Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes

by Rosie Boycott

  'Why don't we just stick them in with the chickens, in tents, or in the huts?' I ask. He beams. He thinks I'm serious. I imagine David trying to rent out what is left of the pigs' caravan in the wood and we both start laughing. But it isn't such a bad idea: David would be a great teacher to anyone who wanted to learn the ropes, but I know that it is just further confirmation to him that people in the cities lead grim and deprived lives. Ever since we began the project I've been trying to persuade him to come and visit us in London, to see for himself just how much money topiaried box balls, or privets shaped like clouds, or bay trees sculpted into descending spheres sell for in the posher London garden centres. I know he doesn't believe that they can fetch several hundred pounds apiece. Like paying to live in a caravan and working ten hours a day, breaking your back weeding carrots, it's just another sign of the insanity of city folk.

  Just before the end of May, I spend the evening with Zoe and Colin Rolfe at their house in Chard. Hygrade is now in its last days. Of the workforce of 305, 282 are still without jobs and the factory gates will shut for the last time in less than five weeks. Colin and the union representatives have fought hard: Tulip is also closing another one of its meat packing plants in nearby Chippenham, making a total of 850 workers qualifying for redundancy. Another £850,000 has been wrested from the management, to be divided up according to length of service. For Colin, with only a little over two years' service to his record, it means another £400, but for some of the workforce it takes their final settlement to five, six, seven, even eight thousand pounds.

  The few that have found jobs have found them in the food sector, but the wages are low and most jobs involve travelling. Colin's mate Lance, who held the rank of supervisor at Hygrade, earning around £18,000 a year with overtime, is taking a menial job at Ilchester Cheese which pays only £5.50 an hour and involves an hour's commute a day if he wants to carry on living in Chard.

  Colin plans to go on working with Tony Dowling to try to change the law about redundancies: the minimum £290 per worker per year in work was originally intended to apply only when a company had gone bankrupt and the workforce faced being laid off with no money at all. 'That's what it was instituted for, but what's happening is that successful companies are using it as a guideline for how little they can pay. If the firm hasn't gone broke, we want to see redundancies being fixed according to the weekly pay each person has been receiving.' We are sitting in their neat, orderly kitchen. Outside, Jack is playing in the small garden. I'm annoyed with myself for forgetting to bring a bottle of wine or a gift of some sort. We're drinking tea, but it's now seven o'clock and I suspect that they'd like a drink.

  'I've had an offer of working as a store man in a packing company,' Colin says, 'but none of us has any qualifications. They've set up a Skills Analysis Training to help people find jobs, but they're only interested in getting you a job, any old job, not in helping you find a job that might be different, or better, or require a bit of new training. It's all about keeping the unemployment figures down. I know that I've got this job for the simple reason that I ha ve a licence to operate a forklift truck. And that's it. It's not because I've got Alevels in English and maths, or because I once stood as the Labour candidate for this region.'

  Colin is starting work on 5 June, and he doesn't plan to stay for long. He's hoping to work in one of the council-run homes for troubled young adolescents in Chard, a job he could do for three days a week, spending the rest of his time working with the union to try to ensure that others in his position don't get screwed by the vagaries of the redundancy laws.

  'All this has made me pretty sure of one thing: I don't want to go on working till I drop, making profits for some bloke in Denmark, or some geezer sitting in Tesco's head office.'

  'Colin would be great with young kids in trouble.' Zoe beams at him with pride. They're in this together, as a couple, and their affection is solid and durable. 'Because Colin is getting a job straight away, we won't have to live off the redundancy,' she continues. 'But lots of the guys, they haven't done anything about finding work. They just seem to think, hey, great, I'm going to be getting five or six thousand pounds, so much more money than I've ever had in my life, and I can live off that for months. What's the worry, what's the problem? There'll be another job.'

  Lots of them, Colin says, have a staggering level of debt: £2,000 on one credit card, £1,500 on another, £1,800 to the bank, a mortgage, loans from stores to cover the cost of TVs and fridges and cars. One of their friends owes over £18,000 and Colin is worried that he's not planning on using his redundancy money to start clearing his debt.

  'It just hasn't hit them yet what is going to happen,' he says. Zoe gets up to put the kettle on for another brew. There's a small telly in the corner and Jack's toys and books are spread out at one end of the table. 'It will, and soon. The first lot of us are leaving at the end of next week and I think that will really bring it home.'

  I ask if people are frightened yet. He shakes his head. Not yet, but they will be.

  Colin is also worried about the growth of racism in the town. Chard, he reckons, has coped well with the influx of Portuguese workers, who now make up almost half of the Oscar Mayer workforce of eight hundred. He grins. 'Everyone thought there'd be a barney when the European Cup was on in 2002 and our guys were playing the Portuguese in Portugal. But it went OK. But when the factory shuts and there's some two hundred guys on the dole and there's just no work around here, then they're going to be fair game . . . it wouldn't take much to stir it up.'

  Chard is home for Colin: after he left school he went to London, where by twenty-two he was the manager of the Athena poster shop in Piccadilly's Trocadero Centre. He'd commute in from Stanmore every morning, hating the fact that no one talked to each other on the Tube and that, even after a couple of years, he knew so few people in the anonymity of the city. He's had several jobs in Chard, including running his own company, which was where he met Zoe, his second wife, but his world revolves around a town, not around a job, and that's how he wants it to stay.

  Zoe gives me a lift back to Ilminster. On the way she tells me that she ended up in the West Country because her father and his sister were evacuated as children to Somerset: they were posted to Ashwell Farm House, one of the properties on the Dillington estate. If I stand in the field where we're now growing carrots and leeks and fighting the pheasants over rights to our newly sprouting cabbages, I can look to the west, and there is Ashwell Farm, a big, square stone building. Zoe wasn't sure exactly where I lived, so she hadn't mentioned it before. Now we drive round there together, to have a look at the house, standing like a black shadow in the dark of the night. We're both rather taken aback by the coincidence. 'My aunt, Brenda, she lives in Ilton and I know she'd like to tell you about it. If I remember rightly, her mum, my gran, got a job up at the big house as a cook. And I think my granddad worked in the gardens.'

  We lose the war of the one-way system. After it is over, it becomes clear that it wasn't a contest at all, that minds were made up long before the meeting takes place at Dillington Park on that Tuesday afternoon. The Battle Bus set off from Ilminster town square shortly after one 0'clock with seventy-eight people aboard. It rained heavily over the weekend, but by Tuesday the weather is turning again, and the sun feels hot when it breaks through the scudding clouds. Twenty years ago the council converted the old stable block into classrooms and one long hall, which can seat almost two hundred people. Wayne stages concerts there, and I've once given a talk about newspapers and on another occasion interviewed Fay Weldon in front of an enthusiastic local crowd. That day, the room is packed when Charlie and I walk in. Bryan has saved me a seat next to him in the second row. Charlie stands at the back. I look around; it seems that everyone I know in the town is there. There is Henry Best sitting next to Mr Bonner. Mr B is wearing smart mustard­coloured trousers, a yellowy tweed jacket, a blue shirt and a red tie. In front of them sit Dave Bailey and Jennifer. Aaron Driver is next to Elizabeth Ferris. Ev
eryone nods and smiles, most are holding bits of paper on which they've written what they want to contribute to the meeting. In the front, on a small raised stage, sit the Somerset councillors in whose hands the decision rests. Two women and one man and, on one side, members of the transport group and, on the other, three men, including the clerk of the meeting, who are supposedly responsible for ensuring that all legalities are followed. Hazel Prior-Sankey, the senior councillor, occupies the middle chair.

