The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

It is early morning on Father’s Day. Early morning for a newly unemployed but long time unemployable waster like me means about half eight. You might disagree but you can’t have that much to do if you’re reading this. Stars have aligned and the time has come to gently unwind the caps of my plastic beer bottles, drum up whatever enthusiasm I can and neck some Lincolnshire cider. I’ve been maturing it in the dark cupboard below the stairs and I need the space for the mountain bike I never use. 

During the cider bottling process back in the winter, my business partner described the taste variously as “bland,” “watery” and “disappointing” but it’s too late to bail out now. I think the old saying goes “bearable by Christmas, drinkable by Easter and enjoyable by Summer.” This is definitely summer. It’s been roasting for days now.

Family members from climes both near (just up the road) and far (Massachusetts) are heading over for a Father’s Day buffet lunch, which is also supposed to  honour Dad’s Mum, my Grandma, Johnnie. Don’t ask, I’m as confused about her name as you are. Grandma always laid on cold meat feasts for us when we visited her in Cumberworth or Sutton-on-Sea so I’m trying to do the same. It won’t be exactly the same, because she was an enthusiastic host whereas I am a fat curmudgeon, but at least the thought is there.

I spent yesterday drifting around the butchers, bakers and cheese shops of Louth rustling up as much Lincolnshire-adjacent food as I could find. I’ve got cheese both blue and yellow, pork pie, sausage roll offcuts, a whole haslet, chutney and a promise of Eton Mess. The pork pie is from one of the local butchers and has a claim to be one of the best on offer nearby but I’ll confess to being a bit gutted when I discovered that the Cheese Shop had sold out by half nine.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning my house. It’s not something I relish but who knows how significant a day Sunday could turn out to be and I don’t want my memories of it being spoiled by someone finding forgotten bits of food in between the sofa cushions. The only bits of untidiness I end up leaving in place are the cobwebs because I don’t want to disturb the spiders. Some of them have lived here as long as I have and have done a much better job getting rid of flies.

Come Father’s Day itself, I’m all set by ten in the morning. The food looks good. I wish I could be as confident in the booze. The plastic bottles don’t help. I’ve ordered some glass ones and a professionally designed label for next year, by which I mean I’ve offered my niece some money to knock something together. 

My phone pings. The family have congregated elsewhere for a coffee or two before heading over. That’s ok. I wasn’t expecting them to be actually enthusiastic. I just overfilled the kettle in case some door-to-door salesmen knock. I decide to read a Stephen King short story to pass the time. Then I decide to read another.

Eventually, the coffee-addled ingrates start drifting up my unnecessarily curved front path and let themselves in without knocking. This is all fine.

Educated by hospitality nightmares past, I have brought in extra seating from the trainset room so everyone can sit down. Three people will have to park their backsides on wooden kitchen chairs rather than comfy high-backed seats I bought second hand in the late nineties but that’s ok. I live on my own. People have to make allowances. Wisely I’ve scrounged some emergency forks because I know I’ve only got about three or four that work.

We eat heartily, swapping stories about the culinary expertise of our grandparents. My niece only eats ham sandwiches but it’s not her fault. She wasn’t born in Lincolnshire and apparently ham sandwiches are what all the cool kids are eating these days.

Dessert is eventually served despite me lacking the traditional household allocation of spoons and dishes. Sideplates with slightly curved edges are washed and pressed into service. I eat my Eton Mess with the flat handle of a fork. I smile and hope no-one storms off.

Eventually, the food is done and the time has come. I commandeer a pause in the conversation to mention that I’m hoping to try my cider today and am met with an encouragingly muted ripple of disinterest. Conversation goes on as if I’m not there. They’re probably still dreaming of the multinational coffee shop. I suck the last bit of squirty cream from my fork and try again.

Newark Carey says it’s too late for cider and leaves, taking her husband and daughter with her. That’s ok, she only drinks Bacardi and Coke, and prefers to do that from brown paper bags in car parks. Or so I’m told. I would never invent such an accusation.

That leaves Dad and Massachusetts Chloe who are both up for a gobful, although neither are really cider fans so I appreciate the gesture. Whilst my family watches on, I crack open a random brown plastic bottle and pour hesitantly. The liquid is the colour of straw and summer, spot on even if I say so myself. It appears to have darkened since Christmas. There are a few bottles but not enough to write home about. That’s traditional. Probably.

Dad, whose portion was the third to be poured, notices that his is a slightly different hue to Chloe’s and it becomes obvious that there’s sediment in the bottle. Honestly, how does this stuff sneak through? It was poured through about a foot of muslin on its way out of the demijohns.

I’m crushed but Dad makes some spurious claim about how the poshest beers often have sediment. He still thinks I’m as gullible as I was as a teenager but this time it works because I decide to let it. I appreciate him trying to spare my feelings.

And then we taste it.

First impressions? Definitely a sort of hmm. I am less disappointed than I thought I was going to be, but I’m still disappointed-adjacent. It definitely tastes like cider but it’s quite tart. Is that what proper cider tastes like? I should’ve kept some of last night’s Henry Weston for a taste test.

Dad and Chloe take one sip and then another. “It’s cider,” they say, nodding at each other in agreement. 

“It’s nice,” says Massachusetts Chloe. That’s as far as either will go at this stage.

“How strong is it?” asks Dad.

“No idea,” I say. “I’ve got a measuring thing but don’t know how to use it.”

They both swear blind that they like it but they’re family and know how much time and effort I’ve invested so what choice have they got? We’re not monsters.

I honestly don’t know what I think about the cider but lurking, sneaking about even, in the back of my mind is the memory of summer and the undeniable fact that the pressed juice was amazing and this is not. Later on I set a bottle aside for wassailing next winter and take half the remaining bottles round to my friend Stephen’s house. He’s working on a new non-geometric counterweight shelving system for his living room. It all looks very stylish but I’m not sure I’d trust my most valuable family relics to it. The angles don’t seem right somehow.

He lifts his welding goggles and collapses the single remaining arm of his glasses before swiftly opening a bottle and sharing the contents with me. He seems more keen than I expected but I’m fairly certain I once saw him buying a two litre bottle of Diamond White so I’m not convinced his approval means there’s a future for the Ticklepenny Tap.

It’s a tough one. I’ve made some cider. I’ve not changed the world. There are apples growing on my trees down near the canal and I’m going to have to decide what to do with them soon. But not today. For today, I’ll savour Father’s Day and the plentiful things I have to thank the old man for. It hasn’t been the start I’d maybe hoped for but this is just the beginning of the road. Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain.