A NOSTALGIC POSTSCRIPT..

My last post about the Round Oak at Padworth Common has brought back memories of times very much past, so beware of a self-indulgence alert!   Before my parents took over the pub, it was owned by an elderly brother and sister named Brown.   Bert Brown ran the pub and his sister was a nurse.   I never knew her first name as she was always known simply as Nurse Brown.   As well as running the pub, Bert was also something of a small scale farmer and he owned a field just up the road from the pub which was given over to barley or wheat.


As a very small boy during the latter stages of the war and just afterwards, I used to look forward to the annual event when Farmer Brown`s field was due for harvesting.   It was something of a local ritual - the old Fordson tractor would come out of mothballs and harvesting would begin.   He used to start by going around the edges of his field, meaning that the uncut crop became smaller and smaller as the tractor went round in ever decreasing circles until there was just a  small area left.


It was then that the rabbits would emerge in their dozens, having been reduced to huddling together as the tractor advanced until they worked out that it was time to make a run for it.   What they could not have known was that, by this time, quite a group of men had assembled, each armed with a double barrelled shotgun, ready to bag as many bunnies as they could.   


Those were the days when rabbit formed a sizeable chunk of the rural diet and I remember having rabbit pie, rabbit stew or just plain rabbit for some time after the harvest was safely gathered in.  It`s also a safe bet that rabbit was also the dish of choice from the Round Oak`s cordon noir menu - quite possibly the only choice.   Even today, however, I find it difficult to look a rabbit in the face.