pancakes and burghers

They serve up a hearty brekkie here in Parliament Square on Shrove Tuesday. The pancake race launched at precisely 10:12 this morning, the Lords against the MPs... after a gruelling relay, and several cakes afoul, the Lords were in good form, showing their genetic propensity for flip-flopping and running flat out to stay ahead of the commoners.

The Matchless Vale De-animated

Today may have been my last day as a meadow warden, through no choice of my own. I scratched Fluffy and No. 349, watched the increasingly curly-coated calves snuffle their mums, and skimmed their water trough. Last month, the cows endured a vicious dog attack that, surprisingly, made the news as far away as New Zealand. Perhaps it was due to Petersham Meadow's celebrated beauty. Or the universal conflict between pets (really their owners) on public right of ways, and livestock.

In this case, the attack dog was part pit bull, what the Brits call an "illegal dog." A fellow meadow warden, Claire, who captured the attack on her camera, told me these dogs must be licensed and monitored by the police. While the owner and dog fled the scene, they were tracked down in half a day. (Perhaps there is an advantage to all these CCTV cameras everywhere. I just didn't know their acute vision extended to the meadow.)

The perfect storm stems from the muddy zone between public rights, health & safety regulations, Council land ownership, and the risk-averse National Trust managing the land. Meanwhile, an increasingly obstreperous segment of the public refuses to acknowledge the signs to keep dogs on leads, or barbecues out of the meadow-- both hazards to livestock roaming on and over public paths.

During my brief career here, I've seen small children gaze on the cows from an oak stump in the pasture for the better part of an hour, utterly transfixed--and weep to leave. Parents towing their older kids to show them descendants of the cows they grew up with. Hikers stopped in their tracks and figuring out how to get through the herd, mostly with bemused smiles. I've spoken with dozens of locals who cherish this bit of bovine heritage in their backyards, and supported the Petersham Trust for years, raising the money to keep the cows on the meadow through open garden days and cake sales. And the cows have done their part as well, anchoring the meadow and keeping it safe from developer's squalls. Last fall, the riparian meadow and cattle care were transferred to the National Trust, along with an endowment. The stipulation was framed in legalese, that the NT would "endeavour" to keep the cows on the meadow. That endeavour ended today.

The National Trust is unhooking themselves from the horns of the dilemma by shipping the cows and calves back to farmer Michael Bovingdon in Slough. After a mere six months, they are unwilling to carry the risk of a lawsuit, should someone be injured by a cow.

It raises all kinds of questions, not least of which is what have we trampled in our rush to maximize individual rights and freedoms. I think about the surly man who told me he would jolly well keep his german shepherd off lead because the dog is always under voice control. Or the 12-strong group of party folk who told Lin to shag off last weekend when she said fires were prohibited. Have we forgotten that livestock are more than trees dressing the stage of our theatre? That they might have something to teach us, if we were open to another way of being?

This was the closest herd to Hyde Park--a factoid one would have thought bore more intrigue than danger. Who is more of a threat, sloshed urbanites on their weekend idyll, or the cows protecting their young?

By any measurer, this is a tremendous loss. Now when parents bring their toddlers to watch large animals doing what they do, the kids will see a stunningly beautiful, but empty meadow.

Dances with Cows

When I tell people I work as a Petersham Meadow Warden on the prettiest pasture on the planet, they snicker. What kind of policing could these placid bovines possibly need I muse. I follow the herd from apple orchard to kissing gate, holding my whirly-twirly behind my back. They get nervous when they see a stick and toss their heads-- heavy as concrete blocks.

As they huddle at the saltlick are they plotting to interlope on riparian picnics? Or perhaps the head-butting calves will get over-excited and bite an ear a la Mike Tyson?

The cows are earnest protectors of their calves. They will stand patiently while their calves nurse until they get their fill and creamy milk streams down their faces. But unless one is ill, or has a bee up her bum, they dislike being alone. They are a herd with a social order, and moo among themselves to make that clear.

