Lucy Pinney - A Country Wife

Contents

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Epub ISBN 9781409004240

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First published in Great Britain in 2004

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Text Lucy Pinney 2004
Text illustration Nigel Owen 2004

Lucy Pinney has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

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PG Wodehouse quotation from Very Good Jeeves by PG Wodehouse, published by Hutchinson. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

Source quotation from Alice Walkers You Cant Keep a Good Woman Down. Reprinted by permission of Jeremy Beale, The Womens Press.

Quotation from Nancy Myles by Kevin Sheerin. Reprinted by permission of Kevin Sheerin.

Neville Lytton quotation from The English Country Gentleman by Neville Lytton. Reprinted by permission of the Lady Madeleine Lytton.

Pol Tosch, Luxembourg Fox Stew, from: Le Livre de la Cuisine Luxembourgeoise 1982 Hlker Verlag, Mnster.

Whilst every attempt has been made to clear all permissions, please contact the publisher with any ommissions or comment.

This book is affectionately dedicated to
all those who will be annoyed by it:
a long list, headed by
my beloved children, Kathy, Sam and Nat.

Certain extracts and themes in this book have already appeared in articles and columns I wrote for The Times. I would like to say a huge thank you to them for giving me the opportunity to write these in the first place, and, later, being kind enough to allow them to be turned into a book. I would also like to thank the following publications, where some other stories and ideas in this book first appeared. The Observer Pigging It, Grockle Crop, Going Orf winter 1985; Cosmopolitan Leaving the City Behind May 1985, My Wild and Woolly Romance October 1986, My Heart Belongs to Daddy November 1988; Country Homes and Interiors Ask the Vicar to Tea but Dont Support the RSPCA May 1986; Country Living Magazine Carthorse in the Kitchen January 1987; She Holiday Pick-Ups June 1990 The Delicate Art of Holiday Sex August 1990.

Thank you, too, to the following, many of them Times readers. Dr K. C. Smith for ram-testicle information, R.J. Lewis and Jackie Stanley for insights into duck eating habits, William P. Boyd for emotional advice, Alan Beat for his black humour, Cassandra Latham for her spell, Roger Morsley Smith for his cockerel story, Karen Eberhardt Shelton for her anecdote about venison, Hilary Joyce for her insight into the porcine sense of humour, Elizabeth Close for her letter about a pheasant, and Lucy Fletcher for hers about a fox-collie. And many thanks, too, to all the farmers and country people whose interviews for my column reappear in this book.

Most of all, I owe a great deal to my editors at The Times, Jane Wheatley and Angus Clarke, to Kitty Corrigan who first started me writing about the countryside, to Nicholas Wapshott who accepted my first article, to Marianne Velmans for all her advice, to my endlessly patient agent, Rosemary Canter, and to my meticulous editor, Hannah MacDonald.

In order to make a readable narrative, I have rearranged a few events in this autobiography, and the names of certain characters have been altered to preserve privacy.

Never trust a man who wears spotless white trousers. Family saying

I came out on to the church porch feeling dazed. My right hand held a contact lens that had shot off my eyeball probably in terror as the vicar began his address on the theme of Marriage is Martyrdom. And my left was held firmly in Charlies large, calloused fingers. I would have liked to have stayed there, in the hot sunlight, savouring the triumph (and amazement) I felt at having nabbed in the teeth of fierce female opposition such a brilliant matrimonial prize.

But he rushed me, along with my bridesmaids, into a Victorian milk-cart borrowed for the occasion, lifted the reins and yelled at his stallion, Bob: You irritating, bothersome, blithering, vegecidal maniac get on! Or rather, he didnt. There is no way I could write down what he said. It was unprintably rude, and consisted mainly of four-letter words. He drove all his horses using foul language, and they responded to it eagerly. Probably because it had a rhythmic lilt, and carried an undertone of affection.

At the familiar torrent of abuse, Bob broke into a brisk trot. The chains on his harness jingled, the cart bounced up and down, and the little bridesmaids screamed. If Charlie stopped yelling filth for more than a minute or two Bobs ears would swivel anxiously, and after a while his step would falter so the four-letter words were pretty well incessant as we pounded through the narrow Dorset lanes to my parents cottage. Bob also farted at regular intervals, which, along with the swearing, somewhat detracted from the tastefulness with which both sets of parents had hoped to imbue the occasion.

The relationship Charlie had with his horses was very close, I knew. When left tied up at shows, Bob would scan the crowd for Charlies face, and pick it out, from hundreds of others, at a huge distance, and he was so trusting that, for a party trick, Charlie would crawl through his back legs on his hands and knees. They even slept together. When Charlie went off to distant ploughing matches with Bob he could never afford hotels, so he would sleep in the lorry or a stable. He said that though Bob slept lying down, and frequently shifted position in the night, he was always somehow aware of a human presence next to him, and never kicked, or rolled over. A dealer friend of Charlies had once explained to me that he, too, always slept with his horses when he was away from home. And the only time he had ever got into any difficulty was when, one morning, he had washed his face in the bucket of water one of his geldings was drinking out of. He did kick me then, the dealer said soberly. I could tell he thought Blooming cheek!