine to have more balls than to be afraid to come home just because o’ that even if he were born a lass. I suggest you tell Sylvia that in a letter, so she can’t run away from what you’re telling her or him by claiming to be in a rush.’ I sent the letter a month since and maybe I’ll get a reply, maybe I won’t. Alf’s view is no matter what happens it can’t be any worse than what we’ve lived with for four decades.”
Aggie smiled and said, “Happen Alf is right, Lass. Whatever he says he is a clever bugger, and a good man too. I remember those early days too, and my family had nay mere te(28) eat than his, but it was men like Alf’s dad, my dad, your dad, and hundreds of others just like them who worked long and hard to provide just enough so that women like his mum, my mum, your mum, and hundreds of others just like them could make it stretch just far enough, so that the likes of we and our men survived to grow up like our parents. Canny,(29) cautious, thrifty folk who never wasted owt. Now things are better and we’re better folk too because we are more tolerant. The auld folks were wrong, Ellen. We’ve all benefited hugely from welcoming outsiders. If we’d stayed like we were, High Fell would have been dead ten years since, and Bearthwaite would have become an expensive, exclusive spot where only super rich folk could afford to live like so many other spots and we wouldn’t even be a memory in less than a generation because all our descendants would had been scattered to the four winds because they couldn’t afford to live here. As a folk we’d be extinct and not even the Gershambes as owned the entire valley and a lot more besides for centuries managed to do that to us, though according to some tales they tried hard enough.
“Don’t wait for a reply, just write again, Ellen. Say that if your lass is a lad he’s welcome back, not just by your family, but by every yan(30) of us as lives here. Explain, without mention of any names, that there is more than one trans male living here and a goodly number of trans lasses and a few others of the LGBT+ too. Tell it like it is, you’d rather have a son close by than a daughter you never saw again. Explain how this spot has changed because for sure the Bearthwaite of today is a gey different spot from what is was forty year since. Apologise if that’s not the issue, but repeat you are not happy that she has bin so far away for so long and want her to come home, or at least to live closer to home where visits are possible. Tell her you want to understand, and that there are any number of folk she went to school with who still talk about her and ask how she’s going on. Tell her her dad was gutted when he didn’t see her at Cecilia’s funeral, but he’s still her dad and has never stopped loving her. If Sylvia doesn’t write back, nor get in contact any other way at least your conscience is clear because you’ll have done all that you could.”
Lucy who kept the village grocery store with Dave her husband said, “Lightening the subject matter a bit, Lasses. Can anyone explain to me a bit more clearly why the children are so excited about Alf building a super large, super strong glass tank to keep some new kind of eft(31) from off the Needles Soft Moss Green in?”
Elle replied, “Sasha has been expending a prodigious amount of effort and time on the matter. When the police went up onto the Needles Fells as part of their investigations into the two missing boys (32) they asked Murray for permission to take photos and drone footage too. Just to ensure we had similar evidence Sasha asked John Finkel the conservation officer to have similar photos and drone footage taken too. It was actually Abigail of the rangers who took the photos and the footage. The drone footage shews some creatures that aren’t efts but salamanders similar to ones found in the Alps. The ones in the Alps have yellow markings whilst ours have orange ones. As far as anyone is aware there haven’t been any salamanders in the British Isles in geological time scales. How long ago that is I have no idea, but I believe it to be possibly as far back as the last ice age. The problem is these creature will be exceedingly valuable to collectors and Harwell and his security folk believe that villains will be prepared to kill to obtain them because the money involved is so much. Where the creatures live is at best hard to get to and the weather up there makes it even more difficult and often impossible for much of the year. The shepherds say the whole area is a no go area as far as they are concerned for all but two or three months a year because it’s too cold, too windy and there’s not much grass up there for their sheep even when it’s not covered in ice and snow.
“Apparently the creatures have been known to be up there for at least eighty years and were assumed to be a variety of great crested eft. It seems years ago when Granny Dahlman was a lass some of the lads she went to school with used to keep them as pets. John and the professors he is in touch with want the species to be protected by having some in the care of various universities in Europe where the experts on salamanders are who can study them. Since they are ours because we own Needles Fells John naturally enough wishes some benefit to accrue to the Bearthwaite residents and our friends too, so he wishes some to live in a huge glass vivarium that will have all that the salamanders need in it. Sasha refers to the beasties in the plural as salamandri because years ago he read about an intelligent reptiloid lifeform on some god forsaken fireball of a planet in a science fiction novel that went by that name.(33) Anyway, back to the glass tank. The climate will be appropriate and it will have the right kinds of creepy crawlies in it for them to eat and the right kinds of plants for them to lurk in, around and under. This horror movie of a glass tank John wants to have in the visitor centre to enable our friends and visitors to be able to take photographs and video footage of the Nightmares from the Needles. You can probably tell I’m not too keen on such beasties, and I have no intentions of going to watch damp skinned salamanders, no matter how pretty their bright orange markings are, queue up to munch on the two inch millipedes which I’m telt are one of their favourite snacks at bait time.(34)
“The problem is these beasties are valuable as I said, so Alf has suggested that he makes the vivarium out of three inch thick poly something or other laminated bullet proof glass that would take the best part of a man’s lifetime to break with a big sledgehammer to prevent any undesirable types trying to steal them. Apparently unlike most other salamanders Alpine salamanders, and it is believed ours too because of their similarities, have little to do with water. Footage of ours shews them in damp spots in the bracken under the stunted trees, but none in any nearby water, nor any on any of the floating vegetation. Frogs, toads, efts and most salamanders lay spawn or eggs that hatch in to frogpols, toadpols, eftpols and I suppose salapols.(35) That was clever of me wasn’t it? I think I just invented a new word. It’s a pity it refers to such an unattractive lifeform. Anyway Alpine salamanders don’t do that. They are viviparous, that means they give birth to little salamanders. Usually two at a time. Sasha says they have two uteruses. Depending on how high up they live, which I suppose means how cold it is and how much food there is available, females are pregnant for anything from two to four years.
