Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (24 page)

Over lunch in the
Express
boardroom, high up on the sixth floor of our Blackfriars office, overlooking the bustling life of the River Thames, I asked
him what advice he would give the
Express
in its war for the middle ground of Britain. Our situation was comparable to the Tesco/Sainsbury's stand-off that Leahy and
McLaurin inherited a few years earlier. He didn't hesitate: 'Stop thinking
about the Daily Mail.
Beyour own masters. Don't mention the
Mail,
don't even read the
Mail.
You're doomed every time you make a comparison.' It made incredibly good sense, but it was insufficient to save us; five years
later, as I sit in Colin's kitchen watching Zoe unpack the contents of the bulging Tesco carrier bags into the cupboards, I
look around to see if I can see a newspaper. Sure enough, there is a
Daily Mail
lurking under a pile of papers on a chair in the corner.

That same evening, Bryan goes to a meeting of the council to try to repair the bad feeling that exists between the town council
and the Chamber of Commerce over the Ilminster in Bloom campaign: both sides feel the other should have done more to support
the annual initiative. The meeting doesn't go as he hoped. Norman Campbell, the mayor, after gratefully acknowledging that
the chamber will be throwing its weight behind the floral bonanza, announces that he thinks that the issue of the one-way
street should be looked at again. 'There is a strong feeling we have not got the ideal solution for the town. I feel that
out of courtesy we should explore whether the mechanisms for re-opening this debate are in place.'

Bryan is surprised and delighted but Norman's open-minded approach is instantly rejected. 'It sets a precedent to go back
too soon,' says Councillor Richard Jacobs. Mike Henley, another councillor, adds that 'it would undermine the credibility
of the council . . . We will be going down a very slippery slope because we will take all credibility from decisions made
by this council in the future.'

Only one councillor, Margaret Excell, speaks up for Bryan. 'Some councillors become entrenched once they have made a decision.
I can't see any harm revisiting it. When you actually talk to the people of Ilminster they think this is a travesty.'

Bryan feels marginalised and humiliated. 'The whole situation stinks,' he tells me. We're sitting by the desk at the back
of Lane's Garden Shop; a new shipment of terracotta pots from the Far East is cluttering up the floor. Shoppers are few and
far between. 'There is no reason why they could not have given the issue another hearing. Those councillors are guilty of
doing their best to wreck the commercial viability of the town for the independent shopkeepers.' He and Mike Fry-Foley have
decided to call an open meeting of the town directly after Easter to try to force the council to re-open the debate.

When they're five days old, Bluebell's piglets venture outside for the first time. They walk with delicate little steps, picking
up their hooves and putting them down warily, still uncertain of the ground beneath their feet. Bluebell has become much more
protective and when the piglets are outside, she walks backwards and forwards in front of them, keeping us away. She also
checks us out more assiduously, subjecting any visitor to a thorough sniff of hands, boots and trousers. On the far side of
the fence the other sows watch the piglets keenly. Babe, Guinness, Collette, Cordelia and the incredibly fat Bramble follow
their every move, standing in a line like a group of young mums in the playground, clucking over the antics of their kids
on the swings. Once Bluebell had given birth, Robinson, the saddleback boar, had to be moved out of the main pen and into
the rescue chickens' run, along with Lonesome George. It is a temporary residence while new fencing is erected, but with four
more pigs already pregnant we don't need another, and Robinson will have to live alone for a few weeks. He spends his days
lying on the ground, belly towards the sun, only bothering to stir to escape the shifting shadows as the hours pass. Two days
after Robinson joins the chickens, Bob goes into the hen house to collect any eggs that had been laid outside the nesting
boxes. He finds the lengths of wood which the chickens use to perch on at night thrown every which way across the floor. All
the straw which he scattered over the floor the night before has been pushed into a pile in one corner. Bob puts the perches
back up, but when it happens again the next night it becomes clear that, despite his bulk, Robinson is managing to get through
the small, chicken-sized doorway in the side of the hen house. Once inside, he's been shovelling the straw into one corner
and using it for his own bed, leaving the chickens to spend the night on the floor. Definitely a budding Napoleon of the farmyard.

'Six pigs: minimum £600. Max: £1,200.' I write this down in my notebook under the heading, 'Now we are pig breeders.' In 1862,
the American government passed the Homestead Act, which entitled migrating families to 160 acres of land in the Midwest. The
land would be theirs for good provided they spent the first five years farming. Within a decade, millions of immigrants from
Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland occupied 300,000 square miles of middle America. To make ends meet and to payoff
the starter loans they needed crops that made quick money. The answer was to grow corn and keep pigs, and by 1880 there were
50 million hogs in the Midwest.

The economics went like this: a good sow could be bought for $5. With proper care, she could produce five or six breeding
gilts a year who would farrow in their turn the next season. In the third year, the sows could be sold at market for $30 and
the farmer still had his original pig, who was still breeding. It was a farmer's best, most reliable investment and pigs soon
had the nickname of 'mortgage-lifters'. All too often, 'hog-money' was all that stood between the farmer and the demands of
the local bank. If he had pigs, he could afford a few cattle. The pigs would be turned out on to the standing corn in the
autumn: they'd feed themselves on the stalks, root up all that was left, fertilise and plough up the land and leave it ready
for planting in the spring. This labour-saving device was known as 'hogging down'.

Today the value of pigs in the USA is over $5 billion, contributing to the worldwide need for 75 million tonnes of pork and
2 billion pounds of lard every year.

Four days after the discovery of the dead swan in Cellardyke, the bird flu scare is over. Scientists discovered that the bird
had most likely contracted the disease in Europe and died as it attempted to migrate across the North Sea. Andre Farrar, a
spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, says it 'looked like this was a whooper swan that spent the winter
in Europe, set off on its migration, got halfway across the North Sea, felt like crap, and landed and died before washing
up in Cellardyke. It can put the spring back into people's step because it makes it much less likely that other positives
will be found.'

Mr Bonner pays us £159 for the two pigs. Not much profit. They cost us thirty quid to buy, plus £20 for Snells, and heaven
knows how much on food. But, assuming that we get Bluebell's six piglets up to size and that she has twelve to fourteen in
her next litter and we sell them at seventy-five kilos dead weight, rather than forty-five, then we're looking at our own
'mortgage-lifters'. I gave Mr B a tray of twenty white goose eggs; the local deli sells them for 99P, so I sell them to Mr
B for 40P each, as I'm keen he should make some profit from us to make up for the pork fiasco. He's selling ten-pound bags
of beef bones for £1 a bag to raise money for the Christmas lights so I take one home for the dogs. Fat-Boy hugely over-eats
and smells like a raw chop for two days. Mr B sells twelve goose eggs in a couple of hours.

On Easter Sunday, Charlie and I go to church in Wells Cathedral. In our age of regulation and automation it is extraordinary
that the dates of Easter, in the northern hemisphere at least, are still determined by the cycles of the moon. Easter falls
on the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, which means that it occurs any time from 23 March to 24
April. It seems to me that whatever you believe in, it can be no coincidence that the great Christian festival of Christ's
rebirth happens at the same time that the earth undergoes its own annual renewal. Nothing lasts, nothing stays the same. All
life is about renewal, about picking yourself up if you've failed, about trying again.