when the Victorian railway builders connected the Vale with other regions of the country. But the industry declined rapidly after the Second World War. Once we could get bananas and oranges and all sorts of other exotic fruits from around the globe, it seemed we lost our palate for the many locally grown seasonal fruit.
Since then the fruit in those orchards had been left to, if not wither on the vine, rot on the branch.
But further reading revealed even stranger reasons for its decline. It seemed this fruit was not only cultivated for its taste but the skins produced a dye highly prized in Luton by the hatters and milliners. You did know that Luton was the hat-making capital of the Empire and the local football team are called the Hatters? If not you should have done, and anyway you know now. But it was not just the milliners of Luton who prized the dye made from Damson skins. Through the 1930s, as Hitler was gearing up the Third Reich, he could not get enough of the Damson skins to dye the uniforms of the Luftwaffe. To think those Heinkels were manned by men wearing uniforms dyed by Damsons grown in the Vale of Aylesbury, as they flew over to drop their not-so-gentle bombs.
No wonder the local farmers gave up on their Damson orchards when the rumours of their very special war effort started to spread. They attempted to spread a counterrumour, that the uniforms of our very own Royal Air Force were dyed using their patriotic Damsons, but the damage had already been done. Anything connected to the Damsons was connected with supporting the enemy. In fact Damsons were the enemy within.
But as the orchards were left to die another feral population of Damson trees started to spread and take root along the hedgerows that criss-crossed the Vale.
In early ’93 I moved into a small and in-need-of-repair farmhouse. From its south-facing windows I had a magnificent view across the Vale. Surrounding the house were five black-barked trees of little account. Useful to string my washing line between, and that was about it. But in those three or four weeks between the pure white of the Black-thorn blossom and the blushed pink of the Hawthorn blossom exploding down the local hedgerows, these five dark trees burst forth with their large and delicate white blossoms. It took the appearance of this blossom for me to recognise these five trees to be Damsons.
It was the appearance of the blossom in my garden which caused my imagination to start tearing in too many directions all at the same time. In my fevered mind it was all beginning to make sense. Because I had never ventured forth on the road to Damascus seeking any sort of epiphany or even full-blown conversion, Damascus had sent out her envoys to track me down and get me. So over the past 1,947 years since Saul fell to the road blinded by the light, those fruit-bearing trees had been heading west. Century by century they were getting closer to me, arriving at the Vale 170 years before me. And even after they were left to die as traitors in their orchards before I was born, they had started their feral march along the hedgerows until they got to this small white farmhouse on a hillside. Five of them forming a guard around the building, waiting for me to come. And once I entered the house, like a lobster into a pot, they would ensure there was no escape for me. Those five wild Damson trees provided me with all the Damsons I could use. There was a large freezer in my workshop, whose only job was to house my year’s supply of frozen Damsons. And then there were the shelves of jars containing Damson jam and the demijohns of Damson brandy. And the handwritten book that I kept to collect all the recipes that I could find that used Damsons in some way – it had the flippant title of ‘Damsons in Distress’.
But if there has been a conversion, I am still waiting to find out what it is. Life marches on; my solitary life in the house lasted a matter of months. There was soon a woman with a swelling belly, followed by the patter of tiny feet and then some more. But, to quote an old colleague, ‘Nothing Last Forever’. Things fall apart and hearts break, and it is some years since I left that house. Driving past it last year, I noticed the new owner had uprooted those five feral and rather useless trees. Maybe their job had already been done. But last autumn I drove out of London, with my youngest son, for a few hours’ fishing. We sat holding our rods on the bank of the Aylesbury arm of the Grand Union Canal. The Perch began biting. My son hooked a fine-looking half-pounder. Then while waiting for my float to bob I heard something drop on the ground beside me. Looking down I saw a Damson. I picked it up and popped it in my mouth. The taste was like it was the first time. Looking up, there was a tree heavy with fruit begging to be plucked. Somehow I had not noticed it when we first arrived. I filled my bag and that evening a glorious crumble was made with them. The Damsons have not given up on me yet.
This spring, as the blossoms on all those feral Damson trees across the Vale will be bursting into flower, I will be flying to Damascus, where I will be leading a performance by The 17. The performance will be of Score 328: SURROUND. It will be performed by 100 local members of The 17; each of them positioned 50 metres apart along the 5 kilometres of Damascus’ ancient but still standing city walls.
Maybe it is not too late for that conversion.
Postscript: And a rather strange one. I bought the house from an old sailor; he had told me that once he had retired and his wife had to put up with him all the year round, they were finished – she realised they had nothing in common. He also told me how he had bought the house from a comedian he had never heard of, and based on his dealings with this comedian he was one of the least humorous men he had ever met. The name of this not very famous or funny comedian was Peter Cook. It seemed that this Peter Cook’s previous marriage had failed due to his heavy drinking and his new young wife was going to save him from his wayward ways by imprisoning him in the small farmhouse on a hill with no ready access to the Soho drinking dens where he had practised his wayward ways. It seems she failed in her attempts. A Peter Cook biography came out while I was living in the house. I was keen to see what mention was made of it in the book. But hardly any was. There was a photo of him in the garden with one of the Damson trees in the background, but it was a mere stripling at the time of the photo being taken. I wonder if Peter Cook ever ate one of the Damsons from those trees, or if he had any sort of conversion on a road to Damascus or anywhere else?
Postscript to the Postscript: I have just read the Peter Cook Wikipedia page to see if it mentioned him living in the farmhouse in question. But there is no mention of it. What I did notice is that he died at the same age as I am now, due to severe liver damage. At least I have not as yet been converted to the bottle. Maybe in time.
How to Catch Trout
Charles Rangeley-Wilson
The short of it:
• find your passion
• learn to feel the flow of a river
• learn to read where the trout are
• learn that a short cast is better than a long one
• learn how drag is everything
• learn that one fly is better than twenty
• learn to go slow and sit still
And the long of it:
Ireland gave me my first trout. I went there every summer in my teens, to stay with a pal of mine – Simon – at his mother’s and my godmother’s house near Caherdaniel in Co. Kerry. The first year we took the train from Padding-ton, bikes in the goods van, ‘London Calling’ on the tape deck. I seem to recall Milford Haven ablaze, an orange firmament dancing on the underside of clouds as we set sail.
Maybe it always looked like that. The ferry smelt of sick and bleach but it was exciting just to be crossing the waters. I didn’t sleep much and woke early to watch the green, rolling pastures of the Cork estuary slide slowly by. The seventy-mile bike ride from Cork to
