The Grantchester Guinea

Grantchester is a small village near Cambridge which I have been aware of since my teens through listening to Roger Waters’ beautifully simple song Grantchester Meadows from the early Pink Floyd album Ummagumma.
      ‘In the lazy watermeadow I lay me down,
      All around me golden sunflakes covering the ground’
      At least once a year I cycle out from the centre of Cambridge, through Newnham, cut through a couple of back streets and onto the path through the meadows, known locally as the Grantchester Grind. Given a golden sunflake sprinkled fair day there are walkers, picnickers, lovers and punters enjoying the pretty much unspoilt scene, the meandering river with its drooping willows, and cattle grazing along the banks. Approaching the village the competing attractions of the famous Orchard Tearooms (patronised by Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf, our old mate Ludwig Wittgenstein and many others), and the three pubs in the village are tempting the passer-by with arrowed boards along the way. The tarmac of Mill Way winds sharply through the village, taking in all of these attractions, as well as the church and vicarage, a rustic workshop or two, a handful of spectacularly nice houses, a bridge over the dreamy Granta, and just out of the village, the track off to Byron’s Pool, which at the time Lord Byron allegedly swam in it was presumably quite scenic, but is now a concrete eyesore.
      To most people of course, the village is now known as the setting for the frankly over-contrived TV detective series Grantchester, which features the vicar of said parish frantically cycling backwards and forwards past Kings College Chapel in every episode, or when he’s not doing that, sitting in The Eagle with a dishevelled looking Robson Green trying to think of a believable plot.
      Grantchester is in danger of being overwhelmed by the developments going on around out. The creeping expansion of new housing from Trumpington feels very threatening. Let’s hope it can keep its character and peace.

“Where are we off to today?” asked the ever-enthusiastic Curly, my sixteen year old waitress for the day, as I picked her up from Little Fenton. She lived just round the corner from the house we had rented there, and was a fantastic waitress, which makes our working life so much easier. Curly’s enthusiasm, maturity and personality were loved not only by me, but by every customer we worked for. She lived with her Mum, who had separated from her Dad, and although she saw him regularly, she wasn’t particularly able to talk to him, and so I would have long discussions with her about career options and her future on our sometimes two hour trips to a job (conversation on the way home tended to be a bit more muted).
      “Grantchester. A lady called Amelia, dinner party for sixteen, having her 40^th birthday in the garden.”
      Suspicious look from Curly, who is well aware of the potential complications of ‘having it in the garden’.
      “Sounds like a nice house, and big. It’s opposite where The Archers live apparently.”
      Curly wouldn’t have heard of the long-running bucolic Radio 4 soap, let alone one of Britain’s best-selling novelists, former politician, and sometime jailbird, nor his scientist wife.
      “Who?”
      “Never mind. D’you remember that big canapé party we did in that farmhouse where you got landed with making loads of cocktails, and they had firepits on the patio?
      “Oh yeah!”
      “Well, they are friends of Amelia’s, and recommended me for this dinner party. She wants it ‘super relaxed but delicious’.”
      “No pressure. What’s she having?”
      “Three types of canapé – smoked haddock scotch quail eggs, gorgonzola with red onion marmalade and fried sage leaf, and your favourite duck parcels – no starter – main of herb crusted rack of lamb, and my famous pear and hazelnut frangipane filo parcels with chocolate sauce for dessert.
      “So no starter, and all eating the same meal, which makes life easier for us, but we’ll probably be serving fizz, and we’ll have to see how long that garden is!”
      There are various hazards to be expected, and it’s difficult to get full information out of people over the phone before we arrive – they like to keep a surprise or two up their sleeve. One time I arrived at a house which just had an Aga, and not only that but it was switched off. Now that’s a challenge for any chef.
      To be fair, on arrival, it did look like the vicar’s tea party scene from Grantchester, with the table for sixteen laid for dinner at the foot of what was a very long-lawned garden. Curly took one look at the distance from the kitchen door down the two slopes to the table and wished she’d brought a motorised golf buggy. At least it was a beautiful evening, sun starting to fade, birds singing.

“Lovely evening for it!” I said.
      “Perfect,” said Amelia. “So we’ll start off with a glass of fizz about seven, which perhaps Curly can bring round, and then we’ll be standing in the garden so she can bring the canapés down to us.”
      We were standing at the top of the driveway double checking the timings and logistics. Amelia had a couple of youngish children hanging off her. Other guests were still slowly emerging from the house in their suits and dresses. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed an old Labrador come lolloping up the lawns, with something in its mouth which I initially took to be its favourite chewy toy. That’s nice I thought. As it got nearer, I could see that it was not in fact a chewy toy, but a guinea pig. That’s nice, I thought, the dog carries the guinea pig round with it, they must be good friends. As my eyes finally focussed on the approaching golden lab, I could see that the guinea pig was looking somewhat limp. Not so nice. In fact the little chap had blood trickling from the corner of its mouth. Hmm. Getting increasingly difficult to be positive about this. There was still the faint possibility that the guinea pig had escaped from elsewhere and gone rogue, and had been roaming wild in the vicinity slaughtering all before it until the dog heroically captured it, but I felt obliged to interrupt Amelia’s instructions
      “Um… Your dog… seems to have…”
      We all looked down. There was a momentary pause, then a piercing scream was emitted by the little girl. Simultaneously the boy burst into tears and started shouting, Amelia started repeating “Oh my God, oh my God,” and the entire party started running round in chaos. Others emerged from the house, in various stages of dress. In the midst of all this the labrador was looking quite pleased with itself, but unreceptive to the possibility of releasing said guinea pig from its jaws. In fact attempts to do so resulted in it clamping harder. I wasn’t going to offer it a duck parcel in exchange. Eventually the guinea pig was prised free, but by that time no amount of Nellie The Elephant was going to resuscitate it, nor was putting it in the recovery position going to help bring it back from the place to which it had recently departed.
      Curly and I decided to take a few steps back into the shadows of the scullery (there must surely be a scullery in every house in Grantchester?) and let the family come to terms with the tragedy in their own time. The dog was locked away in disgrace. Guests trickled back to their rooms to finish dressing. The canapés and fizz eventually cheered everyone up, and the rack of lamb came out just the right shade of pink – probably not appropriate to have it too bloody. As twilight fell Curly wended her way down the twin tiers of the lawn with the desserts, and then a tray of coffee to finish. The candles were lit, the celebratory toasts were completed, and to be fair, the guinea pig had as good a send-off as it could have reasonably expected.

Notes