These privileged cows are pastured at the verdant foot of Richmond Hill, framed on the west by the winding Thames, and on the east by the stately red brick and white stone Victorians cresting Richmond Hill. Since Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the view from his house in 1780, visitors have flocked to the hilltop to paint, snap and swoon at the view. In 1902 it became the only prospect protected by an Act of Parliament. While only specks from the hill, for centuries the cows have been a beloved feature of the Petersham water meadow below. Recently, the National Trust--the largest landowner in Europe--took over the management of the herd, and placed them under the watchful eyes of Ian, the chief cow herder, and his cadre of volunteers.

I didn't grow up on a farm, my only experience with large animals was gentling my mustang at the age of 13. Yet I find large animals impart an air of calm and grounding, not necessarily found with pets that share our living room, and mirror our anxieties. Of course, I love those too, how dogs and cats become family, add their measure of joy, and respond to our moods. But the livestock have a bit of wildness left in them. They read our character but make up their own minds whether they wish to respond. They permit the collaboration, but only just. And only if we keep up our part of the contract. Take care, pay attention, and don't interfere with their duties--calving, nursing, eating enough grass to sustain them (which is a long day and half a night's work) and ruminating.

Last season, and this spring, as I watch Fluffy and her cohorts tidily clipping grass, I have a hunch it's the cows that need protecting more than the people. Ramblers, toddlers, and tipplers snake through the kissing gate to reach the high water path to Petersham-- many unaware of the bovine mob inside. There are signs, more now that the National Trust has taken over the keeping of the cows, but few stop to read them. What ensues is an often charming, slightly surreal encounter.

Urbanites who dodge the most heinous London cabbies while gulping a latte and talking on their mobile are at a loss when it comes to making their way through a herd. They scan the meadow for human help, wondering who let the cows loose.

Others, emboldened by memories of petting zoos, reach out an apple or handful of grass. A rather big mistake.

But that's what we're there for--to intercept the well-meaning, but occasionally wrong-headed, and gently enforce the proper distance and disposition -- in the humans. I keep the whirly-twirly behind my back.

All That Sparkles Isn't Gaul

Peter Hall places the ruddy chipped stone on the oak table.  Light through the Sussex cottage window illuminates the flint ax, his white ruff of beard, and the blue-eyed Bengal cat.

“Guess how old.”

Fine bubbles subduct in golden liquid while he waits.

I’m off by 270,000 years.  He points to a tiny catalog number on the side.  “The Sussex Archeological Society wanted it, but it belongs here.” Hall exhumed the Pleistocene spearpoint when he carved Breaky Bottom Vineyard out of chalk and flint in the 1970s. Chalk-- the porous, eminently drainable soil that connects the South Downs with the Champenoise. Flint to warm the roots. Hall’s French mother helped cultivate his palate early, and it’s paying off, as Peter patiently ferments, sniffs and riddles his way to world attention. Fame he dismisses with a Gallic shrug. “I just do what I care to. Every day.”

Liquid Renascence

Offer almost anyone a choice between an English bubbly and a vintage Cristal, and they’ll laugh.  Until they taste what judges at the 2010 World Sparkling Wine championships in Verona hailed as “a fine mousse, notes of lemon zest, shortbread and apricot. Well balanced.” Nyetimber’s 2003 West Sussex Classic Cuvee trounced 50 contenders, including offerings from venerable Bollinger and Louis Roederer -- selling at ten times the price.

Was this a warm summer fluke, or can the stealthy English sparklers sustain their explosion onto the global wine scene?

Perhaps the answer lies buried in the dirt. Driving south from London, I navigate over Kipling’s “bow-headed whale-backed downs” to suss out the secrets of the small winemakers with big aspirations.

Scenic backroads twist through copses of oak and ash and tiny medieval villages--Ardingly, Ashcombe Hollow, Ditchling. Often the cobbled streets are just wide enough for a horse and haycart--I can stretch my arm out the window and touch the half-timbered houses. “Kill your speed,” the yellow and black signs buzz. I do. Mostly to admire the thatched-roof cottages and stone-studded pubs.  Grape wisteria flows over sandstone walls as 400-year-old churches glimmer with the glassy flint chunks that frame life here. An ancient castle keep yields views of hedgerows divvying up the rolling green like a giant’s chessboard. Along the way, I fuel my quest with Harvey’s Bitter and Ploughman’s Lunches of aged cheddar and chutney, but am hard pressed to find an eatery offering local wines.

