Book Club Books

There's a novel I often notice in the library when I'm shelving. It's by Virginia Ironside, it's about a woman turning 60, and it's called 'No! I Don't Want To Join A Book Club' - as if doing that was the last port of call before the care home. Well, I'm not sixty yet, but I've been a member of our little book group for about ten years. It was started by Judith Churcher, one of the other mums at the school, who tragically died not long afterwards, but the rest of us carried on: we gathered new members, lost a few, and now number around seven or eight people. More than that, we reckon, would fragment discussions and make it difficult to hold it, as we do, in each other's homes. Some people have nice big rooms, but mine and Debbie's aren't quite so palatial. Plus, over the years, it's got a bit competitive regarding the food. When we met during the day, coffee and biscuits were usual (though they did tend to be M&S biscuits, or home made), but now we have evening sessions, none of us bothers to eat before we go out. Cheese and biscuits, nice bread, posh chutneys, wine, even, in Stuart's case, a two-course sit down meal, are the order of the day. As we meet perhaps half a dozen times a year, my turn doesn't come round too often, but feeding six people is a lot easier than feeding ten or eleven - plus I don't have that many comfy chairs.

Anyway, the food, though nice, is hardly the point. We're a fairly varied bunch of intelligent women, plus Stuart, our 'token man' - he's gay, and keeps trying to persuade us to tackle things like 'The Line of Beauty', while making humorous digs about the 'all men are bastards' theme of a lot of the books we choose. There are two authors, a high-powered lawyer, an ex-journalist, an ex-teacher, a letting agent, two library assistants and Stuart, who works for the Landmark Trust. He's the only one who doesn't actually live in the village. Only one of us doesn't have a dog, and apart from Stuart (again!) we all have kids of various ages - some went to the village school, some to the local private school. So our tastes - and brows - are pretty varied too. Debbie and I tend to the less literary end. Louisa ('Can we do 'Of Human Bondage' next time? I've always wanted to read it!') is definitely the most highbrow, though she enjoys more popular books too. Vinnie did an English degree as a mature student a few years ago, and is into Henry James. I like historical novels and fantasy and chick lit. One day I'll suggest we do 'The Left Hand of Darkness', by Ursula Le Guin, which should get people talking. Some of my suggestions have gone down really well - everyone loved 'Northern Light', by Jennifer Donnelly, and 'Passion', by Jude Morgan. 'My Name is Red' and 'The Child That Books Built' were less successful. We used to take it in turns to offer titles, but now it's less organised and a variety of books are put forward and a choice of two made more or less by vote. Ploughing our way through something that's long-winded or turgid will make us keen to read a lighter book next time. With so much available at the library, it's hard to fit in the time for our chosen club titles, especially if they don't much appeal. I never did get very far with 'Of Human Bondage', or with the Trollope (unfortunately Anthony, not Joanna), and I hated 'Dorian' by Will Self. On the other hand we've chosen 'Snobs' at the last meeting, and I've broken all records by finishing it less than a week later! Usually, true to form, I'm trying desperately to read the last chapter an hour before we get together. Even more usually, Henrietta (very large house, indeed pocket stately home, demanding in-laws, commuting husband and several children) never gets the time to do more than read the first few chapters.

Some book groups only do Richard and Judy titles, or go for the Booker Prize shortlist. I can safely say that I've only ever read two Booker winners. One was 'The True History of the Kelly Gang', by Peter Carey (2001), which we did do a few years ago. There are some on the list I mean to get around to trying (notably 'The Ghost Road' by Pat Barker) but most of them I wouldn't touch with a bargepole. Rightly or wrongly, the winners - and, indeed, most 'literary' fiction - have the reputation of being difficult to read, more interested in ideas than plot and character, or just plain boring. The few examples I've tackled have not tended to dispel this notion. I remember reading a Fay Weldon novel (and no, it was not 'She-Devil') and thinking half-way through, 'I have never met people like this in my entire life!' Of course, that could just mean that I've led a very sheltered existence, but I suspect that's not so. These characters were cyphers rather than living, breathing individuals: they were in the book to express an attitude, point a moral or as a plot device.