“Thank god I’m not a salamander, nine months at a time was more than long enough for me.” When the laughter and sounds of agreement went quiet Elle continued. “Anyway, the experts believe that down here in the warm environment of the vivarium and given a plentiful food supply the females may only be pregnant for one year. Makes you glad someone appreciates millipedes and other such bugs doesn’t it. The bright yellow, or in our case bright orange, markings are believed to warn predators away because it indicates that they are poisonous. They do have poison in their skin or maybe they secrete poison from their skin. Either way I didn’t need to know that because I have never had the intention of eating one of them. As to why the children are excited by them, who knows why children become excited by anything. I can’t remember that far back with any clarity, but I do know that no matter how far back I went I would never have been excited by a six inch long [151mm], clammy, damp beastie that was a first cousin to frogs, toads and efts. I know Sasha is quite a distinguished looking man, but trust me he was never a frog, and had he been there is no chance I would have kissed him. I’d much rather have settled for an ugly farmer than taken a chance with a frog on finding a handsome prince. I reckon the girls who found their handsome prince probably wore their lips out first kissing frogs. When Sasha telt me that the biggest salamanders in the world are up to two metres long [6½ feet] long and can weigh over sixty kilos [10 stones, 140 pounds](36) I wasn’t in the least impressed.”
“Elle, you’re just a kill joy. Kids are just kids.”
“So tell me, Alice, what wrong with little girls liking kittens? They’re fluffy, warm and cuddly. What more could you want? I liked kittens when I was a little girl, that I do remember, and I still like kittens. I’ll have another rum punch please, Gladys.”
By the time the giggles had faded most of the ladies had another glass of warm punch of some sort in their hands.
In the bestside sipping warm rum punch and nibbling Aggie’s pleasantly spicy ginger biscuits [US cookies], that even though they were only the size of a pound coin(37) made the mouth tingle with warmth, with the Bearthwaite womenfolk Elle asked, “I hear your lasses have started canning huge quantities of Beef Tea and selling it on the internet shop, Christine. How did that happen?”
“We’ve always made it for the ill and the elderly. The elderly swear by it to keep themselves in good fettle(38) especially in the cold weather. Some of my aulder lasses mek it to drink at work instead of tea. Claire was asked by some of the others if she’d mek up a decent batch so they could all have some, that was back in the real hard winter. She meks a lot of it at home because her auld man, Johnto, teks a flask of it for with his bait down at the allotments. She was happy to do it but asked me what should we do with the beef after she’d done with it. I reckoned it ’ould be fine blended off into soups, pies and the like and telt her not to fash hersel ower(39) it because it wouldn’t be wasted. She made a five gallon batch and it didn’t last the day out. The lasses were mekin a ten gallon of it nigh to every day and the beef they used was never a problem, well it wasn’t till Vincent didn’t have any. They’d always used medium chopped braising steak, well owt off a shoulder of beast(40) as was available. That day Vincent said all he had available was minced bife, [US ground bison]. Owt’s better than nowt, so Claire made it with that. It was tastier, some thought maybe the bife was better than beef. I reckon it’s easier to extract the flavour from mince than chopped meat. Bife has little fat so that wasn’t a problem and Bife is what we’ve made it from ever since, whenever it’s available. Bife for them as don’t know is bison beef. There’s a herd of bison raised for meat by Elleanor Peabody here in the valley. The lasses still call it beef tea but spell it bife tea which is what is on the labels of what gets selt.
“When we have to use braising steak, because bife isn’t always available, we have it minced and after boiling up and simmering, over night the fat separates and solidifies, so it’s easy enough to remove. We use the fat in savoury pastry for pies and pasties. The beef tea made from bife was so tasty the lasses in the visitor centre restaurante put it on the menu. Folk wanted it to tek home and that was when we started canning it in fifty gallon batches [US 62½ gallon] and put it up for sale on the website. Sales went crazy and still are. It seems everybody’s great granny used to mek it when they were kids and it’s tapped into a stream of nostalgia than none knew was there. We’re looking into auld receipts, especially what was done during the rationing of the second world war [1939-1945], to see if there’s owt else to mek money out of. We have a huge turnover of coney and wild celery soup, mixed game soup, bone broth, venison soup, Jerusalem artichoke and chile soup, carp and sweet corn soup, mutton, vegetable and barley broth, and everything that the auld folk used to call war time survival food. And as I said the meat is not wasted because we blend it off with tastier things both meat and vegetables. It works a treat in chiles and curries.”
“So what goes into it and how’s it made, Christine?”
“To start with it was made by a bit of a hit and miss method, but we decided if we wanted to be able to reproduce the same taste we needed to be a bit methodical. The original receipt we used came from an old cookery book of Claire’s that we just like the look of. She keeps it at work, so it was available when we started looking into the matter. She’s married to Johnto one of the allotment folk, and it has a lot of her notes about cooking vegetables and other things too in the back. It’s one of our regular reference sources. However, the receipt was in crazy mixed measures and didn’t specify exactly what volume measurement system was being used. It said to use eight ounces of chuck steak which is a US term for braising steak from a beast’s shoulder meat, but the book was a UK book, hence the confusion over the three cups of water to go with the eight ounces of meat. Three Imperial cups is thirty Imperial fluid ounces or one and a half Imperial pints. Three US cups are just over twenty-five Imperial fluid ounces or an Imperial pint and a quarter. Imperial fluid ounces aren’t the same as US fluid ounces either. We wasted ower much time and in the end decided to go with a compromise and adjust it as necessary. To every kilo of meat we added three litres of water, the mince needed a bit more, so we now start with four litres and keep an eye open to replace any water lost due to evaporation. [US every ounce of meat originally required 3 fluid ounces of water now 4 are used], and we add about 2 tablespoons of salt, it’s actually six point six grammes, and herbs and spices to taste. [US 0.1875 grammes salt per oz of meat or 3 grammes per pound which is ½ teaspoon per pound].
