Of Cardboard and Steam Trains

 

Let’s start with the bad news. Despite readers contacting me in their – OK, in their twos – begging me to attend the “Meet The Village” morning and report back, I’m afraid we will be in London (London!) that weekend. The village will just have to lose out.

Meanwhile, following the sudden feeling of being Settled In I reported on last time, life has become a kind of “Welcome to Country Living” induction programme. 

Module One: trying to get rid of cardboard.

We had amassed a garage full of the stuff, a mixture of flattened packing boxes and unflattenable cartons that once contained sofas and coffee tables. Immune to the regular cries of “when are you going to go to the dump?” I was determined to find a local tradesperson who would take it off our hands. Meanwhile, I continued to fill the empty boxes with old curtains and expanded polystyrene till we had our own grade one fire hazard right on our doorstep.

To find the appropriately qualified individual, I did what every genuine village dweller would do: I looked in the adverts in the village magazine, and came up with a number for “Clear-it: all clearance work undertaken”. No answer, and no voicemail (this is something I’ve noticed out here in the wilds; no tradesperson seems to have voicemail. If you text them they will reply in about a week). I determined to be patient and support a local business. After a couple more attempts a vague sounding man answered. 

I outlined the scope of the job. 

“Argh, cardboard,” he said (he didn’t sound as much like a pirate as that suggests, it was more a ruminating noise). “I’ll need to take a look at it.” 

That was fine, I said, when could he come round? 

“Well, now: Tuesday I’m moving the sheep in the upper field, Wednesday I’m in the factory…” (What kind of professional portfolio was this?) “I reckon I could come Thursday.”

 That would be great, I told him, assuming he was an undiagnosed schizophrenic who I’d never hear from again.

But he did indeed show up on Thursday. 

“You got a lot of stuff here,” he said, peering at the towering mound of cardboard plus extras. 

Not being sure whether this was said in criticism or in wonder, I kept my own counsel. 

“I”ll need to go over Bridgwater, see if they’ll take the cardboard.” 

I nodded sagely, imagining him walking through the streets of Bridgwater ringing a bell and shouting “‘Oo wants me single wall double face corrugated?”

“The rest of the stuff I’ll burn.”

Oh great - so much for my organic rocket (omg, I didn’t tell you about my rocket - in a minute) and my compost heap, I was now going to be responsible for nuclear winter over Taunton caused by the burning of tonnes of expanded polystyrene. Anyway, off he went, and I heard nothing for a couple of weeks. Back to our theme of the rural induction: waiting a couple of weeks is not a London thing. You’d give him a day before threatening legal action and lining up three competitors to tender for the work. But here we do things differently.

Bridgwater celebrates the Coming of the Cardboard

He rang me up out of the blue.

“I”ve been over Bridgwater.”

“Oh, good.”

“They want a sample of the cardboard. Can I come and get some?”

“Sure; when would you like to come round?”

“Well now: Thursday I’m moving the sheep back into the upper field; Friday I’m with the wife moving scrap from the yard…”

“Monday will be fine.”

He came on Monday. He took a piece of cardboard so the cardboard factory in Bridgwater could see what cardboard looked like. And I didn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks. When, just as before, he got in touch. And arranged to come and collect everything.

“There’s quite a lot of stuff. I’ll need to bring the wife.”

His wife turned out to be a different proposition. Having got used to his genial-yet-vague demeanour, I wasn’t prepared for the sharp-faced woman who turned up, peering at the house.

“You’ve got a big house,” she said. “You’re obviously not short of a quid or two.”

I attempted to give a lecture on price differentials between London and Somerset, using Powerpoint slides I keep on my phone for such an eventuality. She was unmoved. 

She set to on the cardboard with aplomb. As more and more went onto the truck I started nosing around for unwanted items.

I held up a large broken suitcase. “Could you take this?”

“Yep; I can burn that.”

I saw the shadow of the ash cloud reach towards Bruton, sending supermodels running for cover.

And so they left, to deliver the cardboard, and then go on to a Ford Zodiac rally. Such is rural life.

Oh, the rocket. Yes, I had a final go at growing something, planting some rocket and beetroot under rabbit-proof netting. And they grew. So to my raspberries I can add some green vegetables and my yearly harvest is a little more respectable.

There has also been a development in my Somerset To-do List. You might remember there were three determinations I made when we moved: join a band, find a football team to support, and be a guard on the West Somerset Railway. I have previously reported I’m in a band (our first gig coming this month in Cheddar, if you’re passing), I’m a paid up Exeter City supporter (6^th in League Two, yay) and this week I had an email from a gentleman responding to my query about being a guard.

First, if you’re wondering, this is not (as my daughter thought) me being a guard on GWR for free, driving down wages and causing rural unemployment. The WSR is a heritage steam railway (plus a couple of diesels if we’re being accurate) staffed by volunteers. I rather like the idea of waving a flag, blowing a whistle, and then sitting in the guard’s van reading the paper while we chug to the next station.

Mike, my mentor, brought me crashing to earth a little. There is, it seems, a hierarchy of responsibility on the railway. Before you can be a guard you have to be a Travelling Ticket Inspector. He explained in detail why this was, and when I woke up I pondered my choices. I had also wondered about being a signalman, though when Mike described it as “two minutes of frenzied activity followed by two hours of doing nothing,” I drifted back to the job on offer. Being a ticket inspector carries the downside of dealing with the public and remaining cheerful for more than five minutes. But I suppose I could do each journey as a different character, perhaps with a puppet, like Rod Hull and Emu. 

Tickets please! No, Emu, don't eat the tickets, etc

My induction day is in three weeks. I shall of course report back.