Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (27 page)

Traditional Persian gardens were designed in great right­angled crosses which symbolised the four corners of the universe.
Running water would divide each section, which would be planted with scented flowers, fruit and shade trees and embellished
with architectural details. The Old Testament descriptions of the trees in the Garden of Eden follow this pattern. Now I can
see that, with the exception of flowing streams, we've created something that more or less accords to the old designs. The
apple trees on their wires create areas, or gardens within the garden. The walls cradle the peaches, apricots and plums. The
herb bed is a semicircle against the west wall. The whole area has gradually filled up, until there is not a wasted square
inch, but somehow it is in proportion and it looks right.

The walled garden had lain fallow for forty-three years before we took it over. The last occupant was called Leslie Barker.
He'd acquired the tenancy in 1951, the year I was born, and like us he'd supplied the college with carrots and cabbages and
onions. After nine years of trying he went broke and moved to Sussex, where he found a job as head gardener to Lady Astor.
I learn all this from an elderly lady in the village, Ellen Doble, who, as a young mother, had started working for Leslie
Barker in 1954. In 1947, Ellen had married her childhood sweetheart, Maurice, a thatcher. For four years they lived in a tied
cottage near Honiton on the estate of Lord Sidmouth. After his death in the early fifties, his heirs sold up and Ellen and
Maurice moved to Whitelackington, where Maurice became the Dillington estate thatcher. Initially they lived in the mews of
the main house, but when the house was converted into a lecture theatre they decamped to the village, to the house where Ellen
now lives alone after Maurice went into care.

'If Mr Barker had had his own shop, it would have been different.' Ellen and I are walking along the path between the rows
of flowering plants and the vegetable beds. Ellen uses a walking-stick; since my accident I'm no speed freak, and I find we
naturally keep pace with each other. 'Mr Barker used to sell his vegetables in town and he never made very much money. He
also grew flowers in the glass houses - chrysanthemums and irises and really lovely dahlias - which we'd pack into brown cardboard
boxes and send to the markets in Bristol. He was very fussy: all the flowers were individually checked: we had to pick off
any loose petals. We packed the flowers in rows, alternating the direction of the heads so that the box was very full and
the flowers didn't move around and get damaged.' Ellen worked five days a week in the garden, from nine till one o'clock,
and she was paid two shillings and sixpence an hour.

On the inside of the south wall there are two rectangular patches of flaky white paint which were once, respectively, the
back walls of a shed and a small house where, Ellen says, the gardeners used to live in the days when Dillington House was
a home, not a college, and the gardeners worked exclusively for the family, supplying all their fruit, flowers and vegetables.
'There was a black kitchen range and that's where little Maureen, who was two when I started work here, used to play when
it was cold.'

She shivers, although the day is warm and she's wearing a thick grey coat over a blue wool jumper. Ellen's eyes are bright
blue and I can see that she is really pleased to be walking around the old garden again, pleased to see that it is coming
back to life. 'It was often very cold. I remember digging the celery, throwing it backwards into a pile, then cutting the
outside leaves and grading it. Our hands would be blue. We would freeze. And it always seemed to be raining when we had to
bring in the parsnips and the carrots.' Ellen's first job had been picking and grading the strawberries, so I showed her our
strawberries, growing in boxes, standing on top of two rows of bales of straw, out of reach of the slugs. 'How did
you
stop the slugs?' I asked. She thought for a minute.

'We never had any problems with slugs, or snails, or pheasants, or rabbits, at least not inside the walls. Outside it was
much more problematic. There were rabbits everywhere: we ate a lot of rabbits in the war. Then the myxoma­tosis came and Maurice
wouldn't go anywhere without a gun. He would put them out of their misery, poor little things.'

I offer to take Ellen into the pig pen to get a close look at the piglets, but she prefers to keep a wary distance. When Ellen
was a young girl, her family had kept a couple of pigs in the back garden. Her mother fed them every day, pouring the food
from a bucket into a long trough. One day, desperate to get at her breakfast, one of their sows had lunged forward to grab
the edge of the bucket with her mouth. Unfortunately, her mother's thumb had been in the way. Ellen remembers her mother running
back to the house, her thumb hanging by sinews, blood pouring from the wound. 'If it had happened today, they could probably
have sewn it back on,' she says, leaning on the gate, watching Bluebell and the piglets ferreting around in the dust, searching
for stray pig nuts that might have eluded them. 'We didn't get rid of them,' she continues, 'and in the war, it was good to
have your own pigs. Along with the rabbits, we were able to eat well.'

Ellen's father used to say that you could use every bit of a pig except for its squeal: bacon and sausage from the body, brawn
from the head, faggots, savouries, lard and pate from the innards; rind and gristle were turned into jelly stock or minced
up for faggots, and trotters and tails were pickled and kept in jars. In the war, pigs were prized although the Ministry of
Agriculture didn't regard them as 'priority' animals. Cows, since they provided milk, had first rights, after humans, to meagre
rations. The numbers of pigs on farms were reduced by half and imports fell by 70 percent after Germany occupied Holland,
Belgium and northern France.