“We use the hundred litre pans and put twenty kilos of minced meat in with eighty litres of water. A hundred and thirty grammes of salt and whatever herbs and spices we have to hand. Lovage and pepper are always available. That just about fills the pans with two inches of space at the top. We bring it to a gentle boil and keep it there for five minutes. Then we move some of the wood from under where the pan is to allow the heat to lower and let it barely simmer for twenty minutes. We skim off and discard any scum before removing all the wood to allow the fire to die completely and the pan to cool for forty-eight hours during which time the beef is allowed to steep in the liquid. Any solid fat is removed and as I said is used in savoury pastry. The liquid is removed from the pan with long handled, spouted, gallon lading cans(41) and strained, often straight into the canning machine feed hopper for the canning machine to process at high temperature and pressure. Some is always used by the staff for themselves and for serving in the restaurante. It’s best served hot. The meat can be used in owt appropriate. We’ve experimented with various cuts and it works as well with poor tough cuts as with more easily used better cuts. These days we just tell Vincent what we wish to use meat for and leave it to him to decide what to supply us with. In order to empty a few folks freezers a bit we tried it with mutton and then with lamb both on a small scale. The tea was okay, but that was the best you could say about it. So we gave up on it. It works well with venison though. Bife is best and I’d say venison and beef are an equal second, so for the moment when bife is available we use that and when it’s not we use venison in an attempt to clear some freezer space. Beef keeps indefinitely when it’s still walking about in a field grazing.”
“What exactly is the situation with household freezers, Christine? Has any been keeping a check on it?”
“The exact situation is hard to say, Alice. I’ll use you as an example. I know down at the bakery you have a dozen of the large freezers Murray bought as a job lot. You took four to add to your capacity and swapped the eight smaller freezers you had for big ones because you had the room for them and could use the extra capacity, and it made eight convenient sized freezers available to others, right?” Alice nodded. “The last time I checked you had ten and a half freezers solid with lamb and mutton and one and a half solid with other stuff that you use on a daily basis and have to resupply as soon as you use it. You used to be able to order those things by the week now it’s maybe not daily but it’s four or five time a week. Every piece of sheep that comes out of your freezers makes your bakers’ lives easier. After school the delivery kids collect a bit of sheep out of folks’ freezers and bring it down to my freezers to replace what we’ve used or given out to folk so they can use it. Most folk see the kids once a fortnight, but folk working out of their freezers like you they call on every week.
“So far so good. We’re all doing what we can, housewives, my staff, folks like you, Jeremy, Lucy, Vincent and the kids too. Any as needs a hand to reorganise their freezer to get at stuff that isn’t sheep the kids will do it for them. Like I said so far so good. The problem is we don’t know much about what is in whose freezer and we have no idea at all where any of it is in those freezers. It’ll all become considerably better in a fortnight when the kids break up from school. Gretchen is overseeing the organisation and her plan is that we completely empty one of my freezer rooms and send the kids round to go through the freezers looking for say leg of lamb and mutton leg. They completely fill my freezer room with legs which will create a lot of space in freezers everywhere. Then they identify some near enough empty freezers and empty them into wherever there is space. Then they go looking for say shoulders and fill the empty freezers with shoulders. Then they do it all over again but filling the empty freezers up with chops. Then with say breasts of lamb or mutton. Then say with haggis. Then with any offal left over. Then necks, the heads and so on.
“At the end of it at least we’ll know where stuff is kept. The problem was we’d not really realised how much pressure we’d all be under once we started dealing with the sheep. We were a lot better prepared when we dealt with the venison, and there was a lot less of it. There was probably ten times as much sheep as venison to deal with. The plan is Rosie and her staff will deal with all remaining offal including heads. My staff will use all the necks and feet for soup and can or bottle it, and the bonfire party barbecue on the village green will see off a huge quantity of the breasts because we’ll cut them all up into individual ribs to be eaten with Jeremy’s barbecue sauce. A lot of folk have said they fancy dining with a load of friends and relatives and cooking a big leg joint for Christmas dinner. As usual there will god alone knows how many folk having Christmas dinner in the village hall, but it won’t be goose this year it’ll be lamb. After that the situation in domestic freezers won’t be exactly easy but it will be a lot easier. And it’ll become easier still when the extra freezer rooms are completed. That we expect will be somewhere in the middle of January which I know is a long way into the future, but at least it’ll be the end of what I know has been a nightmare for many folk, but it could have been worse, we could have been short of food.”
In the Taproom after ten minutes spent pulling pints Pete asked, “Is Sylvia finally coming home, Alf?”
“No idea, Pete. Ellen thought she’d come home nearly ten years ago when she was telt Silvia had retired from the police down there, but seemingly she’d bin retired two years then. She’ll be sixty next time around. She’s a strange one. She married down there, never had any kids and when she divorced at forty something, two I think, we’d never met him. Ellen writes regular and talks on the phone, Zoom too, but I was never one for any o’ that sort of thing. I’ve probably only spoken to her two or three times in forty years. I was okay about her joining the police. I was okay about her riding a police motorbike. I’d have felt better about it if she’d worked Lancashire way or even Cheshire, but no she went to Devon and Cornwall for Christ sake. It’s four hundred mile [630km] away at the far end of the country and over the years Ellen must have cried a friggin mere(42) of tears over her being so far away. She didn’t even come home for her sister Cecilia’s funeral. Bertie was years getting over his mum’s sudden death and Vale never has. He used to be a happy, cheerful bloke, clever like. One of the best auto electricians I’ve ever come across. Now he’s just as clever, but I don’t remember the last time I saw him smile. I reckon Bertie is the only person he talks too. Bertie reckons his dad don’t talk to me because he feels he let me down somehow when Cilly died. Which he didn’t. Family eh? When it comes right down to it they’re the core of what counts, and to me Vale’s family. He married my daughter, so he’s family. Her early death was a tragedy, but he’s still family. Stuff like this hurts my brain, Pete, so pull me another and I’ll tek a glass of chemic too, Gustav, if you would please. Owt ‘ll do as long as it numbs my brain, Lad.” Alf was clearly distressed and his friends all knew that it would be best if the matter of Silvia, Alf’s eldest child, was dropped.
Five minutes later after having seen off several glasses of various noxious and potent distilates Alf asked, “How’s the HGV classes at the school coming along Harry?”
“Not bad. Turk and Walter are doing the theory at the school. Walter not long since passed his test and the two of them are teaching a class of a couple of dozen or so including half a dozen lasses which is good. I think they range in age from fifteen to nineteen. They’re running a much larger class of nigh to forty adults as an evening class. There’re any amount of freely available teaching materials on the net. There’re the multiple choice questions, the hazard perception tests and plenty of CPC(43) case studies available too. There are maybe a dozen and a half of us teaching the practical driving skills for just about every type of vehicle you can imagine. Some of the kids are good enough to pass now even though it’ll be three years before they reach eighteen and are old enough to take the test. Even so they’re proving to be right handy moving stuff around the valley and to and from the Bearthwaite Lonning Ends. One of the fifteen year old lasses was being harassed by plod (44) picking up some pallets that had been dropped off for Bertie on the car park there. He was saying she was breaking the law because she was too young to drive an artic with a forty foot trailer. Murray, you want to tell the rest of it?”
