All Cheeses Great and Small: A Life Less Blurry. Alex James
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a colossal operation, a huge investment and a triumph of the ‘if you build it they will come’ school. Master bakers, pastry chefs, butchers, wine buyers, and goodness knows what other experts all going at it behind the scenes from dawn till dusk to fill the shelves. I was shown around the area where the cows were milked. The milk was fed directly by a pipe into the hands of an artisan cheesemaker and turned into award-winning cheese on the spot. A lot of the stuff in the shop was produced from scratch, with scientific attention paid to every detail on site, but all the home-produced lines were topped up with the finest luxuries from the four corners of the globe. It was a case study in excellence.
What a business to stumble upon in the Gloucestershire countryside. The food hall was just a part of it. There was a whole New Age massage, yogaromatherapy wing, apparently entirely staffed by Tibetan Buddhist monks offering the latest treatments from facials to full body massage. Alongside the new clothing department, was an interiors division full of knick-knacks and tasteful objets. Another building, with roaring open fires and scented candles, sold books about yoga for dogs and other suitable gifts for those who have everything. I took a tour of the market garden behind the shop. I roamed polytunnels full of exotic salad. From an observation deck I watched the cows being milked. I saw the yoghurt and butter-making facilities. I watched the artisan cheesemaker creating his award-winning cheese. They weren’t just making cheese, they were making milk and turning it into cheese and they didn’t just make milk, they made grass. You could tell worms were being taken into consideration and somewhere behind the scenes was someone who knew worms don’t like lemons. A group of wide-eyed Gore-tex-clad tourists looked clearly out of place, wondering at the sheer financial scale of any shopping activity. They stayed in a huddle and nudged each other and pointed at things, slightly scared, but thoroughly exhilarated.
I loved it. It was a dream that deserved to succeed. I couldn’t help thinking I was looking at the shop of the future. It did for shops what Ian Schrager did for hotels in the nineties. Made everything that had happened before look boring. Buying the groceries at Daylesford would never be a chore. It was a joy, because Daylesford managed to have that quality of being somewhere that it is actually quite nice to just pass the time. People didn’t go there just to buy filets mignons, they went to see and be seen. Even the chatelaines of the larger houses liked to drop in to pick up an extra bowl of chocolate-coated cherries when they could easily have sent their cook. It was amazing how it polarised people locally. The pickle factory caused an uproar in the village and was shut down. Many of the locals thought the whole thing was a nonsensical conceit for tourists and never went there. Fred sold lamb to Daylesford but he didn’t know what to make of it. He just shook his head and went very quiet whenever it was mentioned.
But it was a magnificent thing to have on our doorstep: as inspirational as it was convenient. I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my new life, I just wanted something else, but Daylesford was such a sophisticated dream, perfectly realised, that it showed that whatever it is you want to do, however far-fetched it is, it can be done. Right here, bang in the middle of nowhere.
There was always something happening at Daylesford but I was surprised by how much community activity there was, generally. I had no idea there would be so much going on in the countryside. It was one festivity after another in the parish. There was a firework display on top of the hill. It was the talk of the queue in the Post Office. We decided to go, but I had trouble finding Claire’s left welly and by the time we left, both furious with each other, with a sinking heart I saw the first firework go pop in the distance. It was all over by the time we arrived fifteen minutes later. We missed that one, but it soon became clear that firework displays would be actually quite hard to avoid. They seemed to be going on all around, all winter long. There were about three thousand people on the village green on bonfire night itself. Some druids performed quite a dark ceremony with a very lifelike guy while we munched burgers, spangled sparklers and watched our children on the bouncy slide. It seemed just as glamorous and interesting as Brook Street, Mayfair at midday or Newcastle in full swing at midnight. The bonfire was enormous and the fireworks went on for ages. Perhaps they never stop. I suppose there’s always a firework going off somewhere.
There was a pamphlet that came through the door every month with adverts for curtain alterations and swimming pool maintenance. I couldn’t help reading it. I always wanted to call every number in it. One month, between a landscape gardener and a fitness trainer, there was a new number to ring for singing lessons. I thought I’d have some singing lessons. I still played the guitar every day. I was in the best band in the world. I didn’t want to start another one, but I clung on tight to music, tighter than ever.
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