Across the pond

This evening I went to the dinner table full of brotherly love for my brother-in-law. I had just discovered that his team, Watford, had drawn 1 all against Plymouth Argyle, and that, my team, Wolverhampton Wanderers had drawn 3 all against Queens Park Rangers. Both teams have been drawing a lot lately. And although they are rivals for promotion to the Premier League, the way they are playing at present makes it likely that both teams will remain in what is ludicrously called the Championship but is actually the Second Division. In the harsh world of 2008 nothing but the Premier League rates. Even the BBC, which still aspires to be a Public Service broadcaster, on a Saturday night goes straight on from what has happened in the Premier League to the scores in Scottish football.

When I was a teenage football fan, the BBC on a Saturday night gave all the scores in the three English divisions, before they got on to the Scottish results. These days to find out how the Wolves have done, I have to go to my computer, or wait for the Sunday newspapers.

Tonight I thought we can share our sorrows. But at the dinner table football soon lost out to talk about food. Because my eldest daughter, Holly, had produced a fish soup, comprising locally caught mussels and pollock. Which was much lauded by all who ate it.

Janet found the pollock better than cod. Holly said that we should not eat any cod because cod had been over-fished. This led to a discussion of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has been fighting a campaign to get Dorset folk to demand free range chicken at the Axminster Tesco. And also to eat at his River Cottage restaurant, which according to my wife, requires you to fork out £60 a head.

At the mention of the name, Roger exploded.

 ’Can’t stand the man. Whenever he comes on the television I turn it off. So arrogant. But he knows nothing about farming.’

Roger, who reads The Times every day, told us that a lot of the so-called organic produce was a con. Which The Times has apparently demonstrated in several cases. When challenged by my daughter, Holly, he moved to talking from his own personal experience.

For most of his working life Roger looked after pigs. Daily. Until the time he had to hand them over to the man whose job it was to kill them, so we could eat our Sunday roast pork. He did not like it, and when the new technology moved to raising pigs in much the same way as battery chickens, he liked it even less. But Roger continued to work, to care for his pigs, and do his best to make their brief lives comfortable.

Roger fell foul of the ‘new farming’. The farmer complained that Roger was spending too much time making the pigs’ lives comfortable. His job was to get them to the slaughterhouse as quickly as possible.

The ferocity of Roger’s explosion surprised me. Because HFW, whom I call Fingerstall for short, does, I think, care for the animals, as well as for the environment. But, Roger, however much he regretted the move to condemning pigs to a similar life to battery chickens, was also aware, that most human beings could not, and cannot, afford free range and organic produce. Because, as an agricultural labourer he was earning about the same as a teenage shop assistant at Tesco.

And I can well understand that when Fingerstall comes on the box, whatever he says will jar with anyone who has not had an Etonian education, or been to one of the other top drawer British private schools, like Harrow or Winchester. The accent makes them think, this bloke as arrogant.

It is not the content, it is the music. They were educated to rule the world. And, my God, it shows in the way they speak. Since I have met Fingerstall, I don’t think he is really like that. I think he cares for the animals. And that he cares for the human beings, whose well-being would be improved if they ate organic.

But the reality  of the Dorset, where mention of Fingerstall, brings most dinner tables to the verge of fisticuffs, is that only a minority of the population can afford the luxury of not shopping at Tesco. Many of the mostly well-to-do middle class incomers, who have come here because of the awe-inspiring scenery and the healthy sea air, are all for him.

The battles at the dinner tables are probably quite as fierce at the dinner tables of the long-time residents, when those residents who have gone away to university and come back to tell their parents they should change their ways.

Fingerstall is aware of the problem. His much publicised recent BBC series of television programmes, was an effort to get the Axminster Tesco supermarket to provide free range at a price the less well off can afford. And he has made some sort of difference, so that Tesco store at Axminster, now apologgises to customers if they do not have free range chicken available today.

But Fingerstall is not perfect. According to my daughter, who was stoutly defending him tonight, against the on-slaught from my brother-in-law. Too many of his inner team managing his various enterprises down here in deepest Dorset, are people he has brought from London