Of course there are more elements to a book than characters or plot. Good writing is important, though not as vital as you'd think: plenty of books with clunkingly awful prose reach the top of the best-seller lists (Dan Brown springs first to mind). But the novels that last seem to have the right balance of plot, character and writing. I love that feeling that creeps over you as you begin to read a new book, and realise that there is something about it that just grabs you: you make a cup of tea, get a chocolate biscuit, settle down on the sofa and prepare to enjoy yourself. The most recent one to give me that buzz was the other Booker winner I've read (before it was even on the shortlist) - 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel. Never has six hundred pages gone so quickly. I was so pleased when it won, I'd been afraid it wouldn't. You always get the impression that the one thing that literary people can't stand is popularity, and 'Wolf Hall' is certainly popular, with the betting public as well as the readers. I wonder if all the people who put money on it had read it? Probably not - but I bet they knew people who had. At one stage we were considering it for our group read, but there are something like fifty reservations on it in the library service, and as Debbie and I have both read it, we've decided to try something else. Best book of the year, for me, and I can't wait for the sequel.

Over the years we must have read forty or fifty books - Louisa keeps a record of them all in her black book (you can tell she's a legal eagle). Some pleased everyone, some attracted indifference, some had mixed reviews. But only one book was universally panned, and interestingly it led to our most lively and stimulating discussion. It was 'The Dying Animal' by Philip Roth. I can't remember who suggested it but it was quite the most horrible book I've ever read. About an ageing university lecturer who begins an affair with one of his students, a luscious Hispanic girl (played by Penelope Cruz in the film), everything is described in prurient detail and the 'hero' is so obviously the author's alter ego that you just cringe. Doesn't he just wish he could have a lovely girl less than a third of his age climb enthusiastically into his bed! I know there are some mismatched couples out there (Sarkosi and Carla spring at once to mind) but this is wishful thinking on a grand scale. Yuk. And for once, Stuart agreed with the women.

Actually, I've got another idea for our next selection. It's much the same sort of view of women as 'The Dying Animal', but from the opposite end of the literary spectrum, and it throws up all sorts of topics for discussion: prostitution, feminism, even racism. There's a copy in Market Lavington library, and though I haven't actually read it, the title tells me all I need to know. It's called 'Love Slave to the Sheikh', and it's published by Mills and Boon. I can't wait to see what they all think of it when I take it along to the meeting in January.

A Life in Music

I started this blog with music, so it's about time I wrote about it again. Heavy sessions on YouTube, making up playlists of my favourite songs, got me thinking about the part music has played in my life.

Up until the age of twelve, my musical tastes were pretty much conditioned by my parents. My mother had a fondness for musicals and Nat King Cole and Cole Porter, my father for classical music, especially Mozart. Both of them liked Chopin. In the early 60s, living near the east coast of Suffolk, we didn't get any opportunity to listen to pop. The BBC Light Programme broadcast about half an hour a week, and Radio Luxemberg had awful reception. I knew all the tunes and lyrics of 'My Fair Lady' by heart, and nothing by the Beatles.

With pirate radio, all that changed virtually overnight. You could go to Felixstowe beach and see the ships anchored three miles offshore: the DJs travelled there via Ipswich station, and fans used to go and meet them (including my sister and I). Once we had tried to listen to music that sounded as though it was being played in cottonwool in someone's bathroom two miles away: now, the signals were so loud and clear that the DJs, and the records, seemed to be right there in our bedrooms. The film 'The Boat that Rocked' got mediocre reviews, but I loved it for the memories it brought back, the excitement of those early days, when everyone seemed to listen to the same things and we were a community of fans in a new and magical world of music.

It all changed, of course, as different genres fragmented. I remember thinking about a bloke I loathed, 'How can he like Bridge over Troubled Water when I love it so much?' People were judged according to what music they favoured, and of course it changed over time. I started out a Beatles girl and switched to the Stones because their rebelliousness struck a chord - plus, they were so good to dance to. I usually tell people that the first single I ever bought was Sounds of Silence - but actually it was Dominique, by the Singing Nun - excruciatingly awful to me now, but then I was only eleven or so, before the days of the pirates, and the Simon and Garfunkel song is a much more accurate indicator of what my adult tastes would be. On the other hand, things that passed me by at the time - Tamla Motown, for example - resonate quite differently now, and I recently added a compilation album to my collection.