English bubblies have only begun rising to the collective conscious. A clutch of southeast vineyards have garnered top awards at international juried competitions. And a fortunate few have joined Nyetimber in what most Brits would consider the highest accolade: a niche in the Queen’s wine vault.

Jancis Robinson, renowned oenophile and consultant to Her Royal Majesty, says, “While English production is still miniscule, about 1,000 hectares, this may be the moment English sparkling wines make their mark.”


Who scooped Dom Perignon?

Mike Roberts pours a glass of his 2006 Merret Grosvenor-- served at the Queen’s 80th birthday bash--and tells why he took the risk to start Ridgeview with his wife Christine. “We have the same soil, and a better climate for fizzes than the French—with more daylight hours to develop the delicate flavors. We don’t need to imitate --what we have here is all English.”

Bubbles release aromas of elderflower and new mown grass (or is that hedgerow?), while 16 acres of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier bud outside the picture window. Last week the family was out all night lighting bugees--rusted tins with candles inside—against a late spring frost.

“An Englishman, John Merret, made wine sparkle in 1662 – thirty-five years before Pierre Perignon entered a wine cellar,” Roberts notes. Ridgeview trademarked “Merret” for their sparkling wines, hoping the moniker eventually earns the same cachet as the terroir reigning from France.

Don’t call them British

The joke still circulates that it takes four men to drink a glass of English wine: the victim, two to hold him, and one to pour it down his throat. What fuels the bad rap: British wine generally means high-proof, syrupy plonk. The grapes can arrive from Slovenia, and as long as they’re processed in the UK, it’s British wine. In contrast, English wines must be pressed from English grapes.

Yet homegrown makes up just 1% of the wine drunk here, and most upmarket restaurants still recommend Champagne or Prosecco to accompany their treacle tarts.


The upside of climate change?

Today close to 400 vineyards cascade over hillsides from Hadrian’s Wall to the Isle of Wight. In recent years, a warmer climate, and cross-fertilization with vintners worldwide has turned the tide to sparkling wine.

Robinson notes, “The French are nervous… they haven’t been getting the acidity they’d like.” No one wants to pop a cork to global warming, but the extra heat does appear to be helping English vintners -- and not for the first time. Native-grown wines have slaked the thirst of island inhabitants since the Romans first planted spears -- and vineyards -- here.

Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at Imperial College London, Richard Selley explains, “Viticulture has thrived in Britain for most of the last two millennia. That is, until socio-political factors and the Little Ice Age in the 14th century cooled winemaking off a bit.” But now it seems the heat is rising in Britain again.

“Whether it’s the result of human activity since the Industrial Revolution, or a natural cycle, no one knows for sure. But a one-degree temperature rise will transform a marginally good grape growing climate into an optimum one. Seventy years from now, we may be growing Cabs by the Cuckmere River.”


The great white way

Breaky Bottom and Ridgeview both lie within a flint pitch of the South Downs Way, the 100-mile chalk path drawn across the buoyant geography of East and West Sussex.  Walk it and your boots become dusted with the aeons. Stone Age burial grounds, Saxon forts, and signaling rings from WWII punctuate the rise and fall that once was the ocean floor.

I trek a short portion of the Way as lambs dodge across my path. A great English birthright guarantees foot access across land tracts. Fortunately for the untitled, even privilege can’t buy privacy here.

As I climb the last hill to Seaford Head, the Seven Sisters cliffs rise from the Channel, apparitions trailing white feet in waves.  On a well-placed bench, I offer a quaff of Breaky Bottom 2006 to a kindred hiker.  He accepts, and surprise crinkles his forehead. We muse on light radiating from chalk, a French connection and the warmth to come.

The table of life

"Out of the chaos the future emerges in harmony and beauty."--Emma Goldman

Bopping our table mates with limp scallions while singing Dayeinu wasn't the only highlight of the Seder last Monday. It might have been the "sacrificial Yam," offered in deference to the many vegetarians crowding the makeshift dining hall in this 1920s Berkeley bungalow. Or the elevation of Miriam (the dancing girl that usually only merits a footnote), to her revered place as prophetess and conjurer of mysterious wells in the desert--who refreshed lagging spirits during years and years of dusty wandering.

