I moved to the country at Easter and have been planning Christmas ever since. Our house is groaning with home-cooked food, beautifully wrapped presents and table decorations that I’ve made with a hot glue gun. I love hot glue and want to glue everything to anything — apples, ribbons, small animals; nothing is safe. I may have to start sniffing the stuff, such is my excitement at discovering how uncannily similar to Martha Stewart I have become since becoming a Country Mouse. My half-Indian husband only pretends to get it; I know he’d much rather eat lobster on a beach than one of the 200 mince pies that are nestling between layers of greaseproof paper in my freezer. He’s awfully loyal, though, and I pretend I don’t notice that he sneaks a great dollop of chilli sauce on to everything I lovingly cook for him.
I’m a bit nervous that no one is going to give me what I want for Christmas. I long for two things: a beehive with a sexy little colony of honey bees and an African Grey Parrot. I bought an excellent book, Beekeeping for Smallholders, at the Highgrove shop in Tetbury, which I’ve read cover to cover, and have ordered a bee-keeping suit, with veil, online. I’ve left the book out in strategic places and have sighed loudly and wistfully every time my eyes have rested upon it, so I’m hoping against hope that my husband will come up trumps. I have laid siege elsewhere for the birdie.
I am blessed with having the best ex anyone could ever have; my gorgeous, my angelic, my long-suffering Hugh. When we were together I wasn’t allowed pets as he never forgave me for giving away Emma, a lop-eared dwarf rabbit that I had desperately wanted. He finally, and begrudgingly, gave me her one misty day in 1989 and I tried so hard to bond with her. Sadly, unlike the rabbits I’d previously owned and loved, she turned into a malevolent, biting beast and, after a few months, she had to go. However, Hugh and I are no longer a couple and he can no longer boss me around. Consequently, I now have four labradors, two cats, three geese, eight chickens, 49 cows, 63 sheep and 82 pigs. Hugh has never bought me an animate object since Emma but, interestingly, has bought me several homes for them; namely a dovecote, a hen house and a goose house. All, I may point out, homes for feathered friends. This is why I am hoping that he is only a small step away from finding that African Grey and, possibly, a little gilded cage too.
No one has ever pretended it was easy to find the perfect present, so I decided to enter the retail arena, at possibly the silliest time in history, and start my own gift site. I’ve sold my beachwear online for a few years but the gift thing is all brand new. But, as someone who has sought out pretty things for ever, it was bliss sourcing the stock, most of which I found in Bombay. The site is tiny and I mean to keep it that way. I find too much choice annoying. We only have about 30 items, and every single one could nestle quite happily in my own present drawer. My favourite is a tea cosy and matching pinny. I love aprons and, to my husband’s horror, wear one more often than not. Unless customers go pinny-mad and we sell out, all my friends will be getting one for Christmas.
Retail may be down but thankfully we still have to eat. We have recently started to sell our home-produced organic meat to some of London’s glitziest restaurants: Tom’s Kitchen, Locanda Locatelli and Riva — to name-drop but a few — have all served our pork and I shall be hand-delivering a suckling pig to Le Caprice next week. Farming has become my passion and my joy and, when I’m not wielding a rolling pin à la Martha Stewart, I’m busily morphing into Felicity Kendal. Who doesn’t want to live The Good Life? I do, in spades.
Nothing makes me giddier than feeding people with food I’ve produced. So far, my farm is all meat and no veg, but I’m giving my husband a vegetable plot for his Christmas present. I’ve been secretly poring over seed catalogues for months, and have so far ordered 15 different varieties of broad bean, my most favourite vegetable in the world. When on a diet, I frequently eat a simple bowl of broad beans for dinner, with a smidge of olive oil and lots of sea salt, and it is a dinner fit for a king.
Talking of which, since moving to Gloucestershire I have become obsessed with Prince Charles. What an amazing man in many ways. I’m jealous of his farm and his garden, but mostly I’m jealous of his chicken house. It is lavishly photographed in one of his garden books and I covet it badly. What heaven to be one of Prince Charles’s chickens and wake up every day knowing, without a glimmer of a doubt, that you are one of the luckiest, most spoilt chickens in the universe. I wouldn’t say no to a little sojourn in that coop myself one day.
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