As a teenager, my records fell into two categories. There were stars I liked because I fancied them - the Monkees, the Beatles, the Walker Brothers - and those whose music I loved - the Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Dylan, Mamas and Papas. The West Coast sound of 1967/8 gave way to British folk/rock: I acquired albums by Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, and quietly hid my Monkees LPs. I was hooked by the historical bombast of the Strawbs, whom my sister and I went to see at the Royal Albert Hall, one of our first gigs, but the band I most regret never seeing live (too young, too far, my parents wouldn't let us go) was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, of late and much lamented memory. Through all this I was learning to play guitar, just enough chords to accompany my erratic singing, and gleaning new songs from folk clubs and the radio.

I went to university, and after the sleepy backwater of Ipswich, Brighton felt like the hub of the universe. I saw the Strawbs (for the third time), Bowie, the Stones, at last, and many other bands. Certain songs still have the power to bring back those times: Samba pa ti, by Santana, Auntie Aviator by John and Beverley Martin, the music from Clockwork Orange, pretty much all of After the Goldrush by Neil Young. Everyone was into 'prog rock', and the guy who liked Slade and Abba was mercilessly mocked. Then Punk burst on the scene and was universally derided - it was the first time, but not the last, that I was too old to like or even appreciate a new musical phenomenon. The 80s brought the New Romantics - a lot of posturing, an awful lot of awful hair, and some good tunes, even if, as Not the Nine O'Clock News pointed out, most of the time it was a case of 'Nice video, shame about the song'. It also brought a new favourite band for me - Dire Straits. I don't care that they grew far too popular too quickly, and therefore became desperately uncool: that man could play guitar all night and I'd listen to every note with rapt attention. The final guitar solo to Tunnel of Love is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the greatest of all, and still has the power to move me to tears. Grace, passion, consummate musicianship, a glorious tune: what's not to like, indeed to love?

Live Aid - which Steve and I watched on TV, desperately envious of Chris and Maureen who were actually there - introduced me to U2, whom I've loved ever since, my favourite album being the spine-tingling Joshua Tree: The Edge, like Johnny B. Good, 'plays guitar like the ringing of bells'. Old bands faded away, new ones took their place. I rediscovered folk - Kate Rusby, Maddie Prior, Cara Dillon, Seth Lakeman - but a lot of the music of the 90s and Noughties seemed too slick and manufactured. I picked out individual songs to delight in, but there were no more 'favourite bands'. My CD collection is an eclectic mix of the last 45 years of pop and rock, from the Stones to the Killers, from Dusty Springfield to Dido, but it seems as if everything 'new' has in fact been done before, sometime, somewhere.

And so the wheel comes full circle, for my sons have discovered the music of my youth, largely thanks to Live8, which introduced them, amongst others, to Clapton, the Who and Pink Floyd. Patrick loves the Beatles, and has all their albums on his MP3 player. They have fifty years of music to plunder. When I was their age, any music made more than 20 years previously was likely to be by Glenn Miller or Vera Lynn. They haven't got the wonderful sense of newness, of freshness, that characterised the music of the 60s, as people like Lennon and Macartney, Dylan and Jagger and Brian Wilson took it to places it had never been before. But oh boy, have they got some fabulous old songs in their headphones.

Lefties, Southpaws and Cack-handies

I'm right-handed, and so is Steve, and it was therefore rather a shock to find out that both our sons were left-handed. We knew straight away with Hugh, as he sucked his left thumb almost from birth: Patrick was not a thumb-sucker, but when he began to feed himself, always picked up his spoon in his left hand. Apparently only two per cent of left-handers are born to entirely right-handed parents, so it got me thinking: how come?

One pointer is that Steve's mother is left-handed. Her mother was a formidable character, and went down to the school to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that her daughter was to be allowed to use her left hand. This was very enlightened for the 1930s. However, both my mother-in-law's two sons use the right hand, and so do my brother-in-law's three children. Left-handedness has only come to my two boys.

There's a leftie on my side of the family too - my first cousin Jonathan. He's a surgeon, and when he started operating, in the 60s, he had to have all his instruments specially made. So if left-handedness was down in part to a recessive gene, this would make sense. Interestingly, one of the few things I know about my (and Jonathan's) grandfather is that he had a bad stammer. And stammering can be a sign that a left-handed child has been forced to use his or her right hand. We'll never know, but that's my gut instinct, and again it makes sense.