“Aye. She pressed the directorate panic option on her phone and I was there with half a dozen others in minutes. In front of the bloke I rang the force headquarters at Carleton Hall, Penrith. I telt them one of their officers was on private land with neither permission nor a warrant and I’d be obliged if they recalled him and explained that he was trespassing on Bearthwaite Valley property. I explained I’d got it on video that he was harassing a fifteen year old lass. I sent a copy of my footage across to the control there and then and said that I would be seeking legal advice concerning a prosecution on behalf of Beebell. I quoted the bloke’s number and when his radio called whatever was said turned him as red as a post box. I telt his control that till I received an apology the police force no longer had permission to use the Bearthwaite Lonning Ends for their vehicles nor owt else either, and I reminded them that the cameras recorded any movement there twenty-four seven. I expressed the desire to be informed as to exactly what steps had been taken to ensure the constable did not over step his authority in future. I received a written apology within twenty-four hours and I reinstated their permission to access the parking on the Lonning Ends.
“Someone in the force had a word with Michael(45) who reminded them that all actions had consequences. The officer was bullying a young lass who had bin doing an unsupervised practical class that was part of her school work on private property. He had also displayed what for a police officer had bin an appalling lack of knowledge as to what was a public highway and what was private property. Michael telt them that the consequence of that was a withdrawal of support from Bearthwaite and a potential prosecution. The consequence of me receiving a rapid apology was the reinstatement of Bearthwaite support by allowing them access to the Lonning Ends. He suggested that since I had specifically requested information concerning the constable’s discipline there would have been a reason for that. If I received such, that would without doubt have the consequence that no further thought concerning a prosecution would take place. I was duly informed that the constable had been reprimanded and had been given a couple of courses to attend on his own time. I wrote to them saying that we had decided that a prosecution wasn’t an appropriate course of action to pursue. Pass me that bottle of green stuff that looks like hydraulic fluid will you, Peter, there a good lad.” Bertie lifted a case of the afore mentioned green stuff on to a table and for a few minutes all that could be heard related to spirits glasses being filled and the clink of coins as they landed in the children’s Christmas Party fund box.
As soon the distribution of the rare stuff was completed Peter said, “I’ll pull some pints, Dad. You sit you down and rest your feet.” Peter nodded to some of his friends who assisted him by washing glasses and taking money.
“What came of your super fibre broadband, Arnie. What your new best mate Leroy Miranda offered you?”(46)
“Still waiting, Harry. I reckon if, come a day, I get it the entire valley will, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for it. Why?”
“I received notification of an upgrade available to our satellite service which may just render your mate Leroy Miranda a piece of history. For next to nowt our main dish connection to the sky can be upgraded into a version that a fibre optic system can easily be connected to. I’ve ordered the upgrade and asked for a price on a fibre optic system that connects every building in the valley including the out lying farms and the like. I spoke to their finance and installation folks and said the only way we’d be interested was if we dug the trenches. The option I gave them was we’d use a slit trencher behind an appropriate tractor that would put the cable three foot down. That’s a bit of kit that one of their blokes would feed with the cable and as it moved forward the narrow plough furrow created the space for the cable to follow it and the soil would fall back over the cable as it moved on. They didn’t like it, so I said okay we don’t want the service thanks, but I’ll be trying elsewhere. It’s a huge piece of business for them or any other company, and as I suspected would be the case they got back to me three weeks later.
“They are currently working out a cable routing map for our lads to look at. Our lads who are going to be handling the tractor and slitting plough have suggested that once they receive the map they run the plough along the route to find any large rocks or owt else that needs dug out before the cable lads are with them. There’s also the possibility some of the more inaccessible sections have to be dug by a mini digger or even a team of lads wi’ grafts,(47) and all that can be done first so that we are ready for when the cabling lads arrive. The cabling firm are gey enthusiastic now about the deal because it means they can do what they are good at without bothering about the trenching and any hold ups that may or may not have caused them. I suspect they were initially bothered about our expertise at digging a complicated set of trenches that may result in hold ups that took all their profits out of the job. Any roads, once they produce the map we’ll get their quotation for the job with it.
“The lad I spoke to reckoned that will take about a fortnight to optimise the cabling map. He explained there was a trade off between the number of connections, the length of fibre optic cable involved and a few other things as well. The technique they use to optimise the cabling runs is to run a computer simulation that costs each version as it goes. Seemingly the computer programmes itself recursively going round and round each run getting closer to what they finally end up with. It’s like it’s teaching itself, but unlike folk it works round the clock and never needs a break. Our lads reckon maybe another fortnight, possibly twice that depending on what they find, to run the slitting plough along the map and do any other work required of the mini digger and by hand wi’ shovels. The cables don’t actually enter buildings, they terminate at a gadget at the top of a pole and the last bit of the connection is wireless. It seems any number of houses can access the thing on the top of the pole, so for a village like Bearthwaite we won’t need that many. Even the wireless connections to the likes of farms can cover a significant distance. Those cable lads aren’t daft so the price will be acceptable and they’ll be dealing wi’ Chance’s folk regarding the payment. Some of our lads are thinking maybe there’s some work available doing the trench work for the cable company in the more rural areas. They’ve agreed to talk about it after they see how our connections have worked, but it looks promising from both sides.”