But two factors helped ensure that pigs played their part in the war effort. In 1940, the Minister of Agriculture, Lord Woolton,
passed a law which stated that owners of usable rubbish could be - and occasionally were - prosecuted if they didn't recycle
it for animal use. The other was the establishment of the Small Pig Keepers' Council (SPKC), which persuaded local councils
to turn a blind eye to health laws and allow people to keep pigs in their back gardens. The SPKC also pioneered pig clubs;
these had been popular in the First World War and some had survived the intervening years. If you were a club member you qualified
for cut-price feed, help with collection of food scraps, and for 2/6 you could get insurance for your pig. Pig co-operatives
flourished in urban areas. In Hyde Park, the police started their own piggery. A correspondent of Farm­
er's Weekly
visited the park in 1941 and reported: 'The sty that houses these important pigs was built by policemen, and built like a
gaol. Evidently, the police were afraid that the pigs might escape.' After the lions, elephants and giraffes were moved out
of Regent's Park Zoo to the safer environs of Whipsnade, pigs, also belonging to the London constabulary, were moved into
the cages. As part of the pigs-at-war drive, canteens were encouraged to recycle their scraps. In Tottenham, sixty-eight garbage
collectors bought one hundred pigs; they bolstered their diet from scraps which they collected in special buckets carried
on the refuse lorries. Under ministry regulations, any waste that was intended for pig consumption had to be boiled for an
hour to destroy organisms that might pass on foot and mouth or swine fever. The Tottenham refuse collectors developed a steaming
system which could process huge amounts of waste under pressure, resulting in a concentrated swill which became known as 'Tottenham
Pudding'. Any leftover pudding was sold to other pig-keepers.

Local councils saw the benefits of the pig clubs and helped by placing 'pig bins' on street corners. Labels reminded people
not to put in certain types of waste - tea leaves and rhubarb leaves, which make pigs very sick. But stories from the time
recall strange objects finding their way into the bins: in Bath, a young man called Gordon Tucker found a pair of false teeth
and an ebony and silver pepper-grinder which is still in his family today. By 1942, there were over four thousand pig clubs.
Despite all the domestic scraps, pigs were eating too much imported food, so their numbers were restricted. Co-op clubs were
allowed two per member per year and domestic owners were limited to the same number.

Ellen's father kept pigs, as well as cows, which he rented. And when Ellen and Maurice were newly married, they kept pigs
in their back garden. 'A pair of saddlebacks who ran wild all over the orchard,' she recalls. 'We would buy them as weaners
and then sell the pork. I used to feed them on scraps from the big house: in those days you were allowed to give pigs leftover
cooked food. I think it's a pity that you can't do this today. Such a waste.'

On the evening of 3 May, there are two separate but linked meetings in Ilminster. In the community school, three hundred people
join Bryan Ferris, Mike Fry-Foley and Clinton Bonner to protest against the one-way system. I would have been there too, if
I hadn't already agreed to take part in a debate on climate change which has been organised by the South Somerset Climate
Group and is scheduled to take place at exactly the same time, five hundred yards away, in the town theatre. Both venues are
packed, with people sitting on chairs on the stage and standing up at the back. The one-way meeting is clearly the noisiest.
At the outset, the councillors are challenged by town resident Malcolm Young, who says, 'There is a great tide of public opinion
that thinks you are no longer working for the people of this town but for a £2.26 billion supermarket.' There are representations
from emergency services, the taxi companies and the bus companies. None of them feels they have been adequately consulted.
The councillors are told that the overwhelming view of the town is against the new one-way system. 'We don't live a particularly
grand lifestyle and many shops operate on a shoestring. Tesco has got it all sewn up,' claimed Bryan Ferris, to hearty cheers.
At the end of the evening, they take a vote. All hands are raised in favour of asking for a rethink of the decision, except
one. Councillor Adam Kennedy draws a sarcastic round of applause when he becomes the only person to vote against.

Kennedy owns a small engineering company, and claims to do much of his family shopping in the town. A few days after the meeting,
I reach him on the phone to ask why he is such a strong supporter of both the one-way system and the arrival of Tesco. 'It
gives us more choice,' he replies, 'but I won't talk about the supermarket.'

'Do you think there are any downsides to this road system? What about the fact that the emergency services say the new road
system will add eight minutes to the journey if you live in the northern end of Ilminster?'

'Not true,' he replies. 'You can drive round a different way and come along the main road.' I point out that this would add
several miles to the journey, but he tells me that an ambulance 'with its lights flashing' will be able to speed along the
A road and cover the distance in the same time.

But his main reason for voting against re-opening the one­way decision, it transpires, was that it had been agreed at a meeting
which he had chaired. 'So it would be disloyal of me as I was in the chair,' he says crossly.

'You mean you would lose face?'

'Much worse than losing face, I would be disloyal.'

Kennedy was co-opted on to the council six years ago. As such, he has never been voted into the job. I ask how much he cares
about the town. 'I live here, my children go to school here, I shop here, I'm on the town council . . . I put myself out every
week for this town . . . I can't be accused of not caring . . . it makes me very annoyed that people ask this question.'

'So I take it that you are convinced that the arrival of Tesco and the new one-way system are the very best possible things
that could happen to Ilminster in 2006.'

There was a pause. 'I won't answer that question.'

I have the phone pinned between my shoulder and my ear as I type his answers directly into my computer. 'So you'd like me
to say that in answer to the question, Mr Kennedy said he wouldn't answer.'

'Yes. But you need to ask the question of who is most loyal to the town . . . those friends of yours in the Chamber of Commerce
or me. Just ask them where they send their children to school. It's not the local school.'