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We’ve been at this crazy lil place called DICKER for over a decade –we moved here when Britain was still part of the EU. We love DICKER and love the people here and love the quirks of this place - and personally, I still see it as somewhat of a privilege to run the VILLAGE SHOP & CAFE in such a lovely old rural village.
The Village Shop runs on a lot of manpower, it runs on the wonderful local produce from wonderful local growers, it runs on the capital investment from the Flower family and it runs on the life force that is DICKERLOVE.
As aforementioned, OUR STUFF comes from a wonderful plethora of local suppliers. We have favourite local growers & makers, such as BUTCHER BOB who is a genius with a sausage skin. He works with local, freerange pork and creates our oft-complimented breakfast sausage. Also available frozen instore and by mail order*
And lets not forget GIN MAN ADAM whose Sussex made gin changed my life (in a good way). I will never forgot the day I met him, around 9am one morning. He walked into the shop and said "here. try this gin." It was 9am, so I drank it was good. Also, the amazing thing about this gin is it has some sort of mystical ( /litmus) properties from an exotic botanical addition which makes it change colour upon the addition of tonic water (acid) and is pretty blooming** impressive.
Have you seen the bluebells at Arlington’s bluebell walk? –the very people who run this outstanding beautiful natural area of outstanding natural beauty also have some DELICIOUS HAPPY ANIMALS on their farm –so keep your eye out for their chickens and lamb in our frozen department.
DOWNSVIEW DAIRY along the road in Ringmer, do our milk. They are a lovely, family run farm who really care about cows and the yummy stuff you get from them.
It would be remiss not to also mention their shamazing homemade ice-cream. These are a few of my favourite things: local strawberry icecream, passionfruit sorbet... chocolate, honeycomb. Damn.
And a call out to the nice bakers in Eastbourne who get up very, very early (and I’m talkin’ like the-previous-night-early) at WINDMILLS BAKERY to make our daily bread, buns, croissants & baguettes. We like you a lot.
Sugar, do do do do do OH, HONEY, HONEY... Our honey is so local that the hives may as well be on one of our tables. Except for Health &Safety/ EU regulations... that would be dangerous.
You may sometimes see us foraging around the Dicker for ingredients, such as berries or nettles or ELDERFLOWERS to make our yummy cordials and, of course, our milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard.
DICKER MISSELANY . We at the village shop love all things Dicker. We recently represented the Dicker in the annual TUG-O-WAR at Dicker Day. Team-Dicker owned that tug. It was a glorious triumph and an honour to uphold the excellent tradition that Dicker has held for many generations & decade of being National-level champions at the sport. Apparently the men’s team used to practice down the road at the local POTTERY/brick makers by Hoisting crates of bricks up over a pulley system (this practice was not supported by EU legislation).
In those days, Dicker was also known for its JUGS and bowls which were produced at the DICKERWARE factory. It closed last century, but we still sell pieces of Dickerware in our gift section (and we are still known for our jugs and bowls).
Also, I’m not sure if this is an actual fact or not; but I’m pretty sure we once had the BIGGEST CARROT IN THE WORLD *** in our kitchen. I took a photo.
Speaking of which, our chef loves to design pancakes in the shape of RANDOM ANIMALS, so next time you’re in, you can request a pussy cat shaped pancake.
CHISTMAS at DICKER is a lovely time and every year we go all-out to celebrate it at the shop. Come along to our wonderful, free carols V santa V mulled wine event at the beginning of December. We will sing carols around the village tree, we will sit on santa’s knee, we will drink mulled wine to keep us warm and we will sing the loudest version ever of FIVE GOLD RINGS. Boom.
*This product is not available by mail order.
** Deliberate botanical based pun.
***This is a gross exaggeration.
The Village Shop, Coldharbour Road, Upper Dicker, East Sussex, BN27 3QE. Tel: 01323 844 352
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