Alf had been blunt in the Green Dragon taproom when he’d said, “The Bearthwaite valley and its fells has provided for and protected us for centuries and the Fells even kept any number of us safe from the Gershambes when they ruled the spot with an iron fist. There were lads that they wanted to hang as lived up on the tops as shepherds for decades. That’s why there’re so many bothies(48) up there. Wi’ nowt else to do they collected the stone and built ’em. Every time a shepherd went up there after a spell at home he’d tek tree branches up for roofing, and the lads would roof over using flat stone. If asked it was just firewood. No Gershambe had ever put himself to the trouble of getting up on to the harder to reach fells, so those lads were safe enough, none were ever catcht. Now it’s payback time. We’ll kick all and any invaders out. Any that evade us to go up on to the fells looking to find the peregrines’ or other raptors’ nesting sites with a view to tekin chicks or eggs in the spring should be left to do so. Wi’ a bit o’ luck they’ll die and we can let ’em feed the ravens.” All the locals knew Alf was referring to folk who were after salamaders, but in such a way that outsiders would take his words at face value. “Such spots are easy enough to identify during daylight but after dark they seem to just disappear into the shadows and no amount of artificial light meks it any better. Going up there high enough to find nesting sites after dark is asking to die, and spending a night up there is little better. If they don’t come back down so be it. If they do when we catch ’em, and we will, we’ll mek ’em wish they hadn’t, and any chicks or eggs they have with ’em John can rear with a view to rewilding them later in the year or the following year if necessary. I’ll be building a bigger home for his birds soon. That new tank I’m meking for his natterjack toads and the like to put in the visitor centre for folk to photograph and video will be ready soon. John telt me that Granny Dahlman said some of the boys she went to school with had kept frogs, toads and efts as pets and given the protection of a tank and never going short of food some had lived for twenty-five years.” There were a number of men who concluded, but said nowt of it, that Soft Moss Green would be an appropriate final resting place for such folk. Filth buried in a swamp.
Dave said, “The other day I heard that Rizla®(49) have been tekin a bit of a hammering due to folk packing in smoking. However, as the cost of living crisis bites harder they are achieving considerable success after they diversified more widely into the paper business. I reckon that narrow bog roll(50) that you called bus tickets you had to wipe your arse with in the lavatory in Tesco a while back,(51) Liam, were probably Rizla® papers. Talking of bog roll, I saw somecthing a while back that said life was like a roll of toiletpaper. The closer you get to the end the faster it goes.”
After the laughter faded, Dave continued, “I saw something to mek you think on my mobile phone a while back. Bill and his mate Ben were both veterans who’d served in Afghanistan. They met up for pint one lunchtime and Ben said, ‘I saw a sign in a shop window this morning that read, ‘“I would rather have a thousand Muslim extremists in my shop than one British soldier.”’ Tell you fucking funeral directors [US morticians] crack me up.’
“There was another army one that went, ‘I’m an army pensioner. Can I please be sent to Rwanda.(52) No council tax, house provided, free food, free heating, no water payments, brand new furnished home, enjoy lovely hot weather, full medical care &c., &c.. You can’t just send foreigners there surely? I’ll willingly let a family have my house in exchange because I can’t afford to live here and I can’t afford to move.’ Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous. Pity the Rwanda plan’s bin abandoned ain’t it?”
Charlie said, “Well while we’re talking about silly stuff. The other day I remembered something that happened to my mum. Years ago she telt me the tale which must have happened during the war sometime, [1939 – 1945] before she got married when she was nursing. She was pregnant with my eldest sister almost as soon as she was wed which would have bin nineteen forty-six when she packed in nursing. She bought a pair of shoes advertised as sensible shoes suitable for nurses and office workers. The shoes fell apart after six weeks, so she took ’em back. The half witted lass that served her asked her, ‘Have you been walking in them?’ as if that would make the problem Mum’s fault. Now Mum was a feisty lass on a good day, but when she’d got it on her she was a nightmare, and she’d just worked a night shift in a pair of borrowed shoes that were two sizes too big. She said to the lass, ‘Tell me I don’t suppose you do any walking in your job do you? Just being able to sit down all day.’ Seemingly the lass reared up on her in protest about how hard she worked and how she was on her feet all day. Mum heard her out and said, ‘I’m a nurse. I work twelve hour shifts and for every mile you walk I probably walk three, a quarter of them on the run. No, I haven’t bin walking in them. Now may I have my money back, or do I have to repeat this stupid conversation to the manager.’ She got her money back and telt the lass, ‘I was going to ask for a replacement pair, but I changed my mind because I can’t be doing with the idea of having to deal with you again. Goodday.’ Seemingly an exchange wouldn’t have gone against the lass, but her not being able to persuade a customer not to insist on a refund would.”
Paul said, “Talking of shoes, I’ve a short one. It was when I lived down in Worcestershire about twenty-five miles from Birmingham. I’d have bin maybe fifteen, so that puts it at about nineteen sixty. I went looking for a pair of decent shoes with my stepdad. I was pretty heavy on shoes and a decent make for work shoes and boots was called ‘Tuf’. They were expensive, but Dad said he’d pay. I have to say I was grateful. At the time Tuf selt themselves on the name and gave a twelve month no quibble guarantee. When the floorwalker(53) who was serving us said the guarantee was now only six months Dad asked if that was because the quality had halved. The bloke looked around and whispered that it was because the immigrants were wearing them in shifts, so they were getting at least twice the wear that they’d bin getting before. I’ve no idea if that were true but it was obvious that the floorwalker believed it was. Someone pass a bottle of chemic over, Lads.”
Sasha asked, “How’s it going regards Laila and some kids, Wellesley?”
“Slowly, Sasha, tediously slowly for Laila. You know that like a lot of the other blokes in the engineering shops I deal with two or three dozen apprentices depending on what we’re doing and what they’re needing most at the time. We operate a kind of pick and mix apprenticeship. It’s a bit haphazard but eventually they all get what they need because if they haven’t had it they ask for it. At the moment we’re catching up on oxy welding(54) which a few seem to have missed out on. Sam and Gee Shaw are tekin ’em on half a dozen at a time. Laila enjoys mothering the apprentices, but she’s desperate for a second family of her own. To any as don’t know her, outwardly she looks patient enough, but she’s owt but on the inside. I can’t recall her being this impatient since she was expecting our first. I mind she was enjoying the experience, but she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the little lass and despite being huge with her she was pacing the kitchen like a large carnivore in an ower(55) small cage at a zoo.
