Adventures on the High Teas

by Stuart Maconie

  I am biased here, of course. I am fond and proud of the BBC, not least for employing me, and the Mail knows that public-service bashing will always go down well with its red-faced, golfing rump. But while the Mail is undoubtedly popular in these cosy Shires, knows its audience well and must have its temperature on some matters, I don’t like the implication that Middle England can be characterised by fear and rage or that its predominant tone is censorious, illiberal and vindictive. Already I have seen it to be as much kindly, easy-going and tolerant. Funny too.

  Putting such matters behind me, I embark on an afternoon fact-finding mission around this patch of the Cotswolds, ‘the Heart of England’ as a hundred guidebooks and websites have it. Here are some facts I learned. Shipton-under-Wychwood has a railway station, surely only because Dr Beeching sloped off early that Friday to go to his caravan; more of him anon. They also like their heavy-horse ploughing championships round here. The local stone is lovely (a yellow oolitic limestone, geology fans) and the colour of runny honey, making even the most overcast day look like high summer. Also, there’s a fine example outside the Red Lion hereabouts of the heated smokers’ gazebo – emblem of Middle England, just as the hi-viz tabard and Greggs pasty are the new standards of the north.

  On the road to Burford the scenery rolls by: ploughed land and gently rolling Cotswold Hills and sweet green pasture. Burford nestles in trees and, to paraphrase The Wizard of Oz, you know you aren’t in Wigan or Stockport or Goole any more when the local boozer has a Michelin award. That boozer, by the way, is the Carpenters Arms. It’s on Walnut Road leading to Meadow Way. I bet Windy Miller and Chippy Minton drink there.

  Like Chipping Norton, in fact like a dozen or so places hereabouts, Burford styles itself as the Gateway to the Cotswolds. On a North American scale of distance, I suppose Halifax could claim the title too. Basically, the Cotswolds has more Gates than a scandal-obsessed tabloid. Burford is essentially one big street. But what a street. Long and steep and fabulously higgledy-piggledy with scarcely a right angle to be seen. It was originally a street of shops, each a single storey with workshops and stores behind and the craftsman or artisan’s living quarters above. It’s still retail heaven: art shops, antique shops, cheese shops, clothes shops. There’s even a preserve shop. Burford clearly likes its jam. There is another shop selling, bizarrely, Staffordshire pottery, which I fully expect to be burned out and ransacked fairly soon.

  As you may recall, I am still sockless so I make for the gents’ outfitters, viz. the Oxford Shirt Company. If I was expecting the local clothes emporium to offer me Vivienne Westwood, leather-studded ponchos or bling jewellery (and I wasn’t) I’d have been disappointed. Here all is Barbour, Gore-Tex, Rohan and Aquascutum. It is a riot of tweed, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. The clothes on offer are both fantastically expensive and shockingly bad, with a heavy emphasis on those bright scarlet or salmon-pink corduroy trousers that Edward Stourton and David Cameron wear to Sunday afternoon drinks parties. What is it with the upper classes and these comedy clothes? Is it that having worn a grey suit and a Windsor knot all week they want to shed their adulthood and go about like overgrown children or playschool refugees at the weekend? There was a man browsing in the shop who looked like Rupert the Bear’s gay farmer cousin.

  My spies tell me – well, if you count Wikipedia as espionage – that Cameron, along with fellow locals Kate Moss, Liz Hurley, Gary Barlow, Kate Winslet and Radiohead, can often be spotted getting their bark chips and barbecue lighter fluid from the Burford Garden Company. It’s a garden centre with two restaurants. That tells you a lot about Burford. Not far away is Daylesford Organic Farm Shop, ‘the poshest shop in England’, as it’s been described, and where all of the above can be found as well as many another ‘Cotswold highflier’, to use the name coined by Alex James of Blur, now local country squire and cheesemaker.

  On the way to Windrush I jetwash the car. I mention this only because of the wonderful sign that says ‘Jetwash available till half an hour before closing or when darkness falls’. According to my sat nav, this is the only Windrush in Britain, so this tiny, secluded hamlet gave its name to the ship that brought the first wave of commonwealth immigrants to Britain. A curious and sweet juxtaposition. My wife’s family are from Windrush. I would say my wife’s ‘people’ but that would make me feel like Tom Parker Bowles and I would have to gouge my own heart out with the nearest scissors. Anyway, I find lots of them on the commemorative stone to the war dead in the church, as well as something quite remarkable. A plaque on the church wall commemorates ‘Sgt Pilot Bruce Hancock RAFVR who sacrificed his life by ramming and destroying an enemy Heinkel bomber while flying an unarmed training aircraft from Windrush landing ground during Battle of Britain 18th August 1940’.