Nearly half the 50 guests weren't Jewish, many were attending their first Seder, yet somehow all made to feel like family. The hostess, Candace reminds us that we are all on a perpetual journey of liberation with the earth's peoples. We move backwards and forwards through history as the songs of the Tunisian protestors, the 1911 shirtwaist factory protest, as well as the struggles of civilians in Gaza are remarked on by Judy, the officiant.

Karpas, maror, matzah-- Foods tell stories, as we work our way through bitter herbs soaked in tears to the apple and nut relish standing in for mortar used for rebuilding--we take the myth of hardship, flight and freedom into our bodies, into our own histories.

But mostly it was a love fest of self-described"over-the-hill anarchists," filmmakers, politicians, academics, midwives and prison wardens--celebrating the battles for truth and freedom they had joined in over the years. Recounting struggles, up to their necks in water on the way to the land of milk and honey.

And that was the sweetest moment of all, over macaroons and strawberries, seeing that after a lifetime of struggle, hope for liberation for all was still alive among the old lefties, in the old house in Berkeley. My husband and I drifted out feeling like it had been a reunion with people we'd never even met. With echoes of the Buddhist precepts that no one is free from suffering until everyone is, the refrain of tonight's haggadah followed us out the door and into the full moon's shadow.

"So that the next sea-opening is not also a drowning; so that our singing is never again their wailing. So that our freedom leaves no one orphaned, childless, or gasping for air."

Toad Haul

We show up at dusk at the road barrier just outside Richmond Park on a day neither the fog nor the shock of the tragedies in Japan ever abated. A small knot of the "wellies and anorak set" plus two in suits, quickly identified as town councilmen for the Richmond Park, Ham and Petersham districts, David William and Brian Miller, all hold blue buckets and survey the knee-high chicken wire fence lining Church Road that was to corral the migrating toads. It was our charge, as the newly inducted Toad Patrol, to carry the common toads, or bufo bufo across the road and further them on their journey to their ancestral spawning pond, now apparently enclosed in the Sultan of Brunei's estate.

"There are holes in the wall they can wriggle through," says Jonathan Fray, who lives just down the road. He and his partner, Diane Slater, instigated this amphibian rescue effort, after watching hundreds of their numbers squashed on this road last year. Alison, the Ecology Officer from the Richmond Borough Environment Directorate, is handing out Risk Assessment forms to the Patrol, warning us that we had a high risk of colliding with fast cars and a medium-to-high risk of drowning in deep water as well as contacting toad poisons. This gets my attention.

I'm directed to the supplementary sheet which whimsically cites a one Miss Ormerod, a Victorian lady who determines to find out for herself what it was like to eat a great crested newt. Now whether she was sampling what MacBeth's weird sisters evidently found to be a revelatory delicacy, or looking for an equivalent of our blowfish sushi experience--a slight tingling of the lips, but short of convulsions, wasn't specified in the handout. Only that it was not recommended that we try licking a toad, lest we endure the foaming at the mouth and shivering fits that beset Miss Ormerod. Oh these wacky Brits. They're only reserved on the outside, just propose a lip smack with a toad and see how fast they break into smiles.

As it turns out, the poison toads emit from their 'warts' is pretty much their only defense from predators-- not being as spry as frogs. Still a toad has to be pushed pretty far before he releases his amines and alkaloids (one of them, omethyl bufotenine, is said to be a potent hallucinogen). As in, teeth clamping down on his back. I'm put at ease by Alison coming forward with a bufo male who clings to her wool jacket and looks about quite calmly at our huddle, even as she picks up his feet to show us the knobs beneath his long toes that identify him as a male. A councilman surfaces with a female, twice the size of the male and rather more anxious to be on her way, quite bulging with eggs, like an overstuffed soft-sided valise.

