... a vast green stretch atop the hills where cattle wander free and locals come to enjoy what looks to be a rather less-formal-than-usual game of golf. From there, we drove down the long, steeply curving road into Stroud, with magnificent views across green, wooded valleys to the villages and towns beyond.
The parking lot at Stroud was crammed with vehicles, this bright Saturday, but we managed to find a place and wandered over to the market where we found the street lined on either side with stalls and shoppers busy loading up their bags and carts with locally-grown produce...
Remarkable to the American--well, to the Los Angelic eye--was that these vegetables--potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutagabas, turnips--had a very different look from those we find in our own markets, even the farmers' markets we frequent at home. We're used to nice, clean, freshly-scrubbed, evenly-shaped vegetables, with nary a spot of dirt on them. These had evidently been dug straight from the ground, crusty with mud, odd-shaped, and generally misbehaven.
It's become a truism, I think, that we in America have chosen to breed our vegetables for shape, size, color, texture--in a word, for the LOOK of them rather than for flavor. Having eaten, now, a few wonderful meals in England, we have been reminded of just how GOOD things taste. Once the mud's removed, even a simple carrot or potato has the distinctive taste of a carrot or potato. We have sacrificed something important in our eternal scramble to make things look acceptable to the eye.
A great market, then, in Stroud. Aside from the vegetables there were meats, cheeses, home-made chutneys and jams, cakes and pastries, breads...
We stopped to buy some honey on the comb, so neatly sealed that we thought we could bring it home. I was unable to resist the smell of bangers--English pork sausages, sizzling on the grill, served with mustard on a hearty wheat bun. I bought one to share, and instantly regretted not having been more greedy. I could have eaten the whole thing myself.
(My sister enjoys a surprise meeting with you-know-who!)
From the market we headed up into the center of town, where street musicians and performers of all kinds were busy entertaining the Saturday crowds. Stroud has the reputation, Flora tells us, for being a manget for those less bound by the social norms, alternative life-stylers of all kinds, and the shops and cafes seemed to bear that out. We stopped for a cup of coffee at a noisy cafe and enjoyed the bustle of its customers. Later, at a used book stand on the street, I came upon the battered copy of an old Scarlet Pimpernel book--one of my favorites from childhood--and bought it for a couple of pounds as a gift to my -great-nephew. I'd been telling him about the Scarlet Pimpernel just the day before...
On the way back to Cirencester, we stopped again in Minchinhampton, this time in the village, to try out a restaurant Flora had recommended, but we found it closed. An alternative, down the street, was open though, and we enjoyed an excellent lunch there....
Finding a sausage sandwich on the menu, I was able to indulge in the second half of what I had regretted missing earlier, sharing this time with Ellie. The home-made ice cream was also a delight.
Back in Cirencester, we rested up a while and began our packing--today, as I write this, early morning, is the day we leave for my son's place in Harpenden--before heading out to attend the opening of my niece, Charlotte's show...
...at the local arts center. A great display of photographs of fruit, as crisply realist as those Dutch painters of an earlier time, but almost surreal in their proximity to the lens, their simple frontality, and their sometimes odd relationship to the background.
I especially liked those images that verged from the realist into the painterly, where color itself took over from representational shape and became the fluid, shifting focus of the picture. Altogether, we thought, a fine accomplishment. Showing with Charlotte, in happy similitude, was an artist creating images of fruit in felt constructions, also quite beautiful and rich...
(A propos of nothing, here's a swan nesting at the river's edge behind the church. She seemed unfazed by our presence...)
And finally, another climax to the day... Flora had recorded the Grand National, the mother of all steeplechases and an annual ritual here in Britain, along with such events as the Derby and the Boat Race. Our nephew Hugo had arranged a betting game for all of us, and we watched the race not only with great entertainment and suspense, but also with some passion for our chosen horses. What a spectacular sight, to watch that charge of galloping horses, some forty of them at the start, take the fences like a great steaming tsunami of powerful flesh and muscle. Flora's horse won. Mine came in seventh. Ah, well...
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