And on that farm he had a ...

Friday evening saw Ned and me sat in front of the TV in eager anticipation of a good educational programme about 17th century homelife, a series (poo, we missed the first episode) called “Tales from the Green Valley”. The reason for our eagerness was that one of our oldest chums (well, he’s not the oldest as in being old, because we’ve got friends older than him, but he’s been a good friend for … ooh, about 30 years) features heavily in it, and we know how picky he is about accuracy and attention to detail. So we felt rather let down when the programme turned out to more of a Junior School introduction to the subject, and with several basic mistakes and omissions.

For instance, when a pig is slaughtered you don’t lay it on the ground to bleed it (and collect about two pints of blood); you hang the (already dead) pig up by a hind leg to get all the blood (about a gallon) out, for your black puddings. The slaughterer also perpetuated the common mistake and referred to the testicles as ‘sweetbreads’. Tcha! Anyone who paid attention in O’level biology classes knows that ‘sweetbread’ refers to only two parts of the carcass; it can be either the thymus gland or the pancreas. Not the testicles. However we chuckled mightily at the archaeologist bloke going greener and greener as various organs were removed from the carcass – our mate Stuart (who was remarkably clean for the cameras) – I expect you know him too, henners, he was in Norfolk's – is much more down to earth about such things. I don’t think I’ve ever known him squeam over anything. Then they explained about using the washed intestine as sausage skins – but they didn’t show them being washed, which they did on Channel 4’s ‘Worst Job in history’ series, where Stuart got Tony Robinson washing them (there’s been a lot of filming one way and another!). The women doing the culinary creations were very good, though.

The chaps making a wattle-and-daub wall were using an unconventional method of daubing, by only doing one side at a time, rather than having one person on either side and doing both sides of the same area at once – much firmer and more weathertight, but requiring a lot more skill. But they did a good job for novices – better than I could have done, I’m sure - so that’s the main thing. The thatcher was enjoying using a slightly different technique (twisted hazel pegs and rope, not iron ones and chicken wire) to that which he usually uses.

Taken as a whole, it’s a pretty good basic introduction to the subject, but we’d have liked a lot more depth. And we know that, given the opportunity, Stuart can talk for England about it!