Every year, normally on or around the longest day, our local National Trust hall – Great Chalfield Manor - hosts a picnic and summer ball. Over the past few years the weather has remained decidedly inclement so the organisers have now taken heed and now also include a marquee – and dancing in the main hall.

 

Wine box

 

Picking the wines for the night for our village falls to me each year, so after checking that the weather was probably going to require ‘inside marquee drinking’ I went for reds and rosés – and taking our latest shipment of the ever reliable Vouvray Mousseux Brut as ‘the white’ we were ready for the village charabang.

As we gathered, these days I automatically and subconsciously scan the wines that have been assembled, just to find my bearings of my regular partners in crime for the evening. It’s not quite a secretive as, say, the masons or MI5 but it remains a decent code for those ‘in the know’.

A village friend who lives in London and returns to Wiltshire regularly at weekends gave his presence away immediately as I clocked an Aix rose – in a magnum (Richard always claims magnums should be the de rigour bottle format on these events for the ‘comedy value’).

 

Aix magnum

 

Needless to say, having read a recent Yapp blog I’d deployed my Tan brogues for the evening (although I favour the Barbour versions living in a working farming village) – and the evening ticked along happily, with the stand out red being the Vin de Corse Sartène Rouge: Domaine Saparale 2011 meeting with unanimous approval.

 

Domaine Saparale red

 

It was carriages at midnight and we reassembled in the village pub – to find it heaving with a fancy dress evening. Thankfully at this stage my camera had run out of charge so I can save you the randomness of a rural village hosting a fancy dress night on what I assumed was running a ‘people from different countries’ theme – but I also saw someone dressed at Gene Simmons from Kiss – I can only assume he’d not read the invite in full or that was just how he dressed on a Saturday.

 

 

Having moved out to the Styx over ten years ago, we’re only now just starting to get used to living in a rural community. Easy access to cash points, music venues, restaurants and somewhere to walk to get the Sunday papers are all things from a past life, but rural living does throw up decent alternatives and the occasional random event.

Great Chalfield Manor

Great Chalfield Manor

We live a mile away from a NT property called Great Chalfield Manor – it is suitably picturesque, but until this weekend it’s just been the point on family cycle rides that I decide I’ve taken my children too far and think about the steep uphill to return. Every summer the Manor hold a fundraising picnic in it’s stately grounds, and this year us ex-city folk were invited to attend, my wife now convinced we’d ‘arrived’, so to speak. So we booked a baby sitter, my sister and brother in-law came down from Evesham, and some other village friends were all set (those who assumed the event had been cancelled due to the inclement weather couldn’t have been more wrong). All parties were assembled in the various annexes and halls of the manor – a first in this annual bean fest.

Hamish with Yapp Wine Case

Our party was based, much to my amusement, in the minstrels gallery – we were all suitably suited and booted but now setting up beach chairs, picnic tables and cheese boards looking down on the masses of the local great and good.

The case of Yapp wine clearly went down well in the gallery. A friend, a self confessed ‘glugger’ of Italian white wine, experienced the delights of chilled white Brézème for the first time – safe to say, it looks to become a staple with him now as well as my sister, who has been a convert for a few years!

Great Chalfield Manor Hall

The tables were later cleared from the great hall, dancing ensued, we got a lift a mile back down the road and paid the baby sitter – and so ended another random 'night out' in rural Wiltshire – we’d not missed the city cash tills, we’d stumbled on a music venue but still struggled with the Sunday papers the day after!