A biker speeds through in the deepening dusk, and then a few more, ignoring the Traffic Diversion sign. David William calls after them, "You can't ride through here," but is largely ignored. One stops and asks why not. Evidently not all residents share the concern of Froglife, the booster association trying to avert amphibian disaster. This little group has transported hundreds of toads across Church Road in the last few weeks, while Froglife reports forty thousand more toad lives saved across Britain each season.

But two toads is all it was to be tonight. Diane says it may not be warm or wet enough tonight for the hoardes to emerge. "If you can see your breath," Jonathan adds, "you probably won't see many toads." We walk the wire fence but see no movement among the fallen alder leaves, so will come back on a warmer, wetter evening.

Perhaps tonight as the Toad Patrol wend their separate ways back to the latest flash of unimaginable suffering around the planet, they will keep this little song from Wind in the Willows as the selvedge of their minds, and dream of carrying blue pailfulls of bufo bufo to safety: 'Helper and healer, I cheer--Small waifs in the woodland wet--Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it--Bidding them all forget.'

Nutmeg, waterfall and lime time

A nutmeg scents my palm, the dark red flames of mace clinging to the glossy brown surface--as though Aubrey Beardsley on ganja had taken his brush to them. I hold it tightly as Vaughan says, "95% of the nutmeg crop was wiped out by Hurricane Ivan in 2004-- and a tree take 7 years to bear after planting. But we are resilient." He guides us through the nutmeg and banana cooperative plantations enroute to our hike to St. Margaret's Falls, first of the Seven Sisters in Grand Etang National Park.

Four of us have torn ourselves from the siren arms of the luxury resort on Pink Gin Beach to explore the precipitous verdant mountainsides of Grenada's interior. The road winds through forests of palm,

mahogany, and the few giant gommier trees spared both in 2004, and the sucker punch of Hurricane Emily the following year. We passed homes on stilts, some newer and in good repair, others rust-riven and bearing the clawmarks of hurricanes. Many have hibiscus-rimmed gardens with paw paw (papaya), a few cacao, nutmegs, sweet potatoes, corn, pigeon peas and callaloo, a dark vegetable that looks and tastes like bok choi. Plants flourish

in this rich volcanic and humus-dense soil. They say if you spit a watermelon seed, a vine bearing fruits will appear the next day.

Vaughan tells us about the traditionally cooperative nature of

the Grenada's cocoa, banana and nutmeg industries. "But the IMF aid after Ivan was a double-edged sword. It helped some more than others, and tested the bonds of the community." We walk past a colorful farm with beautiful golden cows, staked to keep them out of the crops. "We have a strong belief that we are not like crabs in a barrel who climb on each other's backs to escape from the bottom. Here, if one succeeds, he tries to pull the rest up with him."

His words spread warmth through my limbs like the balmy morning air, as we pass ginger, heliconia, and begonia blooming along the path. We reach Mitchell's Bar, closed but watched over by Bob Marley, and work our way through the giant bamboo and down rock steps, built in the 18th century to make carrying the harvest over this mountain a bit easier.

After boulder-hopping across a river, Vaughan points to a narrow muddy uphill track, and says we can carry on to St. Margaret's or take this side path to Honeymoon Falls. Happily, the others agree to head upriver to Honeymoon, which we reach in short order after Vaughan splits the river with his body to show us where to climb. We reach the pool at the bottom of the

50-meter falls and plunge into chill water. Without question, this is one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. The crashing sound and power of the waterfall were tremendous and swimming towards it, took all my strength to tread in place.

Resting on sun-struck boulders, we eat bananas and hear about "hashing," a local sport where the hasher blazes a trail with a cutlass, and the crowd follows, running, walking, however they want to ambulate to the finish line, which is nearly always a rum shack. "It's not a race, and the hasher always makes a route that everyone can manage. It's really all about what happens after everyone arrives."

On the way back, we meet Mitchell, struggling up the hill with the first trip to provision for the day. He smiles and tells us he started this outpost bar recently, and it's going well, but adds, "It's hard to do this all by myself, mon."

Perhaps he won't have to for long.

(For another sweet glimpse of this island, here's a video on the organic Grenada Chocolate Company, started by a guy in a hut and eleven others working with 18th-century equipment.

http://rococochocolates.com/blog/trevor-macdonald-meets-grenada-chocolate-mott/