Even in this day and age, left-handedness isn't all plain sailing. Of course my sons were never forced to use their right hand, but a lot of people don't use their eyes and just assume that the child is 'normal'. So at nursery school, both of them used scissors in their right hands because that's what they'd been shown how to do. When I bought them a special pair of left-handed ones, at first they didn't get on with them. Once they were writing, of course, it became more obvious.

Writing's hard for a southpaw, and neither of them found this easy. Sport was also tricky. I always said, 'Use whichever hand you find most comfortable and which works best.' And both of them bat with the right hand and bowl with the left. It's a positive advantage being a leftie in many sports, cricket being one of them. Some of the greatest of all tennis players, including Laver and McEnroe, have been left-handed. Nadal is a natural right-hander, but has been coached to play with the left because it gives him such a huge advantage.

I was well aware that the boys needed positive information about left-handedness, and bought several books aimed at children and young people, extolling the numerous special attributes of left-handed people. There were lots of examples of famous artists, writers and entertainers of all kinds, including Leonardo, Marilyn Monroe and Bob Dylan, and explanations of why the left-handed brain is different, and quite possibly superior, to us boring right-handers. Hugh said that these books had really helped when he was young, and made him proud to be a leftie, standing out from the crowd. He has several left-handed guitars, and Patrick asked me the other day whether it was possible to get a left-handed piano. Yes, at a (considerable) price! Much cheaper, apparently, to get an electronic keyboard - you just change the chip.

There's a place online, 'anythinglefthanded', where you can buy all sorts of useful things oriented to the southpaw, from tin openers to scissors to pens with special nibs. But mostly my lads make do with whatever's around them, and just get on with being sinisters in a dexter world. Apparently only ten per cent of the population is left-handed, but that ten per cent is over-represented in all sorts of areas. Many of the Apollo astronauts: US Presidents: actors and musicians. No doubt, left-handers tend to be creative and interesting people who relish their difference, as Hugh and Patrick do. It makes me wish I was one too!

My Daily Deer

I've always loved deer. As a child, passionate about wildlife, I used to stalk them, creeping through the woods early in the morning, moving as lightly as I could, my eyes scanning the undergrowth for any sign of movement. There was quite a large herd in the park: they were Fallow, the darker kind that have brown and grey coats all year round, and presumably the descendants of those animals posed delightfully in the foreground of old engravings of the house. Over the course of two or three years, I got to know them well, their habits and favourite places. No two bucks had identical antlers, so I could recognise some individuals and give them names, usually culled from whatever literature I was keen on at the time: one was called Aiken, I seem to remember, and another, very distinctive with a deformed antler, Shenandoah. Sometimes I had Perdy with me, and had to keep her on a lead because she loved chasing them, and was quite capable of vanishing for hours in pursuit: but mostly I went out at dawn, on my own. The woods, which only cover about a dozen acres, were magical at that hour, wreathed in golden mist, birds singing, dew on the ground: it seemed as if I were the only person in the world, and the deer, slipping through the greenery like wraiths, were creatures of fantasy and enchantment.

Of course to the adults they were a pest. One winter I was horrified to learn that someone was coming to cull them. He was, so I was told, a 'real cowboy' from the USA. I could not bear the thought of anyone, even such a glamorous figure, killing 'my' deer: I came, after all, from the generation that had watched Bambi at a very impressionable age. The thought of offering my services (I don't suppose even at the age of ten or eleven that anyone knew more about the habits of the Orwell deer than I did) didn't occur to me: it would have been the worst sort of betrayal. I took real satisfaction from the fact that this supposed 'expert' had absolutely no success during the week or so that he was trying to shoot my friends.