“All the kids taken in recently have already got families, siblings and parents both. We’re waiting for Arathane and his group to find some more in need of care. Sad to say, but I’m sure they will only too soon. Abigail and her group are due back on Tuesday from Glasgow but so far they haven’t found any in need of a home. No surprise really given how many kids here have already been rescued from that spot. Arathane and his group are heading for Belfast on Friday. None has bin there for going on twelve months, so he’s expecting to find three or four dozen. Last time he took extra folk with him, so they could escort small groups of kids back here as they found ’em rather than having to explain to the authorities why they were escorting a bus load of kids who obviously weren’t on a school trip. The first thing they always do when they have a group of kids to bring back from over there is buy them all a decent set of clothes and contact the Salvation Army who organise bathing and showering facilities. We make big donations to the Sally Army and they know what were doing so there’s never a problem. Freshly bathed and dressed in decent clothes the kids all look okay and no questions get asked at either end of the Ferry. It’s not that our folk object to having to explain that they’re not traders in kids because they’ve all the paperwork requiered to justify what they’re doing. What had always bothered Arathane was if the authorities had stopped them some of the kids would have run and they’d never have been found again. He had a word with Murray who’s been talking to someone in the Home Office. It’s now organised that when Arathane’s folk are ready to approach the ferry they’ll make a phone call and will be expected. Then they are escorted on by friendly folk in civilian dress who are aware of what’s going on. It’s already been tested with a couple of small groups of our own kids and it worked just fine, so at least that’s one thing less for him to worry about.”
Pete asked, “Is that it, Lads? Time to clean up, fill glasses and get the dominoes out?” Ten minutes later other than the clicking of dominoes the taproom was silent.
As usual Elle & Sasha, Gladys & Pete, Harriet & Gustav and Brigitte & Peter were sitting in the bestside drinking tea and passing around whatever new information they had gathered as a result of the evening’s conversation.
Sasha opened the discussion by saying, “John opines that it is only a matter of time before some of the lunatic fringe that refer to themselves as naturalists find out where the salamanders have been discovered. He also reckons that once they do they and the collectors will make determined attempts to get up to Soft Moss Green. Harwell and Murray believe most will be easily deterred. However, there are some folk who will be in it to provide collectors with specimens. Harwell said that big money is involved and they will not be at all easy to deter. They will probably be armed and for the kind of money that is being whispered about they will be prepared to kill. John opines that we need to have a large vivarium for some of them in the Visitor Centre, for folk to see and as a well fed breeding population from which they can be distributed to our academic friends. It is the current intention if they are a subspecies of the Alpine salamander to name them Salamandra atra aurantius,(56) the orange Alpine salamander. A few days ago Alf suggested using three inch laminated bullet proof glass. He had a source that wouldn’t be too expensive and said it would be easy enough to order the pieces cut to size and he knew how to assemble the pieces so the joints were stronger than the glass plate. He suggested making two and shipping the other complete with contents as a gift to Switzerland for Professor Schmidt. Chance said he’d reclaim the money as a charitable donation off Beebell’s corportion tax. Alf said if we talk to customs at both ends first they will provide appropriate paperwork and customs seals at this end too. He also said we should carry the vivarium in a forty foot shipping container again with customs seals and one of our folk takes it to Switzerland on an unmarked wagon. He said none would consider a forty foot box would be used for the job.
“Harwell and Gervin’s folk have been considering the matter from a security point of view and have concluded that this is a completely different matter from a looting invasion by general scum. They all reckon that the best way to deal with these sort of folk is to protect what we value, in other words to make sure that they can’t enter the village if necessary by allowing them up on to the Needles Fells. The lonning is already flooded and all suggested that we leave it that way so that any sneaking in by small boat or more likely by canoe will have a minimal amount of equipment with them. Even any who know where they are going won’t all make it up there in the dark, and it is exceedingly doubtful that any of them will make it down again. God alone knows how many places there are on that sheep track when stepping a few inches off the path will result in a fall of several hundred feet. The best response from us is to just let them get on with it. As we’ve pointed out numerous times, we are not the mountain rescue and will not help any who trespass upon our property. It’s neither our fault nor our problem if they die breaking the law just because they are doing it on our property. If they need help let them ring for the air ambulance and subsequently explain to the authorities why they were there. Every one of them that dies on the fell is one more that won’t be coming back for a second attempt. Too, Harwell says there are any number of plants that will grow up there that are dangerous but legal to import and plant on private property, and that to make our kids safe from them is just a matter of a few local geography and botany lessons, and they’ll know which routes and which plants to avoid. Jane is working on some natural plant extracts to add to the water cannon water that will make life extremely unpleasant for any that encouter it.
“As regards the potential looters. Harwell and his folk are offering training for any of our population who want it just in case all his folk in the TA get called up to handle issues in the towns and cities. That way we’ll have a defence force available. Some of his folk are working with the teaching staff in the school, so even some of the younger children have a rôle which they are enjoying. There are hundreds, probably thousands here who can use a shotgun and dozens now soon to be hundreds familiar with the water cannon. Some of the farmers say that their yard dogs will attack any they are telt to see off and there are a few dozen of them. Auld Alan has telt all the farmers to put their bulls where they can be most effective. Vlad, that Jersey bull of his, has been put with the Jersey cows in the field with the three separate routes up to the Needles Fells. That nasty little sod will attack anyone it doesn’t recognise anywhere near his cows, and any it does recognise too if it’s feeling that way out at the time. The other routes going up there are through fields with either Elleanor’s bison or some other long horned, scary looking variety of beast(57) in. The shepherds have deployed all their aggressive tups(58) to best effect and the rear side of Needle Fells have some of Gunni Gris’ bigger Tuskers(59) there just to look mean, even though there are no viable routes up to the tops on that side that will prevent any sneaking around to the front from that side. I’m not sure what’s being done with the geese, but doubtless it’ll provide entertainment when we get to hear about it, and finally I know hives of bees have been discretely placed such that tracks and trails are on the bees’ flight paths in and out of the hives.
“The engineering and building folk are improving security on all buildings that hold food stocks and all our other big buildings too. Even empty buildings can fall victim to arson. The windows have been obscured and they’re fastening eighteen millimetre [¾ inch] thick rebar one fifty mil [6 inch] square deck meshing(60) on the inside of the windows too. When they’ve finished on those they’re moving on to houses. In the even of a major invasion that takes a lot of us out I intend to leave that to Peter. He has already made major steps in the direction of disguise and is obtaining aid from where he thinks it to be appropriate. We all know about his alter ego Jane and though most folk know nowt about her they know of her existence as a friend of Violet and Brigitte who are looking after her. Ross Finkel who understands the principles of the ring trains and works with Peter knows about Jane and suggested a really sharp idea a while back. He disguises himself as Peter and goes about arm in arm with Violet accompanied by Brigitte and Jane, so that Peter can be seen keeping company with Jane. As a result the likelihood of anyone considering that Jane is really Peter is vanishingly small. That’s all I know concerning security unless someone has something to add?”
