TALES FROM THE VALE
Tales From The Vale with Andy Palmer
A beam of pleasure punctured those final dismal lockdown days. I was in Dike’s, in Stalbridge, on the search for coconut milk powder (yes, it was essential travel, because I planned a Thai curry for the evening’s feast, and no reader could argue with that, surely). I asked a pleasant and helpful assistant, who said, ‘If we’ve got some, it’ll be by the desecrated coconut’. I was going to respond with, ‘that sounds grave’, but if I had, she may have asked, ‘why’, and I would have had to explain that maybe she meant desiccated, and she was so sweet that I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. But my mum was delighted by this exchange when I phoned her that evening. *** My last column mentioned the old railway line in Stalbridge which, before the Beeching cuts, had a level crossing to stop traffic on each side of the line when a train was due. There’s a story of a villager seeing that one gate was open on one side of the track and the opposite gate closed. The station master explained, ‘we’re half expecting a train.’
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Using my super-sleuthing digital ***skills, I tracked it down. This is Jon Chubb’s Yamaha R6 2002 , the very one the teens were poring over in Stur.
Well, I’d just made that up, but this is true: In my last column I mentioned the farmer’s son whose father did not recognize that the posh huntsman he gave earthy advice to was actually Prince Charles. The farmer’s son, my best mate at junior school, was overwhelmed when, a few years later, his father and mother invited him into the kitchen. The son knew it was important because his father had put down The Racing Post. ‘Son, we’re going to invite you into the partnership of the farm,’ they said, and offered him a small but important stake in the business. ‘We think it time that you took on greater responsibilities,’ the parents explained. A few days later, the postie delivered a bank statement. ‘You’d better look at this now that you’re a partner,’ said father, passing over the statement. The son, who knew little about business affairs, was impressed to see that the account read £11,321. But there was something he didn’t understand. ‘What does OD mean?’ he asked, helpfully adding, ‘they’ve written it in red.’
There was a nice story recently on the Stur Facebook. Bloke rode his motorbike into town, parked it and went to buy a paper. He came back to find a group of teens around his bike and thought, ‘here’s trouble’. It was anything but. The youngsters were generous in their admiration of the bike and bombarded him with polite and intelligent questions. The bloke later went on FB to praise the youths’ parents for bringing up such well-mannered children, and offering any of them a ride. *** Good to see people in pubs, the charity shops open, along with the florists and hairdressers in Stur. Ref hairdressers, my favourite response to, ‘how would you like your hair cut?’ is, ‘in silence’. We went for an alfresco pint at The Antelope in Hazelbury Bryan (which has great real ales such as Exmoor Gold and Tribute from the St Austell brewery). When I asked the manageress for a Tribute, she said, ‘Nice jacket, Andy’. I’ve been missing those everyday social exchanges. Always free - subscribe here