Inevitably, as I grew older, my interest waned: pop music and other distractions took over, and besides I began to feel it was rather a strange thing for a teenage girl to do. Occasionally I'd see them while walking the dog, or one would be caught up in the football nets, a regular occurrence unfortunately. It was still a thrill to encounter them, though I never went seeking them deliberately. Long after I left home, my father told me that there was a white buck now with the herd: he saw it several times, and I really wished that I had done too. Apparently they are quite common amongst Fallow deer, and the originals of all those 'White Hart' pubs. Alas, that one met a dismal end in a football net, strangling itself in its panic before anyone had the chance to cut it free, and Dad was quite upset about it. But my favourite memory of the Orwell deer is quite recent: coming back to my parents from my sister's house at midnight, we drove up to the main gates of the big house, and saw, there on the lawn in front of the grand north entrance, perhaps a dozen or more quietly grazing deer, lit amber and gold in the rich glow of the floodlights, as beautiful and magical as their ancestors had been, when I was a child.

There are many deer here too, but they're Roe, not Fallow, and have quite different habits: they appear singly, or in small groups, rather than in a herd of a dozen or more, and they're small and very shy. A couple of times, though, we've actually seen them close to the house. Last winter one took up residence in our garden for a few days, feeding off the fallen apples which were a good source of nourishment in snowy weather. They might have fermented while on the ground, which would explain why the deer had considerable difficulty jumping the fence when I came out to have a closer look!

Once more I have a dog who loves to chase them: in her salad days, Rowan would roar off after them like a greyhound in pursuit of a hare, and follow flat out for half a mile or more: I remember seeing her once, from the long Abbotswood field, right across the valley and almost at the pig farm the other side. What she thought she'd do if she actually caught one, I have no idea! Of course she never had a hope: the buck or doe would go leaping like a gazelle over the grass, switching to a higher gear if the labouring Rowan seemed to be getting too close. Even now, an (almost) staid lady of nearly eight, she'll still give it a go, but stops after fifty yards or so, much to my relief: nothing is more humiliating, or futile, than standing in the middle of a field bellowing the name of a dog which has vanished five minutes ago, and you've no idea where they've got to.

Last year, Phil planted a wide strip of wheat all the way round the edge of the Far Ridge, as we call the belt of trees, last remnants of the original Abbot's Wood, which covers the steep ground between the upper plateau and the gentler slopes of the valley. I assume it was for fodder, as there wasn't very much of it. Or maybe he had another motive, for the grain proved irresistible to the local deer, and while they were feasting on it, they weren't molesting his brussels sprouts or carrots. Almost every evening, when I walked that way with Rowan, I would see at least one, standing in the middle of the wheat, munching. There was a buck - I knew it was always the same one because his antlers were slightly asymmetrical - and several females, including some young ones. They caused tremendous damage, trampling the crop down in many places, and eating much of it. In the evening sunlight, though, they were a lovely sight with their rich red summer coats, springing away from us with those huge leaps into the safety of the trees. It was noticeable that before their flight, it was the dog they watched, not me: quite sensible, given that it was always the dog that chased them!

Just like that long ago time, a man arrived with permission to shoot them. I encountered him and his companion a couple of times, and didn't like the look of him much: nor did one of my friends, who also met him. It certainly casts a blight on your evening walks when you know there's a character roaming your route armed with a high-powered rifle. He also had a Range Rover with an array of headlights on the roof, which made me instantly suspicious: it's illegal to shoot deer after dark, a practice known as 'lamping' and most often practised by poachers. And although he claimed to have permission to shoot on Bernie's land as well, when I asked Bernie's son, he said he didn't. Anyway, he didn't have any luck: the fact that I was walking with my dog around the fields and (deliberately) scaring the deer away might have had something to do with it. Lack of skill might also have played its part: if I'd gone out every evening with a rifle, even taking the dog, I'd have bagged at least one deer every night. Standing on top of a huge 4 x 4 on the edge of the field and waiting for them to come to you is not the way to do it. He hasn't been back this year, and I'm glad. The buck is still able to enjoy the grain and the discarded carrots and parsnips, and there are two does, one with a single fawn, one with twins. I see one or more of them almost every day at this time of year, and always with a smile. Nearly fifty years after those golden mornings in the Orwell woods, I am still delighted by their grace and beauty, and it's still a pleasure to meet my 'daily deer'.

Widespread and Heavy

I've written about Perdy, probably the nicest dog I've ever known, with the exception of Rowan: today I thought I'd pay tribute to our nicest cat.