The eight of them all looked around, but it seemed that the topic of security had been exhausted. Elle said, “Now we have the spare teaching capacity on the staff life is an awful lot easier and many of the staff are being helped by hundreds of adults to deliver the extra curricular materials. The security matters and the driving courses, both car and HGV, are hugely popular and some of the parents are delivering motor cycle classes as well. It all integrates so well with what the new Bearthwaite children are being provided with to help them identify as Bearthwaite folk, and that includes learning High Fell, that it’s hard to say where school stops and hobbies start. I suppose the main thing is the children don’t care because they’re having fun. The folk who are monitoring the housing provision regarding how many Bearthwaite folk from outside the valley we could house here given no notice at all say that right now we could manage all the vulnerable in terms of health and age, both auld and young, but it would be gey tight and in order to do it a lot of kids would be here with grandparents whilst their parents stick it out outside. We could take more if we were prepared to accept a lot of folk living in tents, but as of now there is no sense of that becoming necessary in the near future. Every house, every room and even every bed space is being noted as fast as they become completed. Matt Levins says in six months we’ll be able to provide all our folk with a decent bed in a warn place. Rob Astor, Harriet’s friend, said he’d had bigger cells when he was in gaol than some of what we could provide and if push came to shove he’d live up on the fells in a bothy. Fact is inside a twelvemonth we’ll have everything we could possibly need.”
Brigitte added, “We go to school with the new kids and we even know most of the ones who do virtual school too. Most love being here and adjust gey fast. Some must have horrific pasts, you can tell, and they will take a long time to settle in. What makes the biggest difference is when they find a girlfriend or a boyfriend. That calms them down and takes a lot of their distrust away. Most of them were city or town kids so there are a lot of things we do here that they’ve never even heard of before. Sorcha and Aileen Peabody have asked Murray to buy a couple of dozen four ten shotguns so they can teach the first stage of pigeon pie making. Murray said he’d buy a couple of hundred for security reasons, but he didn’t explain how that would work, maybe he hadn’t worked it all out completely yet when he said that. School is lot more fun with the new kids because they know about stuff we don’t. Some of them were in a school cadet corps once and are trying to persuade some of the adults that were in the army to start one here. There’re a lot of lasses interested. Violet and I reckon they’re off their heads, still each to their own.”
Pete smiled at his granddaughter and said, “Some of them probably think you are off your head for being interested in horticulture, waitressing and cooking, Love. Like you said each to their own. However, now that Adalheidis and Annalísa have bought Barra Fell Estate and Lower Barra Estate, which has provided many of us with more than a few laughs, I suspect the matter of habitat for the wildcats has been settled for the next few years. The fencers have already made a good start and much to the relief of a number of adults new to Bearthwaite are providing work for as many as want it. The tree nursery staff have changed their focus onto raising species of trees that will best start the desired change of purpose of the land. I think the Beebell directorate will be discussing when to release the first few wildcats onto our land at their next meeting. I suspect that Adio’s next delivery will be released here. By the time the wildcats’ population pressure requires more land the Barra Fell and Lower Barra Estates will provide appropriate habitat for them to spread out onto. In the meanwhile a number of folk are discussing how best to achieve that with Flat Top Fell in such a way that the observatory and the weapons cache does not create a conflict of interests.”
Gustav said, “I was talking to Pat the other day about the proposed fibre optic network. He’s started doing a course to bring himself up to date in terms of what it could do for us. He’s thinking in terms of up grading our general level of surveillance security. Nowhere in the valley is very far from the satellite signal receiver, nor do we have a huge number of users here so the increase in capacity offered by fibre is not overwhelming, so in many ways the advantages offered by fibre optics are not of particular significance to us, though doubtless, as with all technology, folk will increasingly use it more intensively because the facility is there. However, it offers enhanced security in a number of ways most of which went right over my head. As I understand it it’s harder to hack and being underground and based on light rather than more conventional electron in copper wire signals it’s far less susceptible to weather phenomena which will make a pleasant change. I reckon from a lot of folks’ perspective currently its major benefit is the employment opportunities it offers both digging the trenches here and the possibilities of doing so elsewhere too.”
Gladys asked, “I hate to be the eternal housewife, Sasha, but we seem to have been spending an awful lot of money recently. The new dam cost us all a not so small fortune, and the cost of the land and property that we’ve bought recently has been eye watering. How are the finances?”
“We’re fine. We’ve got a lot more money than at this time last year. The investments keep making money and in the end our dealings with SPM will have cost us peanuts if anything at all. The only real money we’ve spent in the last few years was what we paid for the Barra Fell Estate which enabled us to recover all our losses with SPM and claw back the retained rights. So what price do you put on freedom, but seriously we’re doing okay. Is that it folks? Is it time to head off for bed?”
“It looks like that’s it, Sasha. Let’s go home.”
Sasha nodded to Elle before saying, “I’ll fetch our coats.”
After goodnight had been said Harriet and Gladys went upstairs followed by Brigitte to check on their offspring. Peter said, “I’ll lock up and check the windows. You fancy a Schnapps, Dad? Granddad?”
“Aye, Lad. Gustav, if you sort some glasses, I’ll go downstairs for a bottle of some good stuff we’ve only had in a couple of days. Your brother Carl’s wife Anika sent it. She said Carl highly recommended it.
27807 words including the footnotes
1 See GOM 59.
2 GRS, Gender Reassignment Surgery.
3 See GOM 57.
4 The BEE, the Bearthwaite Educational Establishment.
5 Þórsdóttir, Thors dor tier, Th as on thorn, IPA θoʊrsdoʊrtiər.
6 Gel, the way upper class English speakers pronounced girl half a century or more ago. Gel has a hard g sound as in go and the word rhymes with bell, IPA gɛl.