  Even by the superior standards of courage and toughness of our grandfathers’ generation, a generation when even conscripted service men did not baulk at danger, knew death was ever at hand and didn’t blub for their iPods when they were taken prisoner, this stopped me in my tracks. It is a bravery that humbles and astonishes. Why on earth, I wondered, did he not receive the Victoria Cross? So I went away and found out. It’s a sad and strange story.

  On the glorious summer Sunday of 18 August 1940, the Battle of Britain was drawing to an end when 26-year-old Sergeant Bruce Hancock was completing his training with No. 6 SFTS at nearby RAF Little Rissington. The course was almost over and he was excited about his forthcoming leave. That evening he took off from RAF Windrush on a night-training flight alone in his unarmed training plane, an Anson L9164, when just before midnight he was spotted by the Heinkel bomber, No. 1408 of the Luftwaffe’s 5/KG27. Originally, it’s thought, the Heinkel had been en route to attack RAF Brize Norton but for some reason had chosen instead to bomb Windrush. The German nose gunner opened fire on Sgt Hancock’s aircraft and it slowed, causing the Heinkel to overtake it from above.

  Instantly Hancock’s Anson climbed, rammed the Heinkel from below and both aircraft plunged to earth as fireballs, killing Sgt Hancock along with the four crew aboard the Heinkel. The wreck of the Heinkel was found at Blackpits Farm, near Aldbourne, and such was the carnage that it was thought at first there were five bodies. Sgt Hancock’s body was found the following day, some hundred yards from the wreckage of his Anson. Local firewatchers who found his body believed that had more of an effort been made to find him on the night of the crash, he might have lived.

  The question, of course, is did Hancock deliberately sacrifice himself? There were several witnesses on the ground that night, both military and civilian, and most stated unequivocally that Sgt Hancock must have sacrificed his life deliberately in an effort to bring down the German aircraft. However, this was never formally accepted by the RAF and Sgt Hancock was never posthumously decorated for what most accept must have been astonishing courage. Sgt Hancock had even told his brother-in-law that he would ‘deliberately ram an enemy aircraft’ if he had to.

  The four Luftwaffe crew were afforded a full military funeral in Britain organised by the Home Office and are interred in Cannock, Staffordshire. Sgt Hancock, because he was not serving with a front-line squadron, is not commemorated on any ‘Battle of Britain’ roll of honour, was never decorated and is remembered by this small brass plaque on the wall of a country church. One is tempted to talk of ‘lions led by donkeys’ but perhaps that is presumptuous. But when someone is sneering at Middle England’s foibles and foolishness, remember that August night above the sleepy Cotswolds and young Bruce Hancock, giving his life at twenty-six so that Jasmine Cottage and Vine Cottage and the Old Church House could sleep on.

  There is nowhere to park at Bourton-on-the-Water. There never is. They call it a tourist trap but it doesn’t so much trap tourists as stun them into submission with its sheer cream-tea-and-ducks-on-the-pond niceness. Eventually, by killing a man with my bare hands, setting fire to his Audi and having my brigands force his grieving family into the hills, I get a parking spot for an hour just by Radish Designer O
utlet. Radish is unusual amongst Bourton retail outlets for not having the word ‘Cotswolds’ as a prefix. There is a Cotswolds Perfumery. There is a Cotswolds Bakery. There is a Cotswolds Knitting Shop. I wonder if anything would be deemed too outlandish or inapt. The Cotswolds Nerve Gas Outlet perhaps.

  Zombified by the sheer pleasantness, I lope past the model village, the car museum and the discount china and cookwear shop to the Rose Tree café for that cream tea which in these surroundings is luring craving, lusting tourists with the addictive power of a crackhouse. Just as I am spooning on the cream with shaking hand, two foreign tourists are denied their fix of scone by the proprietor as ‘it’s gone five’. It is two minutes past. This, in its own way, is very Middle England. I hope they scored some in Stow-on-the-Wold later.