If I'd only ever known my aunt's horrible Burmese, who used to bite and scratch without warning or provocation, I'd never have considered getting one. But Pushka, who belonged to my friend Maureen, changed my mind. I had her granddaughter, Bastis, a chunky brown cat with attitude in spades, who came for walks with us and terrorised the dog. Amongst her numerous sons and (rather fewer) daughters, her third litter stands out. There were five of them: the blue boys Monet and Merlin: Suko, the intelligent, gentle chocolate girl: Mogwai (so called because of his weird ears), who was always a bit of a loser and lost his second fight with a car: and Frost.

Frost was the eldest, a big lilac boy with buckets of charisma. Like Perdy, he was always getting into trouble. As a kitten, he and Suko climbed to the very top of the tallest tree in the garden and had to be rescued. He tried to walk on the waterlilies on the pond, with inevitable consequences. He jumped onto the top of a half-empty bag of compost, thinking it was solid: the expression on his face when I peered down into the depths, seeing him covered in peat, was priceless. We used to joke about plant pots that were labelled 'frost-proof' - no, they weren't! And mention of 'widespread heavy frost' on the weather forecast always raised a smile, especially if he was widespread heavily on a lap at the time.

For fun, Maureen and I decided to show Frost and Suko (who had gone to be a companion to her great-granny Pushka). Suko was a wow in the cage - she played, she purred, she posed - but the judges didn't like her. Frost, by comparison, hid under the blanket but got stacks of rosettes. I entered him for three shows, he did really well in all of them, and qualified for the Supreme (the feline equivalent of Crufts). There, of course, he came up against serious show cats, and finished last in his class. The judge's comment was, 'A lovely-natured boy who needs time to mature.' To which my response was, 'If he matures much more we won't be able to lift him!' By that time he was a year old and weighed nearly a stone.

I should have hung a notice on his cage at the shows saying 'I'd much rather be out catching rabbits!' Frost, like all his family, was a notable hunter and preferred big game. He worked his way through the white doves which we'd inherited with the house, had a couple of racing pigeons in passing, and then decided to roam further afield in search of prey. We had a call from a farm half a mile away: 'Is that your big grey cat sitting on an old nest in our barn?' It was. He was presumably waiting for the birds to return, a trick he'd also tried (to no effect) with the doves' nest box. Then he turned his attention to rabbits, of which there were huge numbers down by the little branch line that ran to Melksham. Once I went down to the bridge over the railway and called him. To my astonishment, he answered from almost under my feet, in the grass beside the road. For an instant I feared he might have been run over, but he was fine: he had just made a cosy nest in the undergrowth, quite unfazed by the traffic passing a few inches away.

We moved from Broughton Gifford to our present house in July, 1991. About a fortnight before we were due to go, Frost went AWOL. I visited all his usual haunts, but there was no sign. In desperation I printed out a 'lost' notice and delivered it to all the houses within a two mile radius. A man called to say he'd seen him a few days previously, very early in the morning, down on the main road between Melksham and Holt: he'd thought it was some kind of fox in the dawn light. Then to my utter relief, there was a call from the chicken farm down on that same road, about a mile away from us. He'd been hanging round their outbuildings for some time. I went down and called him: no reply. But a couple of days later it was raining hard, and we tried again. Bingo! He emerged from the barn looking superb: heavyweight, muscular, fighting fit and absolutely covered in rabbit fleas. Thankfully we bundled him into the basket, thanked the farmer, and took him home. He wasn't allowed out again until we moved, and it took an hour or more to get the fleas off his ears and paws with a pair of tweezers. We'd had plenty of practice during his show career: I kept thinking of him as the subject of a Ralph Bateman cartoon. 'The cat ejected from the Supreme Show for having fleas!'

Frost quickly settled into his new home and never wandered off again. Probably he found ample prey close enough to hand: our chickens soon attracted rats, and he was kept busy earning his Iams. Once I opened the front door in the morning to collect the milk, and found a dead rat laid out on its back beside the bottles, stiff and stark: I often wonder what the milkman must have thought (funny kind of Christmas box!). He did catch the occasional rabbit, and my mother-in-law on one memorable occasion went up for a bath and found a pair of 'rabbit trousers' in the bathroom. I speculated that the local wildlife called him 'The Grey Death'. But to people he was gentleness itself. You could hold him in your arms on his back like a baby, and he had the loudest purr in the world. When they had a pet day at Hugh's nursery school, I took him along. Twenty small children sat down in a circle on the carpet, and Frost strolled round, quite at home, pleased to be stroked and patted. I can't remember him ever scratching or biting. He was the perfect all-rounder - a success on the show bench, a loving, laid-back family pet, and an efficient hunter of vermin. Everyone loved him, and he repaid our love with ample interest, over sixteen glorious years.

