The aristocrat on Piggy's doorstep

I'd like to tell you, dear followers, a little about the place where I live. Just to make you jealous. Nunton Farleigh is a small village in west Wiltshire, about 5 miles from the city of Bath. My parents moved here when my father, a schoolteacher, retired a few years ago. They don't own the cottage they live in. They rent it from the aristocratic family that owns the 1,500-acre estate, the Clutterbucks. Sir Geoffrey Clutterbuck, who is more or less a recluse (please feel free to correct me here, Sir Geoffrey, if you can tear yourself away from The Baronetcy), now runs the joint. The word around the village is that Sir Geoffrey has recently returned following a rather long stint of...well...not being here. Of course, I have to be careful what I say here because I'm talking about the life of someone I don't know, who is also my parents' landlord. Speak to me in person, of course, and, like everyone else here at Nun Far, I'll gossip mercilessly.

The Nunton Farleigh manor house, where I will never live

I have it on good authority that Sir Geoffrey went to Eton and then travelled/adventured abroad rather extensively before returning home to assist with the care of his mother, Lady Adeline, who sadly suffers from dementia. I mention Sir Geoffrey because I have just spent a wholesome morning with my father, Barry, tending his hothouse veggies, including spinach, asparagus and peas, and the elaborate hydroponic equipment he uses was donated to him by Sir Geoffrey. It is a mystery what interest Sir Geoffrey would take in Baz's gardening enterprise, but Dad certainly enjoyed telling me about it.

‘Sir Geoffrey sent his gardener here a few weeks ago with this lot,’ said Dad, making a sweeping gesture around his pokey hothouse. ‘Chap said there’s a lot more where this came from.’

           

‘You’d need another hothouse to take any more, Dad. And there’s only so much spinach one family can eat.’

           

‘The gardener said I could go up to the manor house – Sir Geoffrey’s house – and look around the outbuildings if I wanted. Take any equipment I need.’

          

‘Dad, I think you’ve got all you can handle right here.’

           

‘Well,’ he huffed, ‘I must admit I’ve never seen the manor house up close. I’m rather curious about what’s up there.’

           

‘An old house,’ I replied, ‘or as Sir Geoffrey would say ‘hice’. That’s how the upper classes talk, you know.’ I know this from reading Jilly Cooper's Class, not because I ever actually noticed the diction of an upper class person.

           

‘Have you ever met Sir Geoffrey?’ asked Dad, knowing bloody well I haven’t.

‘No, Dad,’ I said. ‘He’s a recluse. And therefore reclusive.’

   

‘Well, perhaps you could come up to the manor house with me, Pig. Check out the kitchen garden too. It’s walled, you know. Perhaps we’ll find something there for one of your recipes.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said.

Barry Fair aka 'Walrus'

Dad looked up from his greens with a wistful look on his round, ruddy face. He looked like the walrus from Alice in Wonderland when it was contemplating the oysters.

‘I wonder what it’s like to have so much money,’ he said, ‘to be able to buy anything you want. Go anywhere you want.’

I shrugged. ‘We’ll probably never know.’ Then Dad went all quiet and weird, leaving me to ponder his sudden interest in the chattels of a decaying aristocratic family. Not that I'm sneezing at Sir Geoffrey's hydroponic equipment or anything, but I do find Dad's total rapture in it a bit disturbing. I wanted to say, 'Look, Barry. It's a few bits of plastic pipe, okay? It's not like he gave you his favourite Tintoretto.'

In other news, my chick-magnet brother, Ant, is having a small party for me at Nun Far tomorrow night. Apparently he was planning to make it a surprise party, but then realised that he needed me to do most of the cooking. Of course, it's to celebrate my return home to the bosom of Mother England. Baz and Shaz will provide the alcohol as they have a constant supply from the vineyard they own a part-share of in the Dordogne. I'm doing food and Ant's doing entertainment/social direction. It will only be small, about 25 people, including - drumroll - Benji (Mum's friend Sally's son from work). Apparently he has a PhD in economics, so he's a smart cookie. Let's hope he's a hot little biscuit too.

I don't want to wreck the upbeat mood of this post, but I think it might be time to conduct a comparative analyis of my dating history against my brother's. Brace yourself.

For Antony, I don't think there's any point in going back more than six girlfriends. The last six have been London models of varying degrees of thinness and freakish beauty. Ant is a fashion photographer, and I swear that he's no more handsome than I am pretty; he just seems to be in the right place at the right time.

Cut to Piggy's dating record. I haven't even had six boyfriends in my whole life. I've had three. My boyfriend from school, Chris, turned out to be gay. The love of my life, Hugh, ran off with my best friend at the time, Poloma. My most exciting, too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, Martin, was convicted of marijuana trafficking and is now serving fourteen years in a Balinese prison. Farmer Steve doesn't count, leaving a few soul-destroying one-night stands in my early twenties, and that's it. What a pathetic inventory, made even more depressing by the fact that everyone around me now has a spouse or a partner. Even Sophie, my favourite Singleton buddy, is now shacked up.

Why - and please tell me, dear readers, if it's something obvious - am I such a loser? Why can't I catch and keep a decent man? Gosh, let's just hope that Dr Benji PhD breaks the drought. Because I am really parched.

Piggy xx

Oh - and I will post about the best bit of party food I make for my party tomorrow night. Please don't come and please don't invite your 9,000 Facebook friends either.