We've found another option in a trade mag, and the agent for the company that produces it is coming round to see us late that afternoon. He's waiting in his car when Maggie and I get back to Blockley, and follows us in with several samples under his arm.
He explains that his product was developed to answer the very difficulties we've heard about. A factory in northern Italy found a way of hardening limestone by compressing it at a temperature of 1,200ºC. Our man takes out a fifty pence piece and scrapes it backwards and forwards over the surface of a square of his wonder rock with a noise that shows he's not pussyfooting. With justifiable pride, he holds up the stone slab and insists we examine it, each of us in turn. He could have been using a five-pound note it's stayed so smooth.
'I had a customer in Shropshire,' he goes on, 'who owns a fruit farm and she asked me if it would show blackberry stains. I told her it wouldn't, and she asked me to post her a sample. A week later, she phoned back and ordered 150 square metres. I said, "What about the fruit stains?" She said, "Oh, I boiled that sample of stone you sent me in blackberry jam for two hours, and it just came off under the cold tap."'
I'm a sucker for a good story. He's just made a sale, because Maggie's impressed too.
My second task is to go and see Emi Grise.
Now that the Big Back Wall has been fully exposed, we've found that there are three small niches towards the top. They must have been either block holes for ceiling beams or else small windows now screened off with stone. We've had the idea of opening them up again. It's just the sort of feature that appeals to me. And of course Maggie can never get her hands on enough light. But before we approach the assorted planning and conservation bureaucracy of Cirencester, we figure it would be good to have local support on our side, to wit the éminence grise himself. And there are a couple of other things I need to sort out with Mr Grise too.
So I head up Fleece Alley into the middle of Stow, and pop into his emporium to find him in his den. He looks up from his hide-encased ledger, and I detect from the slight forward motion of his head that he has acknowledged my presence.
Item one on the agenda. What sort of topping are we going to put on the pinnacle of the building? He has a fixation about this. Every time I see him, he presses the merits of chamfered coping stones, taking me on tours of his domain to illustrate his favourites. Maggie and I have no particular hang-ups about smooth edged roof bricks. But the decision has now been taken out of our hands by the planners, who won't allow us to raise the roof height by a single thumb width, and copers would stick up proud by a good foot. I explain this to E. G., who says, 'I'll have to think about that.'
Why do I feel myself regress to childhood in front of this man? It's like being in my old headmaster's study.
So, on to the main item. Would it be permissible for the prefects to play table tennis in the school hall on Thursday nights? Or, as I put it, 'Maggie and I were wondering what you think about our opening up the niches in the top of the wall.' And as I go on to explain exactly what I'm talking about, I see his face change from impassivity to frown to the verge of explosion.
'No!' he blurts out. Gone are those whispery murmurings. This is a straight Don't be ridiculous, boy, get on with your homework tone of voice.
But I'm not put off so easily. '… would enhance the building's heritage…' I'm saying.
'No! No!' He's shaking his head to add a third negative.
'We realise this is a slight change from the previous plan but…'
'It's out of the question!'
We're talking at the same time now.
‘… the niches are
actually so high that it
would be impossible
to see out of them
from our side. And
in any event, there’s
nothing but an unused
piece of land on the
other side.’ ‘No! I said, "No!" It
would undermine the
historic nature of the
building. Frankly, it’s
an impertinence even
to suggest it. How
could you dream of
it? No! No!’
I keep going longer than him for one and a half words. But I know it's a hollow victory.
'OK, ok.' I hold up my hands in a gesture of concession. 'It's not worth falling out about.'
'Anything else?' he asks. I can tell I've been dismissed.
The following week, Maggie and I relieve our stress with a visit to rural Oxfordshire and Nigel's workshop. It's on the edge of a wood down a single track road that seems to go on for ever, partly because we can't find the place and keep having to backtrack. But eventually, we come to a collection of brick-built barn-like buildings. We know it's the right place because there's Nigel with a mug of something steaming in one hand and a ciggy in the other.
'Hi,' he smiles. 'Glad you found us.'
Our 10-metre-long green oak frame is laid out on trestles in the yard. It's massive and chunky.
Maggie looks worried. 'It's a bit formidable, isn't it?' she says. 'Don't you think it'll look out of proportion? After all we're not going to have a big house. Do we actually need such thick columns?'
'Don't worry,' says Nigel, 'The posts'll be fine like this. If they were any thinner, the whole thing would end up looking like a posh garage.' We murmur our understanding.
There's something liberating to our spirits about this escape into the wide-open countryside. We're like kids on a school outing. We skip around the oak frame as though it's an adventure playground, trying to lift a beam to test how heavy it is, clambering onto a wall to see what the assembled timber looks like from above, fiddling with the wooden pegs that hold each piece in place – no nails or screws, this is traditional craftsmanship. It's going to be the most significant part of the building. Aesthetically that is. It's going to mark the end of that six-year dispute. It's my character and Maggie's light. It'll be supporting 20 square metres of glass.
And then it's time for a lesson. Nigel stops shaving some curved oak braces and puts his plane on one side. He explains that they're modelled from tree trunks or thick branches specially chosen because their grain matches the angle we need in the wooden braces that will support the cross-beams. 'That's because if you cut across the grain,' he says, 'it'll eventually come apart. But if you have a brace the same shape as the branch – with the grain running along it – it'll be as strong as it was on the tree.'
'Sounds good to me,' I say, patting the brace that we're looking at.
And we learn the language of oak. We already know about 'green'. But there's loads we didn't know.
The cracks in the oak are called 'shakes', and we have to expect them. 'They're normal,' says Nigel. 'Nothing to worry about. That's what happens as the wood dries.'
The dark stains we've noticed and were worried about are called 'bluing'. It's caused by contact with metal, and we'll need to get those sand-blasted off.
And here's one to amaze your friends at parties: 'hearts of oak', as in, 'Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men, steady boys steady.' I'd always assumed it was a heroic notion about the pumping lifeblood of Nelson's fighting frigates. But no. 'Hearts of oak' is a technical term for the weather-side of the tree, which has been left to dry for at least a year to get rid of the tension in the wood caused as it's felled. This drying process stops it twisting when it's propping up your bedroom. Anyway, this is what we're getting in our house. Hearts of oak. I can't wait.
As we drive home, a romantic aura circles our heads. And we decide to call in at the site. There's no business to be done. It's just to dream. To imagine how beautiful our oak beams and braces will be, exuding the purity of nature and reminding us of generations of craftsmanship. Unlike me, Maggie's not usually given to staring at things and travelling back in time. But today after our visit to Nigel's oak yard, a sense of history is warming her soul. She surveys the barren walls that were once a stable and will soon be our home and says, 'J
ust think what this place has seen over hundreds of years. All the people that have passed through it.'
It's a noble thought. We are but the temporary stewards of our place on this earth.
'And all the horses that have been stabled here,' she goes on. 'In the first stall, there'd be one with its front legs where the guest-room bed will be and its hindquarters over there, on the other side of that wall, near where we're going to put the loo.'
I wish she hadn't said this. I mean I'm all for understanding the details of our national heritage, and I don't think I'm overly romantic in my view of history. I don't shrink from a graphic account of the symptoms of bubonic plague or shudder at the diaries of Crimean War doctors sawing off legs without anaesthetic. But your own twenty-first-century loo. Well that's different. It's personal. And private. So later, when the house is finished, I can never sit ruminating in the bathroom without seeing just above my head that image of the wrong end of a horse, raising its tail in preparation.
CHAPTER 22
THE GYPSY AND THE JAGMAN
There's a sudden, panicky neighing from the direction of Back Walls. It's followed by two raised voices. Then shouting: '… your damned horses… get out…' and 'we've as much bloody right…'
Nik and I have been heads down over Anthea's plans, spread out on a pile of rubble. We can just see, over the roadside wall, the curve of what looks like a large green cylinder, about 6-feet wide. But it's got a black stovepipe coming out of the top.
We head over to take a look, and as we come round the corner, our eyes are hit by the colours – burgundy reds with delicate traces of yellow flowers. The grill of a silver Jaguar is snarling at the shins of a piebald horse harnessed to a Romany caravan. The animal's still neighing, the brown patches on its flanks shivering. Its owner, a black-haired youth in an oily leather waistcoat, has it by the bridle, trying to calm it and edge it back.
The red face framed in the side window of the Jag turns to Nik, and shouts, 'Is that your damned lorry?'
Nik holds up his hand in apology, gets into his dusty pickup truck and backs it away down the road so there'll be room for the gypsy and the Jag-owning citizen of Stow to pass in peace.
The car and the horse snort at each other, as they disentangle themselves. Then one roars off up the hill, and the other's led clopping in the opposite direction. A small boy, who's been watching throughout from the front of the caravan, mouth wide open, bends his head round the side of the green curved arch and stares at me till we're out of each other's sight.
It's the start of Stow's twice yearly Gypsy Horse Fair.
Now if you happen to be studying sociology and the title of your doctoral thesis is 'Cultural conflict in twenty-first century rural Britain,' then check in to a B & B on Sheep Street any mid May or mid October.
What you'll see is gangs/happy groups of layabouts/young people, screaming/calling to each other, as they scare the life out of law-abiding Stow people with their fighting/as they enjoy a drink like everyone else. The boys are menacing/ lively. The girls look like tarts with tiny skirts and bikini tops that hardly cover anything and wear too much make-up/look like any young women out with friends in any British city on a Saturday night.
When you conduct interviews, you will be told that the gypsies intimidate schoolchildren, drive away business from the shops, and defecate in front gardens. You will also be told that the Jag-owning side don't understand that the Roma gathering in Stow-on-the-Wold continues an ancient tradition dating back a thousand years, and that the disruption is exaggerated. It's not as if there's an outbreak of mass looting and drive-by shootings every May and October. That at any rate is what the two sides say.
Nik takes a practical approach.
'It's too much hassle,' he says. 'So we'll stop work for a couple of days till things get back to normal.'
So two days later on Fair Day, my journalistic spirit comes to the fore and I decide to check it out for myself. First, I head off into the Square to see what's happening there, and bump into Arch. He's one of our new neighbours in Back Walls. Has he seen any trouble?
'No, it's pretty quiet at the moment,' he says. 'The Bell's closed though.' The Bell Inn is the pub closest to the field where the fair's held and is usually the only one that stays open in Stow, though with the chunkier half of Stow's Rugby Club First XV as bouncers. 'There was a bit of a riot there last night,' Arch continues. 'Some gypsy lads were effing and blinding and getting rowdy, so the landlord asked them to calm down, and they started smashing the place up.'
'Crumbs!' I say, as I feel myself edged towards the Jag-owning side the battle line. 'Most of the shops are shut, I see. Maggie always closes on Fair Day.'
'Yes, well there was that incident a couple of years ago when a bunch of gypsy girls went into one of the dress shops in Talbot Court and threw ketchup all over the frocks then ran out.'
'Hmm, I'd forgotten about that.'
'I think that's a bit of an exception though. It's the lads really that are the problem. Apparently it's all a mating ritual. I saw it on Channel 4. All these gypsy families get together in Stow during Fair Week, and that's the time when the teenage kids pair up. So the girls all dress up to show off how attractive they are, and the boys have to show how tough they are.'
'Wow, that's interesting.'
'Yup, so long as you don't get caught in the middle, eh?' And off Arch goes down Digbeth Street.
At that moment, I look up the otherwise empty road to see a very large family approaching. By 'large', I mean both in numbers and size. When they're about fifteen yards away, the heavy-weight boxing champion who's leading them shouts a challenge to me: 'HOW YER DOIN'?' It's so loud, it seems to echo off the shop windows.
'I'm fine,' I squeak.
'HANGIN' EH? In eh? eh?' it echoes again.
'Yes,' I squeak again, assuming that he's not asking my opinion on capital punishment, but probably means 'hanging about' as in loitering, or even 'hanging on in there' as in managing to survive.
His wife is two steps behind him. I'm careful not to stare at her, but get a fleeting impression of broad shoulders, a broken nose and lots of tattoos. The kids are like the chorus from Oliver! but without the music. They're darting about, punching each other and kicking shop doors.
All's quiet in the Square. There appears to be what the BBC always call 'a strong police presence', though when I get closer to the officers, I decide against the word 'strong'. There are half a dozen WPCs, none of whom seems to top 5 feet and it sounds to me as I approach that they're discussing overtime rates. The half-dozen male PCs are all thin-looking, even in their stab-proof jackets, and their bobby helmets seem a size too big. One of them is advising a Japanese couple, 'There's Huffkins Tea Rooms, that's open,' and he's pointing.
I know where my money would be in a dust-up between one of these law officers and that tattooed gypsy woman.
So I head off down to the fair itself. This is held in a huge field on the edge of Stow. As I get closer, I find myself among more and more people. Ordinary people, not prizefighters or ketchup throwers, but people who look like they're from my side of the battle line. And there are lots more police, and they're considerably beefier too. This is clearly where the action's expected. There's a 'Mobile Police Station', a 'Mobile Camera Surveillance Unit' and a 'Mobile Medical Treatment Centre', and by the entrance to the field, there are two of those police vans that have metal grills over the windscreen, the sort of vehicles that baton-wielding riot cops burst from in documentaries about police brutality.
I enter the field, aware that I'm crossing the line. There are no forces of law and order here.
I'm on my own.
Well, I'm not actually. There are, without exaggeration, thousands of people. Ahead of me between market stalls is an alleyway that drops down a slope in the field, so I can see for 200 yards, and the crowd is so packed it looks like no one's moving. I opt for another stream of humanity to the right, where I can at least make slow progress between CHIPS AND GRAVY on the
one hand and LAMB OGGIE AND PIZZA on the other. Ten minutes and about 30 yards later, we're into the non-edible section. There's a stall selling the biggest garden gnomes I've ever seen. They're about a metre high, and as well as the usual Bashful and Grumpy fishing or cobbling shoes, there's a Betty Boop in iridescent red and black looking sheepish next to a Virgin Mary in blue and gold. I work my way over to the opposite side to look at a large tent which is laid out like a Louis XV dining room. Two Asian-looking guys are selling the kind of elaborate lacquered chairs, tables and sideboards you see in French provincial furniture shops.
A Horse in the Bathroom Page 18