Country life
Charity plonkers
Leanda de Lisle
There is little glamour attached to char- ity work in the country. I once sat on an NSPCC committee in London. All I was expected to do was to turn up to a very smart party with some friends and drink lots of champagne. Sitting on the Market Bosworth NSPCC committee is a different story. We are not so much the ladies that lunch, as the ladies that cook it, serve it and wash up after it. This week I'm produc- ing two puddings and a vegetable for a fund-raising lunch at a local farm.
I don't suppose Hillary Clinton would be very impressed by a group of women in aprons, but the Market Bosworth commit- tee does rather well. Last year we raised nearly £4,000 from quiz evenings, coffee mornings, Aga cooking lessons and the fast- food stand we had at the September Team Event. That was a particular success. It poured with rain and people soon gave up watching the horses to shelter in our tent where they felt obliged to buy our ham- burgers and tolerate the pointed 'Thank- you' I delivered as I handed them over.
It's our district centenary next year and we are already planning a flower festival for the May bank holiday. The proposed theme is 'Suffer the little children' and the arrangements are to be titled, 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', `Moses in a basket', and so forth. Perhaps The Spectator could sponsor one? The infant Bruce Anderson in lemon and white carnations might be nice. Actually, at our last meeting the doctor's wife asked me what kind of arrangements I liked. 'The continental style, perhaps?' Unfortunately, I have never been to a flow- er festival so I didn't really understand what she was talking about. Rather tact- lessly I told her that I liked natural-looking arrangements. 'My father does marvellous things with twigs, but, sadly, my own efforts leave a great deal to be desired,' I said. She cut me off, announcing, 'You're a plonker.' I was startled, but she continued, 'I'm the same, I just plonk flowers in a vase and they flop about any old how.'
I looked around the table. It seemed as if only I was vulgar enough to be aware of the double entendre; one or two other ladies confessed that they were plonkers too. Still, I doubt that any of them have had as much reason to be embarrassed by their flower arrangements as I have.
I've practically given up picking things from our walled kitchen garden. On one occasion I put some striking purple flowers in a guest bedroom. They turned out to be leeks that had gone to seed, and by the time our friends arrived they had filled the room with the scent of grated onion. On another occasion I found a girlfriend peer- ing at the prickly centrepiece of a particu- larly dramatic plonking. 'Isn't it magni- ficent?' I asked her, proudly. 'The thistle of Scotland!' She was outraged, 'That isn't a thistle. It's a globe artichoke.' Well, it wasn't in a fit state for Hollandaise sauce.
I fear there is an element of truth in my husband's view that I am only really inter- ested in plants and animals that I can eat. This has its positive side. It was greed, at least in part, that made me so determined to keep up our acre of organic fruit and vegetables. Most walled gardens are grassed down as they are hard work which is expensive if you employ a garden- er — and produce far more food than even my family can eat. I got round these problems by persuad- ing the gardener to take it on as a business. In a few weeks we shall be selling our excess fruit and vegetables to a cyber cafe in Leicester. Until then, we have our open days when the public can come and admire the garden's wild areas (common weeds), medicinal herbs (evil tasting weeds) and green manure (dead weeds). Of course, there are a few leeks too. Happily, these are looking as I would expect — ready to be shredded and cooked with orange for the NSPCC's fund-raising lunch.
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