Spring in Botolph St Otto

Few things lift the Spume spirit more than the return of Spring to these exalting hills. Winter is not my favourite time of year. It’s alright for my brother Sir Leslie Spume and his companion Eric. The minute the Botolph St Otto Plough Monday Mummers play is out of the way, old Eric shuts up his antique shop and they join a reading party in Tangiers, so Leslie can work on his translation of ‘The Loom of Youth’ into Arabic, or so he claims. They stay away until Easter, when the visitors come back to the village, and Eric needs to open up and sell a few bibelots. I would like to have gone away myself for a few weeks, but funds, alas, are as low as ever. When is the arts establishment in this country going to wake up to the plight of the gentlemen poet? Before her mysterious disappearance five years ago, my wife Mimsy and I used always to enjoy spending a few weeks after Christmas with dear old Robert Graves and his ménage in Majorca. We were great friends. I’ll always remember Robert’s habitual greeting as the donkey train delivered us to his bodega, ‘Quick, hide, it’s the bloody Spumes again!’; his characteristic foul temper masking a deep affection. One thing people forget about Graves is that he was an excellent performer on the blues harmonica. He loved to play ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ and other traditional Majorcan airs for Mimsy to dance along with. Now, alas, Graves has bade adieu to all this, Mimsy is Lord only knows where, and I can’t help wondering how long can old Spume be for the world? George in The Turks Head said I have Seasonally Affected Disorder, and I need to get under an electric sunbed like that Kilroy-Silk man. I said I’d rather feel a bit under the weather than look like the desiccated stool of some nightmarish denizen of Hades. Our father was a Mosleyite, of course, so we know all about that.
But Sir Leslie and Eric’s return from Tangiers presages the return of life to Botolph St. Otto, and as the primroses peep shyly from the tangled banks, I feel the old sap rising, and am to be found wandering the lanes around the village most afternoons, my only companion a hazel switch plucked from the hedgerow. Hares gambol in the fields. Songbirds rise in the newly washed sky, melodies of love tumbling from their throats. On one such perambulation, Mrs Caroline Peach, headmistress of the Botolph St Otto Church of England Primary School swished past me on her sit up and beg bicycle. And, O Joy of Joys, between the top of her Wellington boots and the edge of her skirt, I caught a glimpse of bare knee! And was that the promise of a dimpled thigh? I hugged my cape around me, transported. Could this spring hold the ecstasies of passion for Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume and Mrs. Caroline Peach? Dare I hope? In the library after dinner, I started a sestina, entitled ‘How bare your legs against the sky’. I shall send it to Mrs Peach when it is finished. Anonymously I think might be best, in view of the sharpish letter I received from her solicitor last time I sent her a poem.
One of the joys of country living as spring arrives is that ones pals feel the call of nature, and can be lured from the city for a weekend away. I was greatly cheered recently by a visit from one of my young friends, Ritchie Edwards of the pop group Manic Street Preachers. It is a little known fact that several ‘pop’ lyricists have found their way to Spume’s door over the years. Although my input to their work has been but rarely acknowledged, many of today’s tunesmiths will admit in private to a helping tweak here and there from my experienced hands. Both ‘Motor Cycle Emptiness’ and ‘Motown Junk’ were worked up one wet afternoon in front of the fire at Botolph Hall, more years ago now than I care to recall. Ritchie being very much in funds, I suggested that we enter the quiz at the Turks Head. Leslie had given our redoubtable housekeeper Mrs Cutler the night off, and she joined our team; not for nothing am I described as ‘A Man of the People.’ Old George at the pub keeps a bottle of Wincarnis behind the bar for her, but you have to try and keep her to just the two glasses, or she can get flashbacks. I do like to have her on the team, however, as she is an expert on the television. I do not watch it myself, of course, except for the news, documentaries, nature programmes, films, soaps, reality shows and quizzes.
To my horror, the second round of the quiz was on cricket, but young Ritchie surprised me by revealing that he is a Member of Glamorgan Cricket Club; you never can tell what pop musicians get up to after they have faked their deaths. Ritchie told me that Kurt Cobain keeps rare breeds of poultry, and that Sid Vicious has just published a monograph on Norwegian lichens. With Ritchie’s knowledge of county cricket, Mrs Cutler handling questions on politics, history and science as well as the dreaded gogglebox, and yours truly covering the literary arts, we held our end up most respectably, and came third. We won a fiver; since young Ritchie is alright for a few bob, and Mrs Cutler has no need for cash, they were kind enough to insist that the fiver should find its way into Spume’s somewhat depleted coffers. I shall invest it wisely; a chap in the pub has given me a sure thing in the 3.15 at Lingfield next Tuesday.
The end of May will find me packing my trunks once more for the annual Festival of Literature in Hay-On-Wye. Last year I somewhat disgraced myself. Invited to talk on the subject of socialist poetry with dear old Harry Pinter, I arrived a little early for the talk, and found myself in the saloon bar of The Blue Boar, where I spent a most pleasant late morning, afternoon and evening in the company of some roofers from Chepstow, who had just been paid on completion of a job of work, and whose free-spending habits reconfirmed my commitment to the working class.
Unfortunately, a pork pie I took for my lunch must have disagreed with me, because by the time of the talk, at 8 'o' clock, I was most unwell. In fact, I was sick over Pinter's brogues, and had to be helped from the Festival site.
This year I shall avoid taking solids before my appearance. I look forward to reporting in full from Hay in the next issue of ‘The Cotswold Review.’