Meadowland

If there is an advantage to being a peasant farmer with a “classic tractor” (read “reluctant-to-start 1978 International Harvester”), it is this: one gets to spend a lot of time outside, walking inside nature.

The lark is already up in the sky when I go down Bank Field to feed the sheep.

Alone at 6am on a hill in Herefordshire, where the last of England runs into the forbidding mountain wall of Wales, I know why life is precious. The skylark sings a silken canopy over my head; from the four hedges come the dawn notes of blackbird, song thrush, wren, blue tit, dunnock and the melodious blackcap which arrived yesterday. There is no human sound, except for my laboured breathing under the weight of the feed sack. This is how life was before the pandemonium din of the Industrial Revolution and 24/7 shopping. When England was bright with birdsong.


An extract from "Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field", winner of the Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2015, by John Lewis-Stempel, whose talk and book signing bucksmiss and I went along to on Day Two of the Hay Festival.  We also learnt about archaeology at Hereford Cathedral, heard a discourse on the meanings and interpretations of "trust" and laughed (in some places, if not all) at an evening of new comedy acts.  I was also delighted to bump into another former colleague - the presenter of Radio 4's The Film Programme, Francine Stock, who had earlier conducted the "Trust" session with Tim Parker, the new chairman of the National Trust.

I was pleasantly surprised by the food available at the Hay Festival, which was very good quality, plentiful and tasty - and at a reasonable price.  Edible highlight of the day has to be the mega-block of Rocky Road, which was one of the best I've ever tasted as well as being a very generously sized slice.

This is another backblip catch-up from last Friday.  My blipfoto is of a meadow on the banks of the Wye where a rickety single-track suspension bridge crosses over the river.  The bridge itself and the author John Lewis-Stempel are included as extra photos.