My husband and I are in New York, where everyone is talking about the approaching Trump-Biden debate. Well, I’ll be astonished if it deserves the name. True debate seems to be a thing of the past in the US, with both sides of any argument (assisted dying, the Israel/Gaza war, immigration) shouting loudly but not listening. Civilized friends of ours tell us their university-student children refuse to engage in debate about gender identity. It’s “You’re just wrong, dad. You don’t get it. That’s all.”
The Americans are mad about The Great American Baking Show, the stateside Bake Off, so I have an ego-boosting time being stopped for selfies and a less flattering one being asked by women, young and old, if Paul Hollywood is as nice as he is good looking, and is he single? Yes and no, in that order.
On a glorious spring day we walk the High Line. The beds are full of aquilegia and alliums, phlox and catmint, with trees, planted maybe ten years ago, bursting into leaf. White-blossomed Cornus arches overhead and works of art pop up every few hundred yards — all there for a short sojourn, like the Fourth Plinth sculptures in London’s Trafalgar Square. The overall design is modern and satisfying, with some old railway tracks still visible in parts and the planting both ordered and informal at the same time. There are areas for sitting and gossiping, and views over Manhattan in all directions.
The High Line ends at Chelsea Market, which is heaving with tourists and New Yorkers. We had lunch in Dickson’s, a carnivore’s dream. Half-a-dozen enthusiastic young butchers, their aprons bloodied, provide the theater at the end of the restaurant, butchering carcasses hanging on a rail. They’re so skilful it’s mesmerizing. One proudly tells me that they waste nothing. They supply restaurants with rillettes, lamb’s tongues, tripe and caul and every other “variety meat,” all of which generally go for pet food. The fridges contain pots of stock and broth: beef, lamb, veal and chicken. Also, demi-glace sauces, beef dripping and whipped lard, and smoked and unsmoked lardons. Their smokery provides charcuterie of every description and salamis festoon the ceilings. Home cooks queue for organic chicken and rib-eye on the bone, pork chops and mince. We sat at the counter eating perfect steak tartare at ten dollars a head — not much more than the price of a cappuccino.
I’m definitely old and getting tetchy at the bossiness of machines. My husband’s Kia won’t start until he’s confirmed he understands the highway code. My car won’t go unless the doors are locked, the lights on, my seatbelt buckled and the gear in Park. Everything wants passwords or codes I don’t remember. The burglar alarm asks me questions I can’t answer; the induction cooker-top turns itself off if I put a wooden spoon down on it. And absolutely everything beeps: the fridge, freezer, microwave, dishwasher, vacuum-packing machine. The whole kitchen is talking at me. Why can’t I just shut them up?
Some machines are brilliant, of course. Our Japanese toilet, which glows in the dark so you can find it at night, will wash your bum and blow it dry. I’m told modern versions offer you Mozart or Adele to accompany your performance. They probably analyze your excretions and give you a health report, such as “See your doctor immediately.” My more modest one comes with a fifty-four-page manual. Of course I don’t read manuals. Who does? I once tried looking up “battery charging” on my Mini Countryman’s tome. The index directed me to page 252. And on page 252, it said “Charging Battery: See page 252.”
Aging renders one useless at modern kit. Our middle-aged electrician can’t reset the lights he installed which have half-a-dozen “mood” options — he has to call a specialist. We used to have an elderly TV repair man who could only work our fancy television if he brought his eleven-year-old son with him. When said son went away to university he had to retire. My husband has resorted to buying a DVD player because neither of us can download films.
But to happier modern fashions: the eco-trend for home-grown and local has spawned some wonderful businesses in my neck of the woods: Chipping Norton alone boasts a charcuterie, a smokery, community gardens selling veggie boxes, an excellent butcher and fishmonger and a weekly farmers’ market. The most joyous of all is Chippy Flower Farm, a two-acre plot near Great Tew. It grows the sort of flowers a mythical grandmother would have tended in her cottage garden, among them forget-me-nots, love-in-the-mist, cornflowers, columbines, roses, peonies and various relations of cow parsley, all produced organically with no chemicals, no peat and no plastic. It sells cut flowers by the bunch, bouquet or bucket. The business was started and is owned by Tif Loehnis and is run by her and a bunch of her women friends. They give classes in flower arranging, drying and using dried flowers, gardening and botanical painting. They do flowers for weddings and events and supply local florists but you can also roll up and pick your own posy or bucketful. Right now, the fields are ablaze with orange, yellow and red Icelandic poppies, while blue and white rocket and purple alliums are in exuberant bloom. You can soften your bunch with pale lime-green euphorbia, feathery grasses or other spring-greenery, giving you an arrangement a million miles from the stiff perfection of imported blooms. The drawback is that it is open only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and you get what’s in season. But that, I think, is precisely what makes the farm so special.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
