It’s hot. I have dug out my sandals. The car smells like brie. These two things are, I can assure you, entirely unconnected. The latter may have more to do with the soup of apple juice, part sandwich and child’s sock which has been marinading in the rear door openey shove-things-in bit (you know, the bit you can put stuff in, apples, sandwiches, socks, that kind of thing) for the last five weeks. The sheep, still unshorn due to a dearth of available hobby farm shearers who are actually capable / willing of answering their phones / messages have taken to removing their own fleeces. At this rate it won’t be long before I take Jamie’s Babyliss manclippers to their sweaty dagged rare breed asses. The sheep, that is, not the shearers. Though they themselves are quite few and far between. As for their arses I’d really rather not speculate.
The dog has gone nocturnal and spends the night barking at foxes until the chickens wake up when he starts barking at them instead, presumably to congratulate them on not being eaten by the foxes, unlike the broody muscovy duck who was scoffed a few nights ago, snaffled from her under-shed nest days before her brood was due to hatch. If George R R Martin needs any more inspiration for his next Game of Thrones book, he’s welcome to pitch up here and stay in the caravan for a few nights and observe. (I’m sure he’ll find our rates quite reasonable, even taking into account the rack of fermenting salamis stinking the place out. And I’ll even chuck in use of the crazy funfair scene sleeping bag. Yes siree, the Four Seasons have NOTHING on us. The goings on here would have mental hard-faced megalomaniac brother-fancying murderous sort-of-queen Cersei Lannister chewing on the corner of her blankie. Murder (foxes mainly). Patricide (bantams). Political machinations (which goose is in charge of the lawn area TODAY?). Mystical elegant wolves that howl a lot (Dudley). Incest (everything). Violence (everything). Greed (everything). Shagging (everything). AMAZING locations (none).
And the overriding unsettling feeling that you never know which one of your favourite characters is going to get it in the neck from one week to the next, and why the horrible annoying ones always seem to last so long (I’m looking at YOU boy Chinese goose. Usually attached to the hem of my jeans). So what with that and the noise and the light and the heat, I’m a bit knackered. There are bags under my eyes you could slap gold handles and Anya Hindmarch labels on and flog down the outdoor covered market two for fifteen quid, along with batteries and slabs of nougat the size of a fridge door (you’ll have to head indoors for genuine Alexa Chung clutch eyebags for £2439 a pop). Joking / half assed supposedly humorous self depreciation aside, I myself have my own label these days. And here it is.
One down three thousand to go. Building a retail empire is hard work let me tell you, especially on three bark tainted hours sleep a night, during which I dream of little but salami casings filled with bits of my own fingers, court cases and botulism. Two weeks today is the date of my first farmer’s market. I sent my samples off to the environmental health officer yesterday and the future of Chants Cottage Charcuterie is now in the lap of some council lab technicians (hopefully not literally because hot smoked paprika stains on a lab coat are a DEVIL to remove. Trust me). I have been delivered of a public liability insurance quote which seems to have confused me with some kind of blind knife thrower with no sense of direction AND a pronounced twitch. I’m inheriting a lot of stuff for the stall itself from Nikola the outgoing cured meat head honcho of mid Devon, but I have yet to source my wholesome bill of fayre blackboard, mainly due to the fact that because Jamie bought a pick up the engine of which sounds like the eviscerated drum of our broken washing machine being rolled across a concrete yard (the lengths I go to to authenticate similes, eh?) we now have no money left to buy food never mind mimsy vintage style shop fittings. At least this also means that he also can’t buy any more surplus utility vehicles for a few more days, unless he swaps them for the house. So I will PROBABLY be writing next week’s post from the guard’s cabin of a dilapidated railway carriage watching George R R Martin being chased across the yard by Alys Fowler’s mum’s goose whilst he screams into a dictophone. At least I can now sell him the t shirt.
chants cottage archive 