Low life

Foul weather and worse to come. Puddles in the farmyard. An 18th-century farmhouse with a cast-iron fox’s mask for a doorknocker. The door is ajar. Inside, men in hunting waistcoats are gathered around a silver drinks tray. The warmth and enthusiasm of my host’s greeting takes me aback. He welcomes me literally with open arms and introduces me to the company. One of them, a raffish-looking bloke, is an Earl. Another, with a cruel, outdoor face, is introduced as ‘the Master’. Friendly hands are extended. ‘He looks the part, anyway,’ says the Master.

Last Saturday I was sitting at the kitchen table ready to go out for the evening, when I heard at the tail end of a radio news bulletin that the English poet Vernon Scannell had died. The name rang a bell. I went to the bookshelf and, yes, there was Vernon Scannell’s Collected Poems 1950–1993, bought several years ago in a charity shop and not looked at since. I hadn’t heard of Vernon Scannell before I came across his book of poems by chance, or of the publisher. I was intrigued by the paperback’s unpretentious design. On the back cover a poetry critic admitted to liking the poems enough to reread some of them. Someone else was quoted as saying that he was surprised that ‘Mr Scannell has not been made more of’. Inside, the modesty continued.

I’m in agony. I’m in agony. Toothache. Upper left molar. The pain is shooting up the side of my face and stabbing through my left eye socket. On the plus side, the world is suddenly less complex. My idea of future happiness has been reduced to nothing more ambitious than a pain-free existence. No longer has it anything to do with ameliorating the suffering of others. If a genie made me choose right now between his making the pain go away and making poverty history, I’d probably have to think about it. Two years ago I went to the dentist for the first time in years. She was appalled; I had galloping gum disease, she said. To cure it was going to take time and effort and cost a considerable amount of money, she said.

The estate agent was hopelessly late — stuck in traffic, she said — so I gave the couple the tour of our home instead. It was clear that they had no intention of buying: they lived nearby and were just being nosy. What’s more, I caught them exchanging superior glances, first at the framed portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, and again at the stuffed cuckoo at the top of the stairs. He was embarrassed at being caught out; she was shameless and haughty. I whipped them around in record time. On their way out, they paused in the conservatory to pass a patronising comment on the bougainvillea and the view of the bay. As we looked, two young coastal-path walkers came along the road, which runs along the front of the house.

The first thing me and my boy do when we go to the car auction is to head for the burger van and order a cheeseburger each. The burger bar is called CJ’s. We jokingly call it CJD’s because we say the burgers consist of cartilage, udder and compacted sewage. Sometimes we pretend to identify bone or dental enamel. Smothered in brown sauce, however, they’re not bad. The purveyor of this unpretentious fare is a cheerful middle-aged woman called Peggy. ‘With or without, my lovers?’ she says. (We’re always her lovers, her bucks or her handsomes.) She means fried onions, rather than spinal cord. ‘One with and one without, please, Peg,’ I say. ‘Right-o, gorgeous,’ she says.

The Reverend Nicola Hunt of St Peter’s, Ugborough, welcomed us to the St Francis of Assisi Day animal service. Yes, she had seen the Vicar of Dibley episode in which there had been an amusing portrayal of an animal service. Looking around the congregation, we hadn’t brought quite the wide variety of animals that the people of Dibley had taken to church, which was perhaps just as well, she said. Nevertheless, she was very glad to see that we had a lovely donkey here with us today. We turned around in our seats and beamed our best Anglican smile of welcome at the donkey in the back row. George and I were in the front row, which was reserved for dogs and their owners. George is a Border terrier belonging to my brother, who is on holiday in Florida.

As of this week my boy (17) is no longer legally entitled to buy cigarettes. His half-brother (16) the same. It must be galling for a teenager finally to reach an age when he or she becomes legally entitled to join the adults in one of their glamorous vices, to enjoy that entitlement to the full for several months, and then to have it peremptorily withdrawn again by a sanctimonious Scotsman. My boy has only two months to go before he can service his addiction legally again. To bridge the time gap he popped across to Brittany on a cross-Channel ferry last week to stockpile a couple of thousand cigarettes. I went along for the ride and a breath of fresh air. We weighed anchor in Plymouth just before midnight. My boy had booked the ferry tickets online.

He came aboard at Newton Abbot and sat down opposite without acknowledging me. Mid-fifties. Kempt, but only just. Navy blue, well-worn suit. Plain tie. Once he’d settled himself he looked out of the window and studied the passing sky. I tried to catch his eye. We had a three-hour journey ahead of us and it seemed absurd to share a table for that length of time without as much as an exchange of friendly glances or resigned smiles. But he wasn’t having it. He was looking away deliberately, as if eye-to-eye contact was somehow harmful to him. He studied the sky all the way to Taunton. I watched him and wondered what kind of a man he was.

The gym attendant is giving me private boxing lessons for ten quid an hour. He used to box for the army. He candidly admits to having perfected one combination only during his short career: a left to the ribs followed by a right cross to the head. It was his secret weapon. It either worked or it didn’t, he says. His squashed hooter testifies to the occasions when it didn’t. If he sees me in his gym, he comes out of his office and straps weights to my ankles. I feel like a fool trudging around the place like a deep-sea diver on the ocean floor. But he’s obdurate. If I’m going to learn how to deliver a combination, I’m going to need legs, which at the present moment, he says, giving mine a quizzical, sidelong glance, I ain’t got.

She lay on her side and watched the people coming and going from the tented stalls and music stages. I lay on my back beside her and stared up at the billowing ceiling. We’d arrived at the Ragged Hedge Fair, put up the tent, had a series of unbelievably petty squabbles in the process, and were now paralysed by apathy. We lay in our tent, barely speaking, until it was dark. The Ragged Hedge Fair, held in the Cotswolds each summer, is one of a growing number of small ‘green’ summer festivals springing up to cater for those disillusioned by the squalor, commercialism and criminality at Glastonbury. Power is supplied entirely by sun and wind, on-site transport by horse and cart. Generators aren’t allowed. Neither are dogs.

‘So. Jeremy. Why do you want to learn about eating seaweed?’ said Ingrid as we trooped down the leafy farm track to the beach. Ingrid, our leader for the day, was a spry woman in her early fifties wearing a hand-stitched buckskin Hiawatha tunic and possibly little else. She was going to show us how to identify, harvest, prepare and cook a four-course seaweed ‘feast’ over a driftwood fire. I was preparing myself for the collapse of civilisation, I told her. ‘When we’re all eating each other,’ I said, ‘I’m hoping that a side dish of seaweed will vary my diet a bit.’ A dozen of us had responded to the flyer pinned to the vegetarian café noticeboard advertising Ingrid’s day of instruction.