![\"person-copy\"](\"https:\/\/www.devolkitchens.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Person-copy-1.png\")
- <\/a>
- <\/ul><\/div><\/p>\n
The Mistletoe run, 1984<\/p>\n
![\"deVOL-kitchens-blog-Paul](\"\/\/www.devolkitchens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/cars.jpg\")
- <\/a>
- <\/ul><\/div><\/p>\n
I guess I was destined to run my own business from an early age. My first business transaction was at the tender age of 5. I was quite good at drawing birds, Robins mostly as I remember, and a few of my classmates paid me a penny to draw birds for them to take home to their parents and pass them off as their own. Slightly shady business really; come to think of it.<\/p>\n
When you start in business, a certain amount of blagging can often be the difference between getting the work or not. If you\u2019ve never done it before, you\u2019re not likely to get the job, and if you\u2019re a resourceful fellow you\u2019ll figure it out along the way. Being a bit of an opportunist can also get you started, but it\u2019s worth remembering that people often tell tall stories about their ventures. And so it was on the Mistletoe run\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n
I was in my 2nd<\/sup> year at Loughborough University and by the end of term I was surviving on a few pounds a week. I had big ideas though, by July I would own a four storey Victorian villa, with 8 self-contained flats.<\/p>\n
It was the last week of term, about 2 weeks before Christmas, and I was as broke as any student could be then. You were lucky to get a \u00a3150 overdraft from the bank, so that\u2019s considerably less broke than the \u00a330,000 student loans that most graduates have these days. But having no money and no possibility of borrowing any, brings out the maverick in you.<\/p>\n
A friend of mine, Yvette, who studied Fine Art Painting, took me and my girlfriend to see her brother, who was developing a property in Nottingham. He was several years older than us and he was converting a large house into student flats. He was striding around the place barking orders at various tradesmen. Bathrooms were going in, stud walls were being boarded out and plasterers and decorators were climbing all over each other to finish the place off by the weekend. I was impressed; I knew nothing about developing property and this guy looked like he was going places. That evening he flashed some cash and bought us all dinner, telling tales of fortune and adventure. One story got us thinking.<\/p>\n
A couple of days later it was last orders in our local, and we decided that one of those stories was an opportunity not to be missed; and the timing couldn\u2019t be better: The Mistletoe run was on! We would set off straight away. Claire and me, in her mustard minivan and Yvette in her ex post office Bedford van. We would drive to Dover, catch the Ferry about 4am, drive into France and look for an apple orchard around dawn. Mistletoe would apparently be dripping from every branch and the farmer would be happy to let us have it for free as it was a plague on his orchard, sucking the life out of his trees and reducing his crops.<\/p>\n
Everything seemed to be going to plan; we parked up in a lay bye 50 arbitrary miles into France to get a couple of hours kip and wait for dawn. As soon as we woke, we were off, heads pivoting, on the search for apple orchards, down any likely looking country lane. For a couple of hours we began to doubt whether Mistletoe was really so abundant. One farm track we ventured down slowly petered out and we realised we would need to do a 3 point turn in a freshly ploughed field. The minivan, not known for its off-roading prowess, got bogged down to its sills. The overtly disgruntled farmer pulled us out with his tractor and we slunk off suitably admonished.<\/p>\n
It was while trying to explain our predicament, that we realised we had no idea what mistletoe was in French. Luckily, with 2 fine artists on tour, a fairly obvious mistletoe drawing soon aided our quest. Not a glimpse of mistletoe anywhere, until we happened upon a lovely little village with a church and traditional cottages and farms huddled in a valley. There, going up a steep hill, above a 6 foot grassy bank on our left we thought we spotted a likely looking bunch sprouting from the bare branches at the top of a fruit tree. We stopped and I clambered up the bank to see an orchard, about the size of a cricket pitch, laden with big green bushy mistletoe with gleaming white berries dripping from every bunch.<\/p>\n
\u00a0
![\"deVOL-kitchens-blog-Paul](\"\/\/www.devolkitchens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/tree.png\")
- <\/a>
- <\/ul><\/div>
