It’s autumn and the deciduous trees are beginning to shade into that glorious riot of colour which we all associate with this time of year. My partner and I are extremely busy putting up our chutneys and our jams and filling our deep-freezers with the fruits of our gardening labours. Currently, it’s crab apple season and we are very busy rendering that fruit into various flavours of jelly, each one of which has a purpose either as a seasoning, a condiment or a spread. The blackberries are filling out nicely on their branches and they will have to be dealt with next. Christmas Puddings have been made and put by to mature, and Christmas cakes have been baked and are seasoning in their airtight containers. Rosehips will be gathered next weekend and turned into that delicious syrup – the ultimate vanilla ice-cream accompaniment – which is so rich in vitamin C.
Large bunches of herbs are hanging from the cross beams in my greenhouse, drying naturally in each day’s autumn sun and, in our kitchen, the salted hams hanging above our ancient stove are slowly taking on the redolent flavours of escaped wood smoke, damp dog (unavoidable, but interesting in its piquancy), and various, stewing (and sometimes forgotten and burning) fruits reducing on the hot-plates below.
More than anything else, however, autumn in this small English village means the start of the Whist season. So, last Wednesday night R------- and I walked through the village to the Community Hall for the first Whist evening of this autumn. Now, I’m a Bridge player so Whist is naturally second best, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy it! R-------, my partner, loves these evenings, so, naturally, I do as well. Seeing one’s soul mate happy, and contributing to that happiness, is very fulfilling and satisfying – a sort of harvesting in itself, perhaps.
Our Whist evenings are run by our local WRI (Women’s Rural Institute) and they are famed for the quality of the catering at halftime. The tea is excellent, the sandwiches are so freshly cut that one can almost still hear the squeal of the bread as the knife sliced into it as one bites down into those excellent savouries; but it’s the cakes, those magnificent small sweet things, which truly make the evening. They are mouth-wateringly delicious. Tiny, home-baked lemon slices, macaroons of such lightness that they almost defy gravity in one’s mouth, rock cakes of such delicacy that one cannot even begin to describe them. Choux pastry fancies smothered in such rich, dark chocolate that they positively sit up and beg for very young claret, and some pepper, to partner them on the way across one’s palate and down.
That’s not the point, however, which I want to make. Grand and wonderful though the catering is, enjoyable though the laying of the cards is, it’s not the point of these jottings. The point is, that although every religious and political hue is represented at these evenings there is one which is conspicuous by its absence – no Muslim ever attends! Granted, there are only three Muslim families in our village, a mere one percent of the total, but if they truly wanted to be part of the life we all lead here then the least that they could do would be to make some contribution to these socially important functions. Of course there is a raffle on these evenings, but then some others who are not Muslim don’t participate in that on exactly the same grounds that a Muslim would not – it’s gambling – so I’m not worried about that.
No, what I’m really worried about is that no member of those three families ever participates in anything. They don’t attend the public meetings of our Parish Council, they don’t come to our May Day celebrations, they don’t come along and gaze enthralled at our community bonfire and fireworks on the fifth of November, not a single one of them has ever stood for election to the committee which runs our community Hall, they don’t attend the PTA nor do they stand for election to the School Governors. They are polite and well mannered when encountered in the village shop or in the street but they do not engage with us in any way at all. Quite simply, they don’t take part in community life in any way whatsoever.
Just as bad as all that, however, is the fact that they refuse to dress in the way that we all do. They dress as if they were still in their countries of origin. They deliberately call attention to themselves – especially the females – by dressing as if they were still living in the primitive societies from whence they sprung.
Just last week I encountered one of them in the village shop draped from head to toe in the all enveloping black cloak which is considered to be modest by them. I couldn’t help myself but comment so I asked her why she considered such outlandish garb to be modest. “Because you cannot see the shape of my body,” she replied. “ You can’t see my femaleness,” she ventured further. Naturally, I pointed out to her that dressing in such outlandish garb simply accentuated, in our society, the fact that she was female and that, perhaps, it made her all the more alluring to the local males.
It was the sheer arrogance of what she said next which took my breath away.
“Your society!” she snarled in a loud voice, “You have no society; you are nothing but the dust we have to live with. This is ours and you will learn from us.”
The hatred in her voice was manifest and shocking. Quietly, but with throbbing anger in her voice, the owner of the shop asked this Muslim harridan to leave and never return. After she left we two laughed at her, but behind our laughter was a deep sense of disquiet.
This is Britain today. It’s a country wherein some residents, specifically the Muslim residents it seems, feel that the native population, and its culture, has no worth.
Needless to say, from now on I will be attending every Whist evening, every community event, which my partner wants me to. Every single one!
By the way, I was the lowest scoring man that Whist night. My prize for being so was a large turnip! Don’t laugh, please. OK, laugh all you want – but it was a tasty turnip when roasted with carrots and served as a vegetable side dish to minced steak and onion pie. My partner, R------- was, however, the highest scoring lady and the highest scorer of the evening. And she’s not going to let me forget that for quite a long time!
