Barbara Deserves This

Barbara has always put herself – and been put by others – behind her husband … err, me! I can feel guilty about that. We did build Laithwaite's very much together. So when the BBC South cameras came to her vineyard yesterday, I made my excuses and left.

So I don't know what was said or filmed. But I do hope they broadcast it tonight.

I hope the real story comes across. I hope they don't give the impression Barbara and Cherry are just playing at this English Sparkling thing. For this is not Marie Antoinette toy farming. I hope they get across the story of two ladies who put in long, hard hours in tough conditions. With just a little co-opted family/friends’ help. Maybe Sir Wiggo works harder on his bike but he is young and in his prime. We are not.

I write this, collapsed in a battered old garden chair they keep in Wyfold vineyard. (The sum total of the vineyard's 'facilities'.) I am tending the bonfires of the last cuttings of 2012, The Vintage That Never Was. I am utterly exhausted by my efforts to keep up with B as she rushed to get the last of this burning done before the weather worsened.

There are two very hot fires; hers and mine! They need to be hot because now it is Pissing Down with rain and my waterproofs have failed totally. 

But I can't move. I sit here, wondering if Blackberries work in the rain.

We've always worked differently, B and me. Faced with a wall I would always try and find some clever-clogs, fancy way round it. B would always just put her head down and run at it. Till it broke.

Eg. Burning vine cuttings; I had young farmerboy Lee knock me up a fancy bonfirebarrow out of an old barrow and an oil drum. 

But B just picks up the heavy wet bundles of sticks and trudges the rows; up and down, up and down, hundreds of times, to her fire at the end.

She just left, all done, and all done in, and looking like a drowned rat (yes, I told her so! I never learn, stupid man). Off to the next job.  

I just sit thinking. Anticipating a hot bath.

I do hope the BBC broadcast tonight (BBC South Ch 964 on the Sky listings); they have a habit of changing things at the last minute. We'll be at the Laithwaite's Wine Bar in the centre of The Affordable Wine Fair in Battersea so we'll miss it.

So do watch for us, and see what you think. I am encouraging B and Cherry – now they are this year's top-scoring English fizz vineyard – to have an open day this summer. They are nervous. Write back and say you'd love to come, will you? Then I can cook sausages on any leftover cuttings – vine ember grilled sausages are just the best.

Roll on summer. But do let it stop raining.