7 SPM, Sovereign Properties Management.
8 Eft is an old word still in use in places in the UK for a newt. Newt is not a word used by Bearthwaite folk.
9 Gey lang, dialectal very long.
10 Treed bracken, bracken growing with some trees in it that are neither large enough nor present in large enough numbers to shade out the bracken. Typically birch, yew, Scots pine and juniper. Hardy trees that will grow under harsh windswept conditions even though the environment stunts them.
11 The University of Zurich Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies is a real department in a real university. Professor Dr Hans Schmidt is a fictitious character invented for this tale.
12 Анушка Ющенкова, Anoushka Yushchenkova, an international financier.
13 See GOM 50.
14 See GOM 57.
15 Girt, dialectal great.
16 Golden syrup or light treacle is a thick, amber coloured form of inverted sugar syrup made by the process of refining sugar cane or sugar beet juice into sugar. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance and consistency similar to honey, and is often used as a substitute where honey is unavailable. The most widely recognised brand in the UK is produced by Tate and Lyle.
17 Sage Derby is smooth, creamy Derby cheese marbled with a delicate sage infusion. Sage Derby cheese is England’s oldest and most famous cheese originally made only for special occasions such as Harvest and Christmas. Traditional Sage Derby has an open texture with a smooth creamy body and a nutty flavour. This cheese is a vat made cheese, which involves the Sage being added to the cheese as it’s made.
18 Traditionally French bakers use Calville and Reine des Reinettes. Reine des Reinettes translates as King of the Pippins. A pippin is an apple.
19 A Permain, usually spelt Pearmain these days, is a type of apple not a type of pear. The name may once have been applied to a particular variety of apple that kept well, although in more modern times its inclusion in varietal names is, like the term Pippin, largely decoration rather than indicating any shared qualities. The original Permain variety has not been conclusively identified and may now be extinct.
20 Locust bean gum, LBG, carob gum, carob bean gum, carobin, E410, is a galactomannan vegetable gum extracted from the seeds of the carob tree, Ceratonia siliqua. Not to be confused with the African Locust Bean Tree, Parkia biglobosa.
21 Germ, an alternative name for the embryo. The part of the seed that produces the next generation plant.
22 Endosperm, the part of a seed which acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, (the germ) usually containing starch with protein and other nutrients.
23 Escoffiering, a pun based on scoffing, slang for eating and Georges Auguste Escoffier (French IPA, ʒɔʁʒ oցyst ɛskɔfje, 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods.
24 Jam butty, jam sandwich.
25 Treacle mining is a joke about mining black treacle, also known as molasses, in a raw form similar to coal. The subject purports to be serious, but is an attempt to test credulity. Thick black treacle makes the deception plausible. The topic has been a joke in British humour since the mid 19th century.
26 Yance ower, once over, in the past. Widely used in Cumbria at the beginning of bedtime stories where it is equivalent to once upon a time.
27 Gey lang, dialectal very long.
28 Nay mere te, dialectal no more to.
29 Canny, as used here means astute, shrewd. Also of a person, particularly a female, pleasant, nice.
30 Yan, dialectal one.
31 Eft, dialectal for newt.
32 See GOM 55.
33 Salamandri, the reference is to ‘The Throne of Scone’, 1986, the 3rd book of the Keltiad by Patricia Kennealy.
34 Bait time, and unusual usage referring to meal time. Elle is not a first language speaker of English and though her English is so good none other than Sasha are aware of that, from time to time she does use the language in ways that others consider to be merely eccentricity.
35 Salapol. To Bearthwaite folk, tadpol, not the usual tadpole used elsewhere, is a generic term that refers to all amphibian larvae. Their use of the specific words, frogpol, toadpol and eftpol goes back centuries. In keeping with Bearthwaite usage Elle has just coined the word salapol for salamander larvae.
36 The refference is to the South China giant salamander, Andrias sligoi.
37 A UK pound coin is 23.03-23.43mm in diameter. Approximately 0.90669-0.92244 inches.
38 In good fettle, healthy.
39 Fash hersel ower it, worry herself over it.
40 Beast in this context is a cow or a bullock [US steer]. Shoulder of beast is braising steak or shoulder of beef, US chuck steak.
41 Lading can, a tin can, usually containing two or three quarts, [2or 3 litres, 2½ or 3¾ US quarts] used for taking hot water out of a boiler. The can referred to here is larger than usual being 4 quarts [4 litres, 5 US quarts].
42 A mere, a lake, as in Windermere.
43 CPC, driver Certificate of Professional Competence. The Driver CPC is a professional qualification for bus, coach, and lorry drivers in the UK.
44 Plod, a pejorative term for the police. Mr. Plod was a fictional bumbling police officer in the Noddy series of children’s books by Enid Blyton.
45 Michael Graham, a Bearthwaite born and bred police sergeant.
46 See GOM 44.
47 A graft, is a long, tapering, narrow bladed tool also called a trenching tool. Nowadays the term drainer or drainage tool is also used by manufactures like Draper and Spear & Jackson.
48 A bothy is a basic shelter, usually left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge. It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are found in remote mountainous areas of Scotland, Northern England, Ulster and Wales. They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands, but related buildings can be found around the world, for example, in the Nordic countries there are wilderness huts. In the context here a basic shepherds’ shelter with no utilities.
49 Rizla®, is a French brand of rolling papers and other related paraphernalia in which tobacco, marijuana, or a mixture of the two, is rolled to make handmade joints and cigarettes. The company was sold in 1997 to Imperial Tobacco.
50 Bog roll, slang for toilet paper.
51 See GOM 33.
52 The Rwanda plan is a deal whereby the UK pays Rwanda to take it’s illegal immigrants. In April 2022, the UK government said that any asylum seeker entering the UK illegally after 1 January 2022, from a safe country such as France, could be sent to Rwanda.
53 Floorwalker, a senior employee in a large shop who supervises assistants, directs customers, and answers queries. Also used as a term for any sales assistant.
54 Oxy welding, oxy acetylene welding.
55 Ower, dialecta; over.
56 The aurantius indicates orange in Latin.
57 Beast, used thus the word refers to a bovine.
58 Tups, rams.
59 Tuskers, native suids, often referred to as wild or feral boar. Gunni manages a large number of them.
60 A square steel mesh fabricated from 18mm steel rods welded into a grid with the rods 150mm apart used for putting into concrete floors for reinforcement.
