Arriving at the Wheatsheaf at 3pm on a Sunday it is hard not to conclude that it’s patronised solely by people who can’t move their top lip. So dogged and unmoving are the clientele’s upper lips that the chatter from the bar sounds like the Bullingdon Club’s point-to-point. The haircuts, too, are very Cressida and Hugo. The problem is, when you are pretty, you attract so much attention: some of it of the welcome, take-me-now variety, and some, well, less agreeable. The Wheatsheaf, with its gleaming Cotswold stone walls, brushed wood floors and liberal use of Farrow and Ball, is drop-dead.
There is something awry about those honking accents. It took me a while to figure what that was, and then … ah yes! they sound more west Kensington than West country. Only as the day slides by and the Black Range Rovers retreat, do I realise why: it is because they all are from West Ken. We are in prime second-home territory and by evening Cress and Hu are back on the M4 to their first home. Such is life in this unfeasibly pleasant bit of Gloucestershire.
