When modern and ancient collide, you expect a discordant note to be struck. But on Sunday, I went to a place where the ages were in harmony. For many a spring, during the all-too-short asparagus season, my dad has disappeared into the Worcestershire countryside and returned bearing bunches of the finest spears. For a man who hardly ever does any shopping, or indeed ventures out much at all, this is odd. “I have a supplier,” he’ll say, offering no further explanation.
I had long wanted to get to the bottom of this mysterious business, but then the season would finish and I would forget about it for another year. Not this year. Almost grudgingly, he showed me the way to his source: a drive-thru asparagus store. There’s a first time for everything. Love it. How John Constable would paint this rural scene, or Thomas Hardy describe it, or Edward Elgar set it to music, I cannot imagine. But I was enchanted.
As we pulled up, a woman appeared, as if by magic, brandishing bunches of asparagus the size of Churchill’s cigars. I wound down the window, gave her the money, and the gear was handed over.
My dad’s dealer is called Carol. I won’t reveal this drive-thru’s exact location, lest the shelves are entirely cleared in the last few weeks of the season, disappointing her regulars. But if you keep your eyes peeled between Mustow Green and Hackman’s Gate on the A450 you may well find it. She produces all sorts of stuff on her 400 acres but, apart from pumpkins in the autumn, asparagus is her only business-to-consumer operation. I do like a specialist retailer, a welcome release from the customary paralysis of choice. I told her that I’d have thought she could get away with charging more than three quid a bunch. Interestingly, she said the fact she sold nothing else held her back from charging more. All on its own, any price rise would stick out like, well, one of her bigger spears. I trust the Harvard Business School knows of this strange pricing phenomenon.
With the deal done, and a wink from my dad to his supplier, we went on our way bearing our bundles of green wands, grown in Worcestershire from time immemorial.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
