Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  The train slowed as it pulled into the station, and other commuters strode forward. I took the call, wedging my phone between my shoulder and my ear whilst pulling my suitcase towards the jostling queue of people. Children cried, the train’s air brakes hissed, the voice on the tannoy reminded people that the train was about to leave and, very faintly, I could hear the patter of Rodney the auctioneer. A voice stated that the next lot to be sold was lot 373, a Victorian half-tester. Another voice asked whether I needed a hand onto the train with the unwieldy suitcase. It was brain overload. I can multitask with the best of them but at this point I was really struggling, as was the poor man on the other end of the phone line. I don’t know quite how much he could hear above all the racket or whether he could make sense of the two different conversations I was having. Finally, I got through the door and set off down the central aisle trying to find my seat. Nobody coming in the other direction stood a chance with me like a ship in full sail as I marched along dragging my suitcase, and holding my mobile – now on speakerphone – in front of my mouth like a Ryvita I was just about to take a bite out of.

  ‘I’m on the train!’ I shouted as we began to pull out of the station. I steadied myself by turning and leaning against the side of an aisle seat. I’ll just sit here for a minute, I thought, get these beds bought and then find my place.

  ‘Three . . .’ said the voice on the phone.

  ‘Yer what?’ I said, frowning. ‘We’re goin’ through a tunnel.’ I could hear the phone line crackling.

  ‘You’re breakin’ up,’ I shouted.

  ‘You’re in the wrong carriage,’ said a lady sitting opposite me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘What?’ the stuttered voice replied on the phone.

  ‘This is the quiet carriage,’ said the lady, who I noted had very pursed lips and looked a little annoyed – and rightly so.

  ‘Oh OK, I’m sorry, I’ll move,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said the voice on the phone. ‘Are you in at three?’

  ‘Just buy ’em,’ I snapped. ‘Just buy ’em both an’ then ring me back.’

  I switched the phone off and shuffled back down the aisle hoping to hell that I hadn’t just bought two very expensive beds. In the end, I paid £350 for one and £400 for the other, so that was a good result but more by luck than by management. Clive wasn’t as pleased as I was with my bargain buy.

  ‘’Ow much did ta ’ave t’ part wi’ then?’ he asked when I rang him later to tell him that I had arrived safely in London.

  ‘Nay, not as much as I thought,’ I said. Trying to lift his mood, I added, ‘an’ Reuben will love puttin’ ’em back together, there’s no instruction manual tha’ knows.’

  I was itching to go and collect them and arranged with the salesroom that I would come and pick them up in a couple of days. I figured that the cattle trailer would be big enough to get all of the components in, and if I took some baler twine, the farmer’s friend, I could easily secure them so that they didn’t slide around during transit.

  Clive helpfully put the cattle trailer on the back of the pickup and parked up outside the front of the house.

  ‘There yer go mi darlin’, trailer’s on,’ he said cheerily. After all, the sun was shining, the grass was growing and the yows and lambs were content.

  ‘I’ll see yer later. I’ll help thi unload ’em,’ he said, waving as he strode off up the yard. I loaded Annas and Clemmie into the pickup and off we went, windows wound down, singing away and chattering about our plans for the summer. In little time at all, I pulled up at the salesroom building and followed the signs for deliveries and pick-ups, joining a queue of courier vans and estate cars. We sat waiting for ages. I turned the engine off and we played I-spy.

  ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with . . . “P”.’

  Annas would come up with random suggestions usually not even beginning with ‘P’ but she was still just three years old.

  ‘Painting, Annas,’ I said, pointing to the porters manhandling a bubble-wrapped oblong object towards a waiting transit van, ‘probably Picasso.’

  I patiently waited, watching crates being wheeled onto the loading docks and official papers being signed. Finally, after a few stops and starts as we edged ever closer to the front of the queue, it was my turn. I swung the pickup and trailer around, opening the driver’s side door to get a better view of what I was doing and backed the trailer up to the loading bay.