  She opens the proceedings: 'This meeting might get rowdy, please don't boo or cheer or clap and don't intimidate anyone, we want to be able to hear.' She says it with a smile but she's addressing the room in much the same way as a head teacher might scold a group of unruly ten-year-olds. Hazel is about my age and I think she looks friendly and open-minded. 'We cannot alter the planning - all we can do at this meeting is deal with the TRO' - short for traffic regulation order - 'We only have a small remit. We're elected to represent the public interest, but what is in the general public's interest may not be in the interest of a small group.' The small group means all of us, sitting upright on smart metal chairs covered in blue velvet. Bryan stirs beside me and mutters, 'Oh God . . . that means she's upholding the decision.' His pessimism seems premature, but I can see other faces droop. The councillor to Hazel's right, a blonde woman in her thirties called Cathy Bakewell, speaks up: 'Why has it all taken so long? When this was first agreed there weren't many protests, just twenty-seven people against the traffic scheme and of that fifteen were against Tesco.' She doesn't invite any answers and her words hang in the air like ominous clouds. 'I'm going to allow an hour for people to speak,' Hazel announces. 'Two minutes each, that's all.' She's increased the time allowed, but Ihave no idea if this is a good sign or not.

  Henry Best goes first. He's written out his short speech in his spidery handwriting and he towers over the seated rows like a benevolent giraffe. 'I represent the Somerset branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and our job is to protect the market towns of England. You may not have to consider the controversial decision of a superstore. The laying of that cuckoo's egg has already been settled. But you must deal with the consequences - more traffic, longer journeys, higher pollution, disruption of community services, turning an old, workable street system into one huge roundabout. The majority of people do not want this TRO. They said so in a petition: we have signatures representing 3,540 souls and Ilminster's 200I population was under 4,000. Please heed the cry of those whom you have been empowered to represent. More would have been here but for having to earn their livings or care for their children.'

  As Henry speaks, Dave Bailey waves a copy of the petition in the air. He is still waving it when Henry sits down. There is a burst of noisy applause. People stamp their feet on the floor. Hazel and the other councillors look annoyed and tap their pencils, points down, on the table in front of them. 'Can I ask you to refrain from applause as this will intimidate anyone with a different point of view,' she says in a school-mistressy tone. The stamping increases, accompanied by loud boos.

  Looking upwards across the old stable courtyard, I can see a thin sliver of blue sky where puffy white clouds are moving eastwards, like giant tennis balls pumping out of a machine. Down in the courtyard, the flagstones surround a small pond, dense with irises and water lilies: it was once the main water trough for the horses, the place where Lord North's sweating animals must have come after bringing their famous master back home from Westminster when he was prime minister. Local legend has it that he once delayed so long at Dillington that he was too late to warn George III that he was about to lose the American colonies.

  The meeting wears on. One by one the town's traders stand up to make their pitches. The room grows hot and someone opens up the big doors out into the courtyard. 'This will result in degeneration, not regeneration,' says Mike Fry-Foley. 'You do not need the wisdom of Solomon to realise that this will split the town in two,' says Clinton Bonner, whose shop, being the furthest from the car park and the supermarket, is likely to be hardest hit. There is a catch-22 element to the proceedings. The issue under debate is not the supermarket, but the supermarket is the cause of the proposed one-way system. When planning was granted for the store, no one knew that it would be Tesco, or that by some sleight of hand the car park would be pushed out of the town and into the fields to accommodate the needs of the supermarket. The town seems to be fighting with one hand tied behind its back. Standing at the back of the room, looking over the shoulders of the two councillors who were for the one-way system, Mike Henley and Richard Jacobs, Charlie watches them writing notes to each other on a pad of paper. After I finish speaking, Mike Henley scribbles 'yet another supermarket ranter'.

  We hear about the elderly, we hear from a driving instructor, we hear from someone in the first response unit for the emergency services. Next to me Bryan slumps lower in his chair. I am exhausted: I came that morning from the Hay-on­Wye book festival where the previous night I'd listened to Al Gore's impassioned speech about the environment. Dealing with climate change, he said, promised us a chance to create a better world where communities pulled together, united by common purpose. My ankle is hurting, my cheeks feel hot and, as we wait for Hazel to pronounce her verdict, I feel like crying.

