The Brits nail eccentricity
Hurrah and jolly hockey sticks from Old Blighty! More specifically, from a spiffing converted annexe overlooking a field of rescue ponies in the bucolic English countryside. I found it on Airbnb. As you do.
Actually, until this week, I didn’t. I was an Airbnb virgin. (Don’t scoff. Someone has to be at the end of the statistical long tail).
I must be starting to show my age, for new technology makes me a little nervous when travelling. I still prefer to plot an itinerary on a map the size of a single bedsheet, lest my rental car’s sat-nav starts spouting gobbledygook, but golly gosh, old bean! If you need to book last-minute affordable accommodation off the beaten track – say, down a Shropshire country lane – this Airbnb malarkey is all rather marvellous, innit?
Shropshire claims to be the birthplace of, among other things, the industrial revolution, the modern Olympics, the first skyscraper (the Ditherington Flax Mill was the world’s first multi-storey, iron-framed building) and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
It’s also the ancestral seat of a tiny English plum that has made its way from the hedgerow to the heart of the slow food movement. The ‘Shropshire Prune’ damson, despite being not much bigger than a cherry tomato, is a bona fide British darling, having been inducted into the UK Ark of Taste as a threatened crop in need of preservation.
Unlike our damsons, which are round and mouth-puckeringly sour, the ‘Shropshire Prune’ is petite, pearshaped and sweet to eat. It was once widely planted for use in dyeing as, when combined with ammonia as a fixative, dark purple damsons yield the khaki colour favoured for army fatigues.
I’m writing a book about damsons. Yes, a whole book. And, yes, without exception, everyone I have told about my latest publishing project has suggested I might very well be mad. But I counter that a plum pilgrimage is no more bonkers than climbing mountains or running marathons while on holiday, or paying for the privilege of being told to sit down, shut up and subsist on organic kale crisps and spirulina smoothies at a mindfulness retreat.
‘‘There’s a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts,’’ quips New York folk singer Christine Lavin, queen of the quirky rhyming couplet. (Look her up on YouTube: she famously turned a threesecond encounter with Harrison Ford – he was coming in to dine at the Snake River Grill as she was leaving – into a three-minute song.)
If I have momentarily mislaid my marbles, I am at least maintaining a proud colonial tradition. In his 1890 self-help book on New Zealand for the Emigrant, Invalid and Tourist, Dr John Murray Moore reckoned he could write quite a chapter on Kiwi eccentrics: ‘‘What undeveloped geniuses, what utter bores, what strange and queer men and women.’’
New Zealanders have always had a soft spot for the anomalous and unconventional, from the kooky Christchurch wizard to former rabble-rouser Tim Shadbolt, self-confessed ‘‘aromantic asexual atheist’’ author Keri Hulme and Lorde, who persists in calling herself a loser despite clear evidence (squillions of record sales, 5.6 million Twitter followers, Taylor Swift as a bestie etc) to the contrary.
But if anyone has nailed the intricacies of eccentricity, it’s the Brits. Some are simply playing a part – think Bill Nighy, Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman, Jim Broadbent, Helena Bonham Carter, Rhys Ifans, Tilda Swinton and Brenda Blethyn – but others are properly crackers.
This week alone, I’ve interviewed young boys who sow world recordbeating sunflowers and wacky Welshmen who compete to grow the mightiest marrows and cucumbers the size of sausage dogs. I’ve made the acquaintance of artisan butchers, bakers and cider makers.
I’ve met fellow damson disciples and taste-tested their damson jam, damson mincemeat, damson chutney, and prize-winning Cumbrian damson pies, the fruit enclosed in crumbly sable pastry topped with hazelnut frangipane.
And, of course, I’ve washed it all down with damson gin, damson vodka, damson stout and damson wine.
On my tiki tour around pick-yourown orchards, I have also eaten so many fresh damsons that I fear my skin will soon turn an antioxidant shade of indigo.
The American columnist Regina Brett would certainly approve. ‘‘Be eccentric now,’’ she once wrote. ‘‘Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.’’
New Zealanders have always had a soft spot for the anomalous and unconventional... But if anyone has nailed the intricacies of eccentricity, it's the Brits.