  I got out and went to drop down the trailer’s back door. The porters were already bringing the beds in pieces towards the docks.

  ‘In t’trailer, yeah?’ said one of the lads.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I chirped as I opened the fold-out gates inside, but then I was confronted with a picture of horror, for the inside of the trailer was awash with sheep poo. Not just a few dried-out currants neither; the inside of the trailer was coated with lashings of the stuff, still wet.

  ‘In there?’ said the porter with an incredulous look on his face.

  I groaned. Clive had obviously had sheep in the trailer and I hadn’t thought to check whether it had been washed out before I set off. I had assumed that it was clean.

  The only real remedy was a hose pipe, shovel and brush but not having access to any of these things left me with no option other than to put the top level of decks down inside. These were what we used if we needed to carry sheep both upstairs and downstairs. Fortunately, the upper deck was in a better state than the lower, though it still meant me walking through all the muck to lift all the catches and drop the fold-down chequer-plate floor. The porters, bemused by the state of the trailer, found sheets of cardboard to protect the furniture a little and eventually loaded it all onto the top deck.

  I chastised Clive when I got back home but, quite rightly, he pointed out that it was my job as the haulier to see that the trailer was fit for purpose, helpfully adding on an old favourite quip:

  ‘S**t ’appens, Mand.’

  I vowed never to make that mistake again.

  Reuben desperately wanted to reassemble the beds but, knowing that they required a little alteration in order that they stood level and square in distinctly unlevel, off-kilter bedrooms, I asked our friend Alec to come and help. I knew that Alec, with his eye for precision and detail, a quality that had annoyed Clive on innumerable occasions, would not tolerate any imperfection in the reconstruction and so would keep Reuben on track. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than the whole bed and canopy above collapsing on an unfortunate couple in the throes of passion.

  This was the last time that I bought anything at the salesrooms, having come to the conclusion that I was making things difficult for myself. The beds, although uniquely wonderful, took such a great deal of time and effort to make usable. My friend Rachel is an excellent seamstress and volunteered to make me new drapes. Ken, the joiner, fixed new headboards in place and rather than buy new, very expensive made-to-measure mattresses for the non-standard-sized frames, I made use of some very heavy and long feather-down-filled bolsters. The girls adored the beds, the velvet throws, silk tie-backs and damask cushions that were very reminiscent of the Princess and the Pea fairy tale, and they all wanted these beds to be theirs. It was this that made the whole undertaking worthwhile, beds that are heirlooms to be cherished and hopefully stay on in the house for generations, long after we have departed this earth.

  It was now Ian, from the antique shop, that I went to with a wishlist of items that I needed for the house. A large farmhouse-style table to seat at least twelve people, nothing too highly polished, just sturdy and serviceable and certainly not too expensive.

  ‘They’re not easy to find, farmhouse tables,’ Ian told me, ‘and big ones, well they’re a rarity indeed.’

  I also needed a coffee table, a couple of chests of drawers and some kind of side table for the kitchen. Again, nothing too spectacular, I was open to all ideas. I heard nothing from him for weeks, then one sunny afternoon I was driving up the one-way cobbled street
in Hawes after selling sheep at the auction when, as usual, I slowed to study the window display in his shop. Ian was standing in the doorway watching the world go by and, seeing me crawling past, gestured that I should drive back around the one-way block again. By the time I was in front of his shop, he’d swung open the back doors of his transit van on the side street and was pointing enthusiastically at a table inside. I did an emergency stop and parked up with my hazard lights flashing.

  I walked over to the van for a closer look.

  ‘Do yer want mi to get it out for yer to ’ave a proper look at?’

  I told him that there was no need and that if the price was acceptable then he might just as well leave it in the van and bring it to The Firs.

  ‘Well, I had to go to Keighley for it,’ he said, ‘and it is a very nice table in original condition.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Seven hundred pounds and I’ll throw in four chairs an’ all.’

  We shook hands on it and agreed that Ian would deliver the table the next day. New reproduction kitchen tables that I had seen online were more money than that, and I was getting the genuine article. I was very pleased indeed.