  'I want you to know that our decision has not been cooked up in advance,' she says, casting her vote in favour of the one­way system but noting that things could stay as they are until building work starts. Cathy Bakewell concurs, but says the one-way system should be implemented immediately, and the third councillor, who has sat silently throughout the proceedings, votes with Hazel. And that's it. We file out into the late afternoon sun, past the entrance to the main house and towards the park. I can hear the pigs grunting in the wood and the geese are making a racket from the other side of the trees. The Battle Bus is waiting in the car park, its engine already running, ready to take everyone back to town.

  Charlie and I wave goodbye as the bus sets off down the single-lane track, scattering a large herd of sheep that are sleeping on the hot tarmac. We turn off the lane and down the path leading to the farm, where David is preparing the pigs' second meal of the day. The pigs start squealing, kicking at their metal feeders and pushing past each other in their anxiety to get to their food. Charlie gives my shoulders a rub as we watch the pigs guzzle up their dinner. 'Maybe it won't be as bad as everyone thinks,' he says, 'We've already got the Co-op and that hasn't caused any problems. Maybe it will stop some people going all the way to Taunton to go to Sainsbury's. We've got good shops in Ilminster. They'll be OK.' I'm grateful for his optimism, but at this moment it seems impossible to share.

  At the Hay festival I interviewed James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory and one of the world's leading climatologists. Professor Lovelock will be eighty-seven on his next birthday but he looks much younger. He's small, trim and energetic, asking where he could go walking around Hay, saying six or seven miles along the river was just the ticket. He smiles a lot and it's impossible not to be charmed by his warmth. Even when we were on stage and he was delivering his apocalyptic message, the smile is still there, completely out of keeping with his words. If Professor Lovelock is right - and all the evidence suggests that he is - there is now no chance of reversing the climatic disaster that is engulfing the world. By the end of the century, the central latitudes will be uninhabitable, reduced to deserts where the wind howls and the dust blows. Nothing will be able to live there and the human population will be forced to flee north, where the climate will still sustain life. The British Isles and everything north will be habitable, so will New Zealand and the southern regions of South America. Lovelock was unfailingly bleak, delivering a message that no politician hoping to get elected or re-elected would dare to utter. He was telling us that all we can do is hunker down, start going back to the land, live more simply and set up small farms to provide food on a local basis.

  I'd recently seen pictures of the deepest coal mine in the world, an open-cast mine in China wh
ere the coal had lain buried for fifty million years. Was this part of what Lovelock meant by Gaia's Revenge: that we were burrowing deep into the earth to extract waste that the earth had stored away so well, confident that it would never be brought to the light again? He nodded. I then asked him if, as we came to the end of the world's fossil fuel supplies, climate stability would be restored, that Gaia would somehow, in the nick of time, regain stability. He smiled and shook his head. 'It's too late for that.'

  I told him about the farm and my plan, if we succeed in becoming economically stable, of trying to establish other small farms to feed other institutions, such as hospitals, large schools and prisons. As I push the gate open to allow David access to the pig feeder, holding it back against a small army of porcine strength and greed, I think about what he said. One day, in the not too distant, we're all going to be living off small farms like ours. I'd just read a news report from Japan, where the government is so worried about the potential collapse of the meat market that it is warning people that, within ten years, they may have to return to a largely vegetarian diet. It takes two kilos of grain to produce one kilo of chicken, but a huge seven kilos of grain to produce one kilo of beef and the world has only a limited supply of land on which to grow feed to fatten animals, rather than growing food which humans consume directly. About-to-retire Japanese baby boomers are being encouraged to start small farms in their retirement as they may be feeding their country in years to come.

  I go back to the store house to fetch a plastic tray to collect the eggs, 129 of them requiring five trays and as many trips. Some of the chickens have become broody and, every morning, David sprays those that are sitting on their eggs with purple paint and then, if they're still there in the evening, turfs them off and out of the hen house. The eggs are warm, and so many different colours, some as dark as an autumn chestnut, through shades of toffee, cream and white. As I collect the eggs, I worry: will Daisy really grow old in a world where no one can live in Africa, or India, or the Middle East or the southern states of the USA?