  Or possibly Lower Slaughter, called by some the most beautiful village in England. That’s fighting talk in Chaddesley Corbett, Cerne Abbas and Acton Burnell, but it seems entirely plausible as you cross the languid river Eye and gaze in wonder and a little envy at the place with its quaint footbridges, its delicious church, its lovingly restored water wheel with redbrick tower, its gorgeous, unaffordable houses. Don’t be put off by the name. It has nothing to do with death and slaying but refers to the fact that before it became as des as res can be, Lower Slaughter was a ‘slough’ or quagmire. It has certainly scrubbed up nicely now although there’s still plenty of places to get your feet wet. In fact, the first time I ever came across the place was as a tiny tot watching a public information film about testing your brakes after driving through a deep ford. ‘Deep Ford Ahead’ said the sign and ‘Lower Slaughter’ too, bringing a chortle from the plummy voiceover man. The ford and the sign are still here, and I get a nostalgic thrill from driving through with a splash. Whatever happened to PIFs? Maybe with the new Health and Safety mania, they’ll be back soon and we can all be terrified again by Donald Pleasance and the cowled Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water.

  By contrast to its neighbour, Upper Slaughter is a hellhole, a 1960s planners’ nightmare of brutalist concrete tower blocks riven by organised crime and gang violence where feral youths congregate in darkened underpasses to shoot smack and no one is safe after nightfall. Only joking. It’s actually incredibly lovely too. Just not as well known. It sits aslant the river Windrush and has a small paved square with medieval almshouses restored by none other than Sir Edward Lutyens. Ramblers ramble, dazed by the place. Ivy creeps up the walls of a row of detached cottages and the medieval/Tudor manor house is now a swanky hotel. There are only so many cream teas a man can have, though, so it’s back via crowded B roads to Saturday night in Chippy.

  The pubs are filling up, the lights are coming on and I have a table booked in town at a restaurant called, rather winningly, the Thai Shire. It was a good idea to make a reservation. The place was packed, bustling, vibrant and noisy without being intimidating, where serenely smiling ladies in cerise and maroon silk went hither and thither with trays of delicacies. Having neither the teatime takeaway association of the Chinese nor the ‘after the pub and fourteen pints of Wifebeater’ ones of Indian food, Thai food seems to have become the default ethnic cuisine of Middle England. You can see why. Fragrant, delicious and a bit exclusive, it has a cachet that vindaloo and chow mein have long since lost. I had tam ka soup, Malaysian fruit curry and a side dish of cashew nut and cauliflower. The staff were delightful and the Singha beer was crisp and cold. At some point during the salt and pepper aubergine, I thought I was going to cry. In between exquisite mouthfuls, with the Slaughters still in mind, I knew exactly why La Hurley and La Winslet and Messrs James and Cameron and Barker came here, even if their silly yellow corduroy trousers were still a mystery.

  Back in Meriden, there was bad news disguised as progress. To be honest I’d had my doubts as soon as I’d glanced at the map and when I’d read that Meriden is not so called because of its position. It’s nothing to do with ‘meridian’ or anything like that. It actually comes from the Middle English meaning ‘the valley where merry-making occurs’. The Global Positioning System is no respecter of tradition and it seems that, armed with their tracking gear and distant satellites, the men from the Ordnance Survey have calculated that the centre of England is not Meriden but a muddy paddock in a field some eleven miles northeast on a farm in Leicestershire. Lindley Hill Farm, grid reference SP36373.66 96143.05, to be precise, and owned by a couple called, appropriately enough, Charles and Margaret Farmer, aged eighty-nine and eighty. When asked by BBC News Online, they said they were ‘surprised’ to learn their farm was special. ‘Someone said we should build tea rooms here and possibly American tourists would come out, but I think we are a bit old for that.’ In Meriden, they were philosophical. There were dogs to be walked and bikes to ride. And the Ordnance Survey themselves were conciliatory. Their spokesman Trevor Mouncey said, ‘You’ll never win an argument against tradition. It may be worth noting that cartography has come on a bit in five hundred years.’

  But I had learned already that Middle England was nothing to do with satellites and co-ordinates, rulers and pincers and protractors. We are not a nation of bureaucrats and autobahn-builders. We are vague and romantic, a race of gentleman scientists chasing butterflies with silly nets. Middle England and deep Englishness cannot be defined by measurements. In his book The English, Jeremy Paxman lists some of his signifiers of Englishness including Elgar, Do-It-Yourself, punk, brass bands, Shakespeare, Cumberland sausages, double-decker buses, Vaughan Williams, gardening, Monty Python, the Beatles, Women’s Institutes, fish and chips, curry, Christmas Eve at King’s College, Cambridge, indifference to food, fell-running, ugly caravan sites on beautiful clifftops and crumpets. For me, too, this is how to go in search of Middle England. Not with a slide rule but with heightened senses.

  It’s about the food we eat and the music we listen to, the books we read and where we go on our days off, what makes us laugh and makes us scared. It’s about village greens and craft fairs and smokers under gazebos, Sikh shops and Rastas in football tops and cycling memorials and Thai restaurants and Polish waitresses. You can’t pinpoint that with your GPS. Besides, they can’t move that monument in Meriden now. So on your bike, cold-hearted cartographer. I would look for Middle England through its fixations and foibles. And next I would test the water.

  CHAPTER 2

  Bathe of Glory

  The English are dirty. Ask any Australian. One of their favourite derogatory terms for us, ‘Pongo’, refers to our lax and slovenly bathing habits. Complimenting us grudgingly on our swimming successes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Australian swimming coach said it wasn’t bad for a country with ‘very few pools and not much soap’. Odd, then, how keen we are on spas. Not the ones where you can get Monster Munch and the Daily Mirror but the ones where, for hundreds of years, royalty, gentry and even oiks have come to disport themselves, to drink rank, sulphurous draughts to cure their lumbago and scrofula, to luxuriate in H20, and most importantly, to gavotte, jig, minuet, gossip and conduct illicit assignations. There may have been no bombing or diving in the baths of Leamington and Buxton two hundred years ago. But there was plenty of petting, believe me.

  Once upon a time, the spa was a place where the enfeebled or world-weary well-to-do could take what we might call the health of nature cure, a belief that immersion in or drinking of various weird, smelly liquids could rid one of sundry agues of the heart and mind. While still places of rest and recreation, the modern spa and the modern spa break is more likely to be enjoyed by a hen party in fluffy towelling robes or a small group of middle managers shuffling awkwardly towards the steam room in monogrammed Van Essen slippers after a morning on the mini golf course. The key concept here is ‘pampering’.

  Pampering is a very Middle English notion that reveals much about our national psyche, i.e., that essentially we expect life to be disappointing and unsatisfactory and that the smallest of treats – a sit down, a cup of tea, a Jammie Dodger, a leg wax – are what make it not only endurable but excitin
g. The Finns and the Germans do not do ‘pampering’; they thrash themselves with birch branches and plunge into icy pools for their R&R. The French and the Italians, with their gorgeous climate, fine wines and plump cheeses, regard ‘La Dolce Vita’ as a birthright. They have no concept of pampering. Life is about pampering. These are not races who think of a digestive biscuit and a pouffe as a life-affirming experience.

  Spas take their name, deflatingly, from a Belgian town near Liège called Spa. It’s a spa, by the way. Continental Europe has tons of them, from the famous Baden Badens to the more cultish Hajdu Bihar of Hungary. We in Britain have a perfectly respectable eighteen. And perfectly respectable they all are. As a pub diversion, listing the eighteen spas of the British Isles will probably never replace naming the Magnificent Seven, the seven dwarves or the wonders of the ancient world. But there are some similarities. In the canon of English spas, Tenbury Wells and Droitwich are the Horst Buchholz, the Doc, the Lighthouse at Pharos. The ones everyone forgets.

  By contrast, Buxton, Leamington and Bath are the Steve McQueens, the Dopeys and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. According to a 2007 survey, only one per cent of Britons actually use spas – the natural sort, not the ones in hotels where hen parties hang out in fluffy towels getting their cuticles done – because of their ‘perceived exclusivity’, but this may be precisely what has made them so redolent of a genteel Middle Englandism, the sort of place where you have a lovely, refined weekend that ends with you looking enviously in estate agent’s windows whilst eating an organic damson and juniper ice cream. While I’m on the subject, the best ice cream in England is to be found in a spa town. There’s been a little wooden shack at British Camp in the Malverns probably since those industrious Iron-Agers built the camp on the adjoining hill. Go there soon and, eschewing the Lyons Maid on offer, ask the nice Goth girl for Rachel’s home-made stuff. You won’t regret it. I seem to remember that the elderflower and sloe gin is the best one. It’s hard to say, though, especially when you’re rolling around in the car park drooling. I’ll remind you of it a little later.