  I told Clive that his presence at The Firs the following afternoon would be much appreciated as there was a kitchen table being delivered and it was going to be heavy and undoubtedly awkward to get through the hallway and into the kitchen.

  ‘Yer know, I dreamt last night that we’re nivver gonna get this table through t’door,’ I said, waiting until we were on our way down the road to The Firs before I decided to share this information.

  There have been occasions when, in an aspirational mood, I have told the children that their dreams can come true, and unfortunately on this particular occasion I was right on the money. The table was just too big to navigate the turn into the house from the front door. Clive and Ian even tried carrying it right round the back of the house and through the field and attempted to gain access via the sunroom, but that didn’t work, either. It was a very hot day, tempers were getting frayed and there were even some mutterings from them both about a refund and taking it back to the shop.

  ‘Well, I reckon we could get it in if we sawed t’legs off,’ said Clive, mopping his brow whilst Ian leant against the wall getting his breath back and looking down on the table, now lying sideways, half in and half out of the sunroom.

  ‘I’ve never sawed the legs off an antique table,’ said Ian, slightly indignantly. ‘In fact, I’ve never sawn up any kind of furniture in order to get it into a house.’

  ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything,’ said Clive. ‘It’s the only way this thing is gonna get into this ’ouse.’

  ‘No, I’ll take it back,’ said Ian, clearly mortified at the idea of desecrating something old.

  ‘Naw, we need to be brutal, let’s just get on wi’ it,’ said Clive and, with that, he went out to the garage, returning moments later with a hacksaw. I cannot say that I was entirely happy about the extreme measures being undertaken, and I swear I saw Ian wince as Clive made the first cut. As Clive sawed, cleverly, at a forty-five-degree angle to make the repair job afterwards easier and stronger, he hit a sizeable iron nail.

  ‘Why, that’s a capper!’ he said as he examined the partially sawn table leg. ‘Ach, it’s been sawn down afore.’

  He was right, all four legs had previously been amputated, probably for exactly the same reason, then duly reattached with an almost invisible mend. I left it in the capable hands of Ken the joiner to do the repair job, and the table now stands in the middle of the kitchen, the scrubbed top pitted and gouged, the boards worn and slightly dipped at the edges. It is a piece of furniture that will probably never move now, or at least not without undergoing further surgery.

  The other items on my wishlist were sourced and delivered without mishap, an elm dough table for the kitchen which, with its coffin-like construction, provided a perfect place for tea towels, tablecloths and linen. The coffee table was supremely heavy but not difficult to move owing to it being on iron wheels. Of course, it didn’t start out life as a coffee table, far from it, it was one of two mining bogies that Ian had found . . . well, in a disused mine, I guess. One is a deep-sided tub made entirely of metal that sits outside the house full of logs for the fire. The other is low, wide and made of oak, with riveted protective metal edges, and is the perfect low table, though only after Reuben made chocks to prevent it from rolling away across the flagged floor. The children were fascinated with the carts and would play happily with them, pushing one another around in them and taking each other for rides, but what pity I had for the children and ponies that had been forced to spend their lives in the coal mines at Tan Hill and the lead mines of Lonnin End just a stone’s throw away. Hauling these heavily laden carts along the underground passageways and then to the surface, for little recompense, must have been dangerous, back-breaking and soul-destroying work.

  People round and about soon got to know that I was on the lookout for furniture and smaller pieces to fill a house. I was astounded by people’s generosity but also surprised at how wasteful society could be as a whole. Pictures, curtains, bedspreads and cushions all surplus to requirements due to redecoration and a change of colour scheme came my way. A friend brought box after box filled with blue-and-white Spode tableware: meat dishes and platters, teacups and saucers and large lidded serving dishes. A rustic earthenware pancheron was retrieved by Peggy, one of our neighbours, from an old dairy at Angram. A large dough bowl, its name is derived from the process of kneading the dough in a circular motion, or panching. The same description is often used to describe an animal going round and round in circles before giving birth. Apparently even I have been known to panch! This particular pancheron had been thrown by hand on a pottery wheel then glazed and fired, the ridges made by the potter’s fingers preserved forever. Its imperfections are what make it so unique and beautiful to look at. It had stood unused on a stone shelf for too long; though still fit for purpose there are now not so many who would need a dough bowl of such large proportions.

