Warning this is a long and rambling tale of grass, spoons, eggs and shameful mowing! I went to mow, went to mow a meadow at Wimpole Hall, near Cambridge over the Weekend. But somewhere along the line things got a little more complicated and I found myself teaching a spoon carving course on the Saturday. In my defence I’d like to point out that I thought I’d managed to say no – but to no avail as it turned out. In the event I’m very glad that Simon Damant (our host at Wimpole) talked me into it as it made for a great weekend.
The mowing started early on Saturday morning with the 1/4 acre endurance mowing. Simon and Richard Brown mowed a 1/4 acre and an 1/8 acre respectively. No mean feat and luckily the weather was still cool, particularly at 6am though I’ll have to take their word for that! George finished faster than Simon but with the complex negotiations on quality of cut Simon won the day (though there might still be some dispute over this).
I’d like to have participated but I had six novices for the spoon carving course and I’m pleased to say that everyone went home with at least one spoon – and all of their fingers at the end of the day. My inadvertant demonstration of paring with my thumb in a poor location and drawing first blood worked very well in minimising the number of cuts throughout the day! I think I might have converted at least a couple of people to the world of greenwood working and quite possibly to Ben Orford’s excellent crook knives as well.
I was far too busy to demonstrate polelathe turning as well (it was a weekend off after all) and after some discussions a local lathe appeared complete with its personal transportation system – words fail me – almost – I’m clearly going to have to give this some serious thought!
The food was great if you like lamb and luckily even the vegetarian amongst us approved of Simon’s hogget ( a hogget is a sheep between one and two years of age, larger and with more flavour than a lamb).
The success of the spoon carving course seemed contagious and before long plenty of people were spooning away to enter the spoon making competition by noon on Sunday. By Saturday evening a good dozen spoons were being made and we continued whittling late into the evening – the competition had turned serious.
Now if you thought this post would be mainly about mowing and scythes – I’m going to disappoint you a little for a while as eggs now enter the proceedings.
At some point in the evening I thought it would be a good idea to make use of all these spoons and with talk of the rural Olympics the idea of racing with the spoon we’d just made was born. I’d vaguely imagined next year but Simon is not one to hang around and had just collected a bucket of duck eggs – and one goose egg – now I wonder who he’s going to give that one to? I began to smell a rotten egg if not a rat!
A great line up of spoons in the competition – especially as several were from first time spooners! Unfortunately in blissful ignorance that I’d soon be racing with it I’d made a small spoon from a cleft of wild cherry (thanks to some overly enthusiastic axe work slicing off half the bowl). Pretty much a no hoper with the duck eggs let along the goose egg I suspected would come my way.
Time for a cunning plan, a very cunning plan! Clearly the first rule of the spoon race will be bending the rules, so at the last minute I fashioned a simple spoon, aka the Giant Goose Egg Holder, and slipped it into the competition – it’s at about 2 o’clock in the photo.
Chaos ensued as Simon issued rough directions for the course and handed out eggs – the Goose Egg fitting neatly into its holder- and plenty of choice language to match as my subterfuge emerged! My plan was nearly thwarted by the substitution of a ringer as a runner (from HM Forces) but amidst the carnage of collision and not so subtle trips on the return journey the ringer wobbled and the Giant Goose Egg Holder won the day!
I’d come up to Wimpole aspiring to a medal position in the mowing finals but with all of the spooning I had little time to prepare for mowing. As in Somerset a relatively good performance in the team mowing lulled me into a false sense of security and when it came to the individual mowing I went to pieces. Do you want to hear the bad news or the good news? The bad news is that I managed a shameful performance in the finals. Descending from the realms of fast but crap to TRUELY SHAMBOLIC! The good news? Well at least I made my peformance in Somerset look reasonable!
But then I wasn’t the only one whose plan was blown off course. On the day a real live Dead Ringer appeared – or Ded Ringer in this case, as Ded from Albania showed up to show us his scything talents. Ded walked off with the title and the Quality cup to boot just pushing Richard Brown (great mowing Richard) into second place and George Montague into third(Ed – I think I have that right now-apologies for inadvertantly promoting Andy Coleman) with George winning the ‘fast but crap’ cup.
George wasn’t too happy with the ‘fast but crap’ cup as he mowed well – apart from the badger hole. But it’s strange to see someone else walking off with the cup in a class that I created while I am struggling to finish!
Really not my year for Mowing competitions but by next year I’m going to know a lot more about preparing my blade and the less said about my fitness (or lack of it) the better. I’m also not going to try peening my blade 10 minutes before the competition starts with no time left for honing.
Andy and Ded went head to head in the Scythe versus Strimmer race. This time in two rounds with Andy first on the scythe, winning comprehensively and later in round two Ded took the scythe and won – which goes to prove that the scythe really does beat a strimmer hands down!
All over, it’s time to relax in the cut grass and consider that its the taking part that counts not the winning – and on this occasion that’s entirely true except of course in the Egg and Spoon race where anything goes in order to win and cheating is mandatory.
I almost forgot the cider drinking competition. Ooops, sorry I meant the Cider Making competition and these are the judges( faces mostly obsured by glasses to protect their identities) not the participants. I’ve never entered so many competitions before . It was really good to see so many home made ciders taking part- and even though I didn’t get placed I’m very glad I wasn’t a judge!
To round off a great weekend we had a guided tour of the estate including the vast length hedges laid in recent years – here a section laid in South of England style if I remember rightly.
Just time to fit in a quick Landrover repair before heading home. Luckily not to my landrover but to Simon’s which had mysteriously run out of clutch fluid over the weekend. We managed to stop Simon trying to fit a cable, topped up with fluid and a few minutes of frantic pumping something like a clutch returned.
Many thanks to Simon, Jim, Andy M, Catherine, Graham and Olga for making us so welcome and putting on such a great show. There are loads of photos I could not put up here – so I will shortly be posting at least one gallery and I’ll link to it as soon as its up.
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