Back to Cheddar this weekend as tonight the village was putting on a big Christmas extravaganza with stalls and mulled cider and events. My wife had been invited to the library to sell copies of
her brilliant kids' book and my brother was also there flogging copies of
his brilliant kids' book. For some reason I had not been asked to come along and sell copies of
my brilliant cock book. But there's no accounting for taste. There are so many authors in the family now that we almost need our own library. As long as it was a library with a big enough shelf to fit six books.
My brother and I were both slightly amazed and resentful that Cheddar now had this winter jamboree. There was nothing like this in our day. It reminded me a bit of the film Groundhog Day. Not because it was the same thing we'd seen a billion times (because we hadn't) but because it was really like the bit when the whole turn out together to celebrate the appearance of the groundhog. As I get older I really miss this community spirit and it would be very hard to get the people of Shepherd's Bush together in the same way, but the turn out and support was strong here for citizens of all ages.
I was glad to be freed from sitting behind a table hoping people might come and buy something from me - though my brother especially threw himself into it impressively, regaling the young folk of the town with a poem about a cockroach. Instead I went to look around the small library which I used to come to almost 40 years ago with Steve Cheeke when we were trying to solve the mystery of the Masquerade hare. We didn't try all that hard and got nowhere near the solution or the prize, but back then if you wanted to find something out you had to go to a room full of books. You couldn't just ask your phone to tell you. Cheddar library was under threat of closure, but my father and others battled to save it (at least for now). Whilst the internet is an astounding resource of information, it's also important to have these local hubs, as much for the community they provide as the literature within. And the value of being able to read books for free should not be overlooked.
I was looking for stuff about the history of the village (which the internet is fairly vague about) as I have vague plans to write about the gorge in the 19th Century. I found a few useful bits and pieces and my dad had collected a few more for me at home. I became engrossed by looking at photos of familiar landmarks with unfamiliar additions. The distance of stuff that happened to me a third of a century ago tugs at my heart til it aches, so seeing the changes that have been wrought in 130 years made me queasy, but brought nostalgic pleasure with the pain.
Cheddar is an amazing place and I hope one day I can tell the world its stories and maybe encourage the world to come here and see this stuff for themselves. Most of the caves were only discovered fairly recently because of superstitions that caves were passages that led to Hell and were used by devils. Cox's cave was supposedly discovered when a workman was standing on some land that collapsed into a cavern and he screamed that he was being taken to Hell. With these pieces of information and a bit more investigation into the fantastic local characters I started to get a real feel of how this could work as a comedy drama. The beginnings of the gorge as a tourist attraction are reminiscent of a tame and unmurdery version of Deadwood and the wild west. This was the slightly wild south west. With men not searching for gold, but searching for holes. In a sense they were digging in the hope of finding nothing. Or at least the absence of something.
Regardless of what I may or may not do with this information it was illuminating and fascinating to spend some time looking back at the history of the town in which I grew up.
