OPINION: We at Lush Places are elderly, and so need a bit of calming down after the trauma and the tragedy that was the finale of Succession, It did rather raise the blood pressure. So we have been watching elderly episodes of the sometimes brilliantly bonkers Midsomer Murders. An episode has more red herrings than a Scandinavian could eat in a lifetime.
Because there are about a million episodes, we will be able to spend the rest of our lifetimes watching the murderous residents of picture-postcard English villages come up with ridiculously inventive ways to knock off their neighbours.
Midsomer Murders is all thatched cottages and meticulously manicured herbaceous borders and genteel English manners and stiff upper lips. Also, pompous toffs and lecherous louts. There has yet to be a murder by delphinium or by a sex toy but it can only be a matter of time. As Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby says, “Who in this village isn’t at it?”
Prudery and bonking. Golly. Do such excitements exist here in our patch of the countryside? Well, maybe the prudery. Who knows what goes on behind the barn doors? One does not care to contemplate.
In one episode of Midsomer Murders, a prime suspect was ruled out on the grounds that she was a member of the Women’s Institute. Being good at flower arranging and baking scones rules you out as a killer on Midsomer Murders, even if the victim met their demise by having a poisoned pikelet stuffed down their gob. (This is not an actual plot line, but it should be.)
I am not a member of the Wairarapa Women’s Institute – I adhere to Groucho Marx’s maxim that “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”. Still, I could apply. I reckon my well-stocked biscuit tins would grant me access. I have taken up, in my quest to become a proper country wife, the challenge of always keeping the tins full.
Just now, my tins contain Alison Holst’s mother’s coffee creams, a batch of little lemon and lime cakes and some lemony shortbreads. There are only the two of us. And we are fat enough. The chooks get some. So does our rural postie, June. I have learnt not to ask whether she would like a home-baked biscuit. She says, “Just give it me.”
The Lush Places Petting Zoo has been under construction for six years with no progress being made whatsoever. But it turns out that if you sit about for long enough doing absolutely nothing except for watching silly telly shows, great things can be achieved.
We now appear to have a petting zoo, which has magically manifested itself in the garage. Magically might not be quite the right word, but we’ll be using it in our marketing campaign, which will involve deep-fake images of cavorting creatures and enticingly and artfully placed bits and pieces of rustic life. Hay-bales draped with gingham, say. I think I do have a rusting old rake somewhere. But given the way implements mysteriously vanish, never to be seen again, every time I venture into the garden, I doubt it will ever be found.
The petting zoo on a busy day consists of four wildish cats and a kitten called Tiny Cat, plus the sometimes cat – the patriarch – who pops in from time to time; three crapping chickens; a family of hedgehogs whose dark-brown squishy poops surpass even the hens’ disgusting offerings; a cat-poo tray, and an array of hay scattered about from Tiny Cat’s various beds. If we let the pet sheep out, they, too, will gallop about the garage attempting to tear the lids off the sheep-nut bins. They may also contribute a poo while on their raid.
Not so much a petting zoo, then, as a pooping zoo. This might be a world first as attractions go. At least I have the biscuit tins full. I can put on, for anyone mad enough to visit, afternoon teas. Scones, anyone?
