My local gastropub, which is very popular, serves a hot, freshly made and runny-yolked scotch egg. It’s billed as a ‘Cackleberry Farm Scotch Egg with Maldonado Salt’ because part of hospitality is marketing. If you just chalk up ‘scotch egg’ on a board, it doesn’t entice the appetite in quite the same way. But call it ‘œuf écossais enrobés de chair à saucisse’ and serve it on a cracked slate tile – you’ve got yourself a stampede.
A couple who live in the village visited the pub and ordered two of them. Shortly after being served, the husband of the couple returned the plates to the bar and asked the staff to reheat their partially eaten scotch eggs. The landlord explained that he could not reheat them once they had been partially eaten. If a person is infected with Covid, then the virus could be present in saliva left on the scotch egg. In reheating the scotch egg, you are potentially turning the microwave into a virus incubator, he further explained. Viruses are like show-offs at a party – they do not just sit there, they like to circulate, alighting on as many victims as possible.
The husband refused to listen to reason. It escalated into a quarrel and the customer – adopting the absurd posture of an Edwardian boxer – challenged the landlord to a bout of fisticuffs. Meanwhile, a burly Territorial Army volunteer had been waiting at the bar for his ‘Cackleberry Farm Scotch Egg’. Having lost patience, he strode out to the garden, taking the angry customer with him. ‘Hit me,’ he said to Fisticuffs.
Inadvisably, the latter threw a half-hearted punch, which missed, and received a good pre-decimalisation clout round the ear. Fisticuffs dropped from view, going down like a defenceless nan. Returning to the bar, the TA volunteer asked: ‘Can I have my fucking scotch egg now?’
The incident became known as scotch egg-gate. Fisticuffs brought no charge of assault and was barred from the pub for a year. Very silly of him because the next nearest public house is three miles away. This is why celebrity local Sharon Osbourne chose to move the family here – to prevent the Prince of Darkness from sneaking out the back door during the Emmerdale omnibus to get tiddly in the snug bar. A local craftsman made a little plaque for the bar counter: ‘Please do not ask for your scotch eggs to be reheated as a refusal often offends. Thank you.’
Smaller communities tend to exact justice over lesser matters rather than calling our absent police force. We are not talking about ratepayers holding pitchforks, presided over by a Vincent Price figure, or dunking a habitual shoplifter in the village pond (although I would not find this problematic). I’m referring to arbitration. If arbitration fails, a collective solution might be sought.
Smaller communities tend to exact justice over lesser matters rather than calling our absent police force
For example, last year, two neighbours engaged in a lengthy spat over a parking space. The space was not privately owned and neither neighbour held the exclusive right to it. However, the spat escalated to the point where one of them placed a traffic cone on the patch of road when the other was absent. It was then moved. This traffic cone went back and forth more times than Theresa May between London and Brussels. The parking war was raised at a parish meeting where it was agreed that the neighbours share the space on alternate days. Simple. No Thames Valley Police. No siege. No overhead Sky News helicopters.
Relatively minor matters, unchecked or unresolved, can grow into a full-time occupation. Villagers become ever-vigilant guardians, stationed next to a blind, peering through a slat to monitor the situation. The number of British householders engaged at any one time in a boundary dispute is legion. Fisticuffs served his sentence, which obliged him to travel to Chalfont St Peter if he wanted to enjoy the ambience and bonhomie of the English pub. Suitably repentant, he was allowed back into the gastropub where, one suspects, he refrained from asking for a Cackleberry Farm Scotch Egg with Maldonado Salt again.
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