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Authors: Trisha Ashley
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twitch and a pallid, moon-shaped face retreat behind the glass.
Bess immediately squatted in an unladylike posture on the narrow country road and assumed a determined expression, so I got as far upwind as the lead would allow and looked around the countryside with its dotting of picture-postcard cottages.
February is perhaps not a time of year when the countryside looks its best – there’s a sort of fuzzy greyness over everything, like mould.
In the distance a small squat church tower appeared over the top of some dark and gloomy trees, which might be yew, but little more of it could be glimpsed even when we walked past the churchyard, because the high wall and trees conspired to shut out any further view.
There were some interestingly ancient-looking monuments set among the short green turf, which I would have explored despite the biting wind if I hadn’t had Bess with me.
After some searching I spotted the postbox nestling inside a carefully clipped niche in the holly hedge. Gleaming with newly replenished paint, it looked as small and insubstantial as a bird-box on a post, but I pushed the letter in and walked on to look at the shop.
It was one of a row of little cottages, but the original window had been replaced by larger panes of thick greenish glass, and the displaying space was added to by an overflow of assorted goods over the concrete frontage: boxes of vegetables and sacks of potatoes jostled with hoes, rakes and spades, and a large and garishly painted selection of garden gnomes.
The low doorway was festooned with wellingtons on strings, and it all looked a bit Enid Blyton: by rights there ought to have been an elf behind the counter in a long striped apron.
It was dark and, as I halted on the threshold to let my eyes adjust, a voice from the murk instructed briskly, ‘No dogs, please! There’s a hook outside to tie it to.’
There was, too, half hidden by the onions and potatoes. A little wooden plaque above it, tastefully executed in poker-work, said ‘ DOGS ’, with a languorous hand pointing downwards, rather Michelangelo.
‘Sit!’ I commanded, tying Bess up. She whined and tried to jump up at me, only the lead was too short and she fell back, puzzled.
When I ventured in, a small, wrinkled woman had appeared behind the wooden counter. She smiled at me, a smile that stretched from earring to earring, showing teeth set singly and far apart, like rosebushes in gravel, but her eyes were sharp and full of curiosity.
‘Sorry about that, dear, but it’s the Law, you know – no dogs in shops what sell food. I’m a dog-lover myself. What sort would yours be, then?’
‘Borzoi,’ I replied, taking in the serried ranks of jars and tins and packets jammed from floor to ceiling all round – not to mention all sorts of things hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and the jars of sherbet dabs and other comestibles on the counter.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Borzoi.’
‘Oh –
Bourgeois
. One of them foreign breeds. Labradors, I like. Nothing like a nice Labrador.’
‘She’s “an Aristocrat of the Russian Steppes” actually,’ I told her, quoting from
The
Borzoi Owner’s Handbook
, which I had bought in the hope that it would tell me the stupid creature would acquire brain cells when mature.
‘A Bourgeois,’ she murmured, committing it to memory. ‘What can I get you, now?’
Since I’d been drawn inside by sheer curiosity this momentarily stumped me, but then my eye fell on a basket of tangerines and I said hastily, ‘Four pounds of tangerines, please.’
Don’t ask me why four pounds – it just came into my head.
‘Four pounds it is,’ said the woman. ‘That’ll be a lot of tangerines, then?’
‘Yes …’ A picture from my
Complete Book of Home Preserving
(a recent book club choice) flashed into my brain. ‘I’m making tangerine marmalade.’
‘Oh, yes?’ she said brightly, measuring out tangerines into a large set of scales and then wrapping them up in a bit of
Bess immediately squatted in an unladylike posture on the narrow country road and assumed a determined expression, so I got as far upwind as the lead would allow and looked around the countryside with its dotting of picture-postcard cottages.
February is perhaps not a time of year when the countryside looks its best – there’s a sort of fuzzy greyness over everything, like mould.
In the distance a small squat church tower appeared over the top of some dark and gloomy trees, which might be yew, but little more of it could be glimpsed even when we walked past the churchyard, because the high wall and trees conspired to shut out any further view.
There were some interestingly ancient-looking monuments set among the short green turf, which I would have explored despite the biting wind if I hadn’t had Bess with me.
After some searching I spotted the postbox nestling inside a carefully clipped niche in the holly hedge. Gleaming with newly replenished paint, it looked as small and insubstantial as a bird-box on a post, but I pushed the letter in and walked on to look at the shop.
It was one of a row of little cottages, but the original window had been replaced by larger panes of thick greenish glass, and the displaying space was added to by an overflow of assorted goods over the concrete frontage: boxes of vegetables and sacks of potatoes jostled with hoes, rakes and spades, and a large and garishly painted selection of garden gnomes.
The low doorway was festooned with wellingtons on strings, and it all looked a bit Enid Blyton: by rights there ought to have been an elf behind the counter in a long striped apron.
It was dark and, as I halted on the threshold to let my eyes adjust, a voice from the murk instructed briskly, ‘No dogs, please! There’s a hook outside to tie it to.’
There was, too, half hidden by the onions and potatoes. A little wooden plaque above it, tastefully executed in poker-work, said ‘ DOGS ’, with a languorous hand pointing downwards, rather Michelangelo.
‘Sit!’ I commanded, tying Bess up. She whined and tried to jump up at me, only the lead was too short and she fell back, puzzled.
When I ventured in, a small, wrinkled woman had appeared behind the wooden counter. She smiled at me, a smile that stretched from earring to earring, showing teeth set singly and far apart, like rosebushes in gravel, but her eyes were sharp and full of curiosity.
‘Sorry about that, dear, but it’s the Law, you know – no dogs in shops what sell food. I’m a dog-lover myself. What sort would yours be, then?’
‘Borzoi,’ I replied, taking in the serried ranks of jars and tins and packets jammed from floor to ceiling all round – not to mention all sorts of things hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and the jars of sherbet dabs and other comestibles on the counter.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Borzoi.’
‘Oh –
Bourgeois
. One of them foreign breeds. Labradors, I like. Nothing like a nice Labrador.’
‘She’s “an Aristocrat of the Russian Steppes” actually,’ I told her, quoting from
The
Borzoi Owner’s Handbook
, which I had bought in the hope that it would tell me the stupid creature would acquire brain cells when mature.
‘A Bourgeois,’ she murmured, committing it to memory. ‘What can I get you, now?’
Since I’d been drawn inside by sheer curiosity this momentarily stumped me, but then my eye fell on a basket of tangerines and I said hastily, ‘Four pounds of tangerines, please.’
Don’t ask me why four pounds – it just came into my head.
‘Four pounds it is,’ said the woman. ‘That’ll be a lot of tangerines, then?’
‘Yes …’ A picture from my
Complete Book of Home Preserving
(a recent book club choice) flashed into my brain. ‘I’m making tangerine marmalade.’
‘Oh, yes?’ she said brightly, measuring out tangerines into a large set of scales and then wrapping them up in a bit of
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