Life In the Slow Lane

"When we move to the country, I'm going sing when I get stuck behind a tractor, and make my own soup and bread.  And also gallons and gallons of elderflower cordial," I declared back in 1995, as I packed up my Victorian 3-bed terraced house in Barons Court, and headed off to its countryfied equivalent - a substantial delapidated farmhouse in seven acres, located in the middle of Dartmoor - both valued at around £150,000.

Within a few days of arrival, Wydemeet was besieged by 100 women camping in its hideous breeze-block barn, all competing for a place in the 'McVitie's Penguin Women's Polar Relay' (another story),  all of whom had to be fed.

Later I learned how to make bread from Mary Berry's AGA book, and devotedly sent off my brick-like loaves to my then-husband in the high Arctic, to remind him of home.

You don't need many elderflower sprigs to make the cordial, and I made so much that I felt sick, and it started going mouldy in its leaky containers. I've never bothered again. Bottlegreen is fine.

I didn't get round to the soup, because I prefer proper meals where the ingredients are recognisable, rather than all mashed up. I think you feel fuller if you've had to use a knife and fork.

Driving on Dartmoor

And I was so busy, busy, busy trying to keep a roof over our heads: running five PR accounts, marketing and admin/business sides of the polar business, raising two small children- all combined with endless driving. The more you pay for education, the more driving you have to do, and the longer the holidays.

So singing merrily, dawdling along behind a herd of slow-moving sheep, didn't come naturally after all. Every morning at 8.15am, you can observe Dartmoor's equivalent of Le Mans: a motorcade of Range Rovers, coiffured agressive Mums at the wheel, eight-year-olds behind in their childseats shrieking with delight, hurtling across the moor in order to get the little darlings to school in time for assembly.

Anyone in the way casually glancing in their rear veiw mirror will spot the threatening grill of a huge 4x4 two yards from their back bumper, frantically indicating right. 

And guess what, the slowest, most head-in-the-clouds, most infuriating drivers on Dartmoor are always, just always, old men. I often ask my children to check and look to prove that I'm right, as I race on by. Whenever I'm driving my two horses in their trailer and I meet an old man unfortunate enought to be driving his Honda Civic in the opposite direction to me in a narrow lane, I immediately hop out and offer to reverse his car for him, before his woffly indecision causes a traffic jam stretching back to the A38.  I've never quite understood why, but my charitable gesture seems never to go down well.

What happened to turn these once tyre-burning youths of yore into indecisive, annoying, risk-averse Old Blokes? I bet they weren't like that when they were twenty.

My view is that old men turn into old women, and old women turn into old men. And I think hormones (or the lack thereof) are to blame.

To Be, or Not To Be, Home-Made/Local?

Fifteen years on, with a divorce in the offing, and forced to make a living out of Wydemeet, B&B loomed as the only feasible option.

As far as I'm aware, every luxury B&B offers a breakfast menu boasting home made specialities and the very best seasonal local produce.  In preference, I think, to what actually tastes best. 

So with my rose-tinted, naive, enthusiastic glasses on, I used to scour the area for the very best quality local produce, and attempt my own home-made efforts.

I would drive in circles of twenty miles late at night in search of domestically reared chickens' eggs. I knew exactly where all those little booths that they sell them from were (that are almost always empty). I stopped supplying my neighbour's eggs (where the chickens roam freely around the farm) because for some reason it was impossible to guarantee that a poached egg wouldn't turn into a spherical grey blob. Perhaps some of their eggs weren't found for a while? They're certainly not refrigerated - an ongoing debate of whether they should or shouldn't be, which I believe is of international interest and importance.

I gave my guests endless taste tests so that I could be sure of sourcing the most delicious sausages available, as I moved from exclusive local butchers, to a friend twelve miles away, who rears her own pigs, gets them butchered herself, and sells their sausages from a freezer in her garden.  Only the absolute very best for my beloved, revered, and highly discerning guests! Cost not an issue!

Ten years on, I have refined my menu. Since Tesco no longer sells its wonderful wheaten loaf, I do make my own bread. With a seeded ready-prepared mix in a bread-maker. It's really exceptionally good, particularly when toasted.

I don't buy expensive watery artisan pats of butter. Tesco's unsalted tastes just the same.

I do commission Mad Karen (who else would put up a sign up the road from her home advertising the fact that she's 'round the bend'?) for her unbeatable home-made preserve, uniquely labelled 'Wydemeet's Fabilicious Strawberry Jam'. I find those branded, award-winning, over-priced versions sold in their 100s at fetes and farmers markets are generally remarkably ordinary.

The bloke in Poundsgate is delighted whenever I pitch up and buy ten jars of his orange and lemon marmalades.

Honey is so expensive! I recently brought home two giant jars from the Greek Cypriot mountains - thank goodness they didn't break or leak in my suitcase! 

I like to offer the best bacon, which I think is dry cured unsmoked back. After frying, who, really, could possibly tell whether its provenance was next door, or Denmark?

With a clear score of 10/10 in my taste tests, I'm afraid  that it's an absolute no brainer and no contest, that Tesco's Finest Bramley Apple Pork sausages win every time, even over my friend's pet pigs. The local butchers' best sausages always seem to stay pink, however long you cook them for - probably because they've got no additives in.  But you can't serve pink sausages in a B&B.

And the ultimate prize goes to....... Tesco's 'Rich Yolk' eggs at £2.50 for six. These are always more orange, richer and creamier than anything else I have ever come across (I hope the poor chickens who lay them aren't stuffed too full of additives). Sometimes proper organic eggs from chickens with names, pecking about in your friends' gardens, are a bit runny, and hardly orange at all!

And once you've cooked tomatoes, the tiny ones are always the tastiest. Such as Tesco's mini plum tomatoes at £1 a pack.

But my sautee potatoes.. although I didn't grow them, I did pre-boil them myself!

I am totally honest about the provenance of my breakfast ingredients, if asked.

I offer massively expensive mini-breaks, where people get the whole house to themselves and I provide a candle-lit four course dinner in our exquisite dining room, after bubbles and canapes in front of the log fire in the sitting room. 

When I ran Riding Holidays (I don't do them anymore, the stress and demands are just too great at my age) I had 30 minutes in which to prepare their supper, so 'Cook' became indispensable. The amount of times Ive been asked for the recipe of  'my' Chicken Dijon, and I've had to rush to get the packet out of the bin, and read its ingredients off the back!

Change of Pace?

So I'm genuinely disappointed to report that, despite having departed London nearly 30 years ago, I still have the brain and make-up of a Londoner, and can't stop rushing about. My dirty little secret is that I've even got a jar or two of Homepride Cook-in-White-Wine-Sauce in my cupboard.  I really haven't moved on at all!

But my (usually female) guests do particularly appreciate the 'Wydemeet Pile', comprising my sort-of home made toasted bread; creme freche, smoked salmon (Lidl), avocado, wilted spinach, poached egg, hollandaise (Maille, or Tesco own-label which is runnier) and paprika, garnished with a sprig of Tesco's grow-in-the-pot flat leaf parsley when my own has been killed off by the frost. Yummy yummy yum yum yum!

Meanwhile their male partners typically opt for the best-researched, tastiest, Double Full English, that they've ever experienced, anywhere! (despite some of it coming from Denmark)