The Funny-Gift Story
or,
Joy Larkcom Strikes Again

Those of you who have not yet had the honour of knowing Joy Larkcom and her husband Don Pollard are missing a real treat; they are true originals and thoroughly wonderful creatures. Joy, as you may know, is one of Britain's greatest vegetable garden writers - in fact, she is one of the most highly regarded in the world.

At any rate, several months ago, I (judy) finally got a chance to go with Graham to their home in Norfolk to stay overnight, and, after the delight of wandering through Joy's gardens and eating one of Don's magnificent meals (salmon cooked wrapped in spinach leaves and another batch wrapped in grape leaves, with a taste testing of both for all), Joy declared that they had to go to a wedding the next day and was anyone any good at wrapping presents.

I, trained by my mother who once wrapped presents for some fancy store in New York City one Christmas season in the 1940's (and thus considered in our family as a master trainer), said, innocently, "I'm not bad. What do you have to wrap?"

"Two of my books," replied Joy.

"Oh, sure," I said with great certainty. "I can wrap books. No problem."

With that, Joy bounced off to assemble the ingredients. She returned bearing books and a pen to inscribe them, and also in her arms were scraps of wrinkled, previously used wrapping paper of various odd sizes and designs, a box of thoroughly sad-looking well-worn bits of ribbon and string, no cellophane tape, and a box of cards that reflected the Pollards' long and incredibly varied life travelling around the world but (as we discovered two hours later after Joy and Don had both inspected them with lively pronouncements upon their origin), none of which was at all suitable for a wedding greeting.

Thank God for wine, I say.

When at last, with much grumbling amid the laughter, I finally got the books wrapped, Joy produced an aging register in which every visitor to their house for the past 31 years of their marriage has had to write, where I dutifully added my name and, of course, a diatribe about having to wrap presents for people I didn't know, with thoroughly awful paper and string and card and no tape.

So at our own wedding, Joy came up to me and said very proudly, "I have your wedding present, and I want you to know that I went out and bought NEW wrapping paper and NEW ribbon, and TWO new cards, and put it all in a box, and you can wrap it yourself!"

The box, by the way, was a polystyrene container that once held iced calabrese vegetables.

And that, dear folks, is just one of the reasons we love Joy Larkcom.

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(The gift, I might mention, was a gorgeous handmade pottery salad bowl.)