\n<\/a><\/p>\nIt was the first time I\u2019d seen mistletoe growing and it was greener and bushier with way more berries than I had imagined. Suddenly I had an inkling that this might actually work. This would have to be the best mistletoe going, and if the story was true, by 3am tomorrow we would be dealing out green and white gold to scrapping hoards in Spitalfields market, with our pockets bulging with cash.<\/p>\n
We knocked on the farmer\u2019s door, holding up a bottle of white plonk to greet the craggy faced old chap with crazy matted hair. With a showing of the drawing and a pointing to the trees, he soon cottoned on.<\/p>\n
\u201cAhhh Le Gui, Le Gui! Oui oui, of course, go on.\u201d He gestured towards the orchard and walked off in the other direction. We stood in the orchard and then, only then, we realised we had no tools whatsoever; no stepladder, no loppers, no saw, how completely stupid! No matter, the farmer returned with same said items moments later. What a jolly fellow. Smiles all round, we set to work. With the stepladder, I\u2019d climb up into the branches and saw off bunches that were 2 foot across, the size of a big beach ball but as heavy as a bag of sand. The bunches were soon landing in the lush wet grass and the girls were towing them off on sheets of tarpaulin. In no more than a couple of hours the vans were full, but we had cut down half as much again. Luckily we had thought of tarpaulin and rope. The minivan had 2 roof bars and Yvette\u2019s Bedford van didn\u2019t. We strapped the tarpaulins onto both the roofs in any case, roping Yvette\u2019s on by tying the ropes through a slightly opened window on the passenger side and through the door openings on the driver\u2019s side and the back. If you really slammed the door it closed, and with a lot of heaving and leaning we had the back doors closed too. We parked up, fully laden, and went to thank the farmer. I can still remember the dark kitchen with light from an opposite window reflecting on the worn table top. He sat, opposite his wife, with some hearty smelling broth on the range; they cheerfully raised their glasses and hailed \u201csalut\u201d through dry bread crumbs and missing teeth.<\/p>\n
We had our bounty and we were on our way home.\u00a0 We were only an hours drive from Calais, and boarded a ferry in no time. Of course we were a little concerned about what customs might say to us, but there was nothing to be done except hope for the best. Yvette was first off the ferry in her Bedford van and got waved straight through; we unfortunately were taken to one side. We had driven through the nothing to declare channel and the customs chap asked us \u201cAnything to declare?\u201d We were sitting hunched over; mistletoe was bulging out over our shoulders and spiking the back of our necks and ears. The roof tarpaulin sagged under the weight of mistletoe and sprigs poked out of every gap. \u201cNo,\u201d we said. \u201cWhat\u2019s all this then?\u201d \u201cMistletoe.\u201d \u201cI can see that, how much did it cost?\u201d \u201cA bottle of wine.\u201d \u201cWhat are you going to sell it for?\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t know, never sold any before.\u201d \u201cWait here.\u201d<\/p>\n
We waited for an hour and a half, whilst various phone calls were made. When we asked what was happening, they said they were waiting to hear from the Office of Infectious Diseases to see if it may be carrying any disease or parasites. If they didn\u2019t give the all clear we would have to take it back or pay for it to be incinerated. It was agonising and we were just so jealous of Yvette sailing through customs a couple of hours ago.<\/p>\n
Thankfully a man eventually ambled over to us and said we could go. We didn\u2019t ask if he\u2019d got confirmation that mistletoe was ok, or just got bored of holding us there, we just went. It was dark and we had no idea where Yvette was. The plan was to head for Spitalfields market, so we hoped Yvette would either be waiting for us at the exit to Dover Port or be having a kip in the car park at Spitalfields. It wasn\u2019t all Motorway then and there was no M25, it was A roads and roundabouts. We were near Canterbury when we saw a huge pile of Mistletoe by the side of a roundabout. We could see what had happened and there was nothing Yvette or we could do about it, so we just shook our heads and motored on.<\/p>\n
We arrived at Spitalfields around 3am and it was all going on.<\/p>\n
![\"market\"](\"https:\/\/www.devolkitchens.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/market-1.png\")
- <\/ul><\/div>
- <\/ul><\/div><\/p>\n
- <\/ul><\/div><\/p>\n
![\"deVOL-kitchens-blog-Paul](\"https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button?&url=https:\/\/www.devolkitchens.com\/blog\/ahh-le-gui-le-gui&media=https:\/\/www.devolkitchens.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Person-copy-1.png\")