  Unfortunately, I was also given items that I truly did not want nor care for. Sometimes it was a case of exaggeration on the part of the bestower of the gift.

  ‘It’s a grand owd chair, mebbe could do with a bit of a clean-up but it’s a bit o’ age.’

  The reality was a 1970s monstrosity which, rather than needing a clean-up, needed to go in a skip. I sound like such an ungrateful beneficiary, but you’d understand if you saw the things. In the end I just found it easier to accept the gifts rather than refuse and hurt someone’s feelings.

  On one such occasion I was given a larder cupboard, nothing of any great age but evidently it had once been quite a nice piece of kitchen furniture with full-length doors, a bottle rack at the bottom and shelves at the top. It had stood in an outhouse for a few years after the adjoining house was cleared out after the owner’s death. It was still being used as a larder cupboard, only now it was storing dried dog food, the smell of which had permeated the wood. Reuben worked his magic on it; he sanded it down, stained and waxed it and when it was finished it looked very much in keeping with the farmhouse kitchen. It had looked irredeemable when I first set eyes upon it but I was so pleased with the end result that I decided that Reuben and I should show Bryan, the donor of the cupboard, the transformation.

  Bryan was impressed. It was nearly unrecognizable, only the faint smell of dog food giving the game away.

  ‘I don’t suppose you want a dresser?’ he said. ‘Nice thing, made of oak, proper craftsman-made but we’ve no need for it now, it’s too big, we just haven’t got room for it.’

  I can honestly say that I really didn’t want a dresser, but it seemed impolite to turn down the offer and it didn’t help that Reuben, ever the magpie and collector that he is, was nodding his head vigorously and already making plans for this next project.

  ‘Strike whilst the iron’s hot. Follow me back home now,’ said Bryan, ‘and I’ll help yo
u load it.’

  I couldn’t think of any viable reason as to why I couldn’t, so off we all went. I could see why Bryan didn’t have room for the dresser, it was enormous, solid and extremely heavy. Reuben set to work with a screwdriver and removed the plate rack from the back which made it slightly less cumbersome, but still it took some moving. We edged towards the pickup, walking it ever so slowly, using tiny steps, and all the while I was thinking how much I hated the flaming thing. Once we got it to the pickup, it was a question of lying it down and anchoring it, and the now-separate plate rack, in place.

  ‘Don’t want it to move,’ said Bryan as he tightened some elastic bungee cords around the tailgate. I did have a very steep hill to negotiate on my way back home.

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be good,’ I said. ‘Perish the thought.’

  Reuben knew me only too well and could see through my mock gratitude.

  ‘Yer don’t like it, do yer?’ he said as we drove back, taking the twists and bends that Swaledale’s roads had to offer a bit quicker than usual, secretly hoping for there to be some ‘accidental’, irreparable damage in transit.

  ‘No, Reuben, I’m afraid I don’t,’ I said flatly as I flew into another chicane. In the back I heard a dull thump as the dresser slewed against the pickup side.

  ‘Are we gonna unload it tonight?’ asked Reuben. I told him that I wasn’t, and I really wasn’t that bothered if it came out of the pickup in pieces.

  Clive came out to see what I’d salvaged this time.

  ‘Oh, now that is lovely,’ he said, running his hand over the wood. ‘Proper quality, nice thing.’

  Reuben said nothing and just looked at me despairingly.

  Clive then insisted that we took it straight down to The Firs. When, finally, after an almighty effort, we had moved it to its final resting place in the sitting room, Clive stood back to admire the monstrosity.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Looks well, don’t it.’