Eventually, of course, middle age turned to old age. Aged fourteen, he caught a liver complaint, probably from one of his rats, and was badly jaundiced: even his fur had a yellowish tinge, poor boy. He did recover, but he was never the same again. He caught his last prey the following year, climbing onto the ivy-clad roof of the old barn next door, and taking a succession of pigeon squabs out of their nests: easy pickings, and delicious! His last illness happened quickly, and he died at home in his sleep, before we could get him to the vet. Like all the cats, he was buried under one of the trees in the garden, and I made a pottery model of him to go on his grave, but it did not do justice to his looks, nor to his personality. All our cats are special, but our darling Frostle was the most special of all, and remembered with much love by all who knew him. This is the couplet I put at the end of his mother's obituary in the Burmese Cat Club News, but it will serve for his epitaph as well, and for all our cats:

'A kind hand and a warm fire
Is all the Heaven I desire'.

An Ethel By Any Other Name ...

I find names fascinating, and when the lists of the most popular are published every year, I always take a look at the statistics charting current fashions. When I was teaching, more than twenty years ago, half the school seemed to be called either Mark or Vicki: now, it's Jack and Olivia. But the top 100 won't tell you the really interesting things: the uncommon, the unusual and the downright weird.

All a matter of fashion, of course: sixty or seventy years ago, the name 'Hugh' featured in the lists, now it's so rare he's the only one at his school. 'Patrick' is a bit more common - and of course very common in certain areas, Ireland and Scotland for instance. Some of the names current in late Victorian times are gaining popularity - Daisy, Maisie, Ruby, and sturdy traditional boys' names like Edward, Thomas and, yes, Jack. My second and third names are in honour of my grandmothers - Dorothy (not back in) and Alice (very trendy now). I've always thanked God that my mother's mother was Alice Bertha and not the other way about. Being called Dotty Alice at school was bad enough.

'There are some names that'll never come back into fashion,' said one of my colleagues the other day, looking at the library ticket of a borrower called Norman. I think the Tory party, circa 1985, killed that one off for good. We had fun making a list: Ethel, Doris, Herbert, Ernest, once the names of proud young people fighting World Wars, now probably attached to someone in a nursing home. 'Bruce,' someone said, though I think there may be quite a few still in Scotland, and possibly Australia. In fact, a recent survey lamented the disappearance of such 'traditional' names as Walter, Percy (no surprise why that one has fallen out of favour), Clifford, Arnold and Leonard and, for the girls, Gertrude, Edna, Olive and Agnes. Apparently Elsie is also in danger (a surprise, as I know several) Sidney (there was one at the village school) and Florence (also becoming more popular). There is a family locally with children called Florence, Wilfrid and Stanley - what a name to be saddled with!

When we were thinking of names for our children we spent a lot of time agonising over it. Some are good in both long and short forms (Alexander, for instance) while others are fine until you remember how they're usually abbreviated. One of my teaching colleagues called her son Gary because it didn't have a shortening, only to find he was 'Gaz' to his school friends. Teachers find it difficult anyway, because lots of possibles have to be discarded because of their connotations. I never taught an Andrew who wasn't a problem, for example, and Daniels weren't far behind. There was a girl called Krishna, from a white British family: rather like a Hindu couple naming their daughter Jesus, I thought. Her brothers were Zachary and Isaac. I could never understand why Bryan Ferry called his eldest son after a lift, until I realised that Otis Redding was being honoured (and presumably, for the next son, Isaac Hayes). Some names are really hard to bear, which is why we gave our boys fairly ordinary second names (Nicholas and Luke respectively) so that they could change if they wanted. My sister, fed up with being called Penny at school, became Vicki when she went to college. I'd have changed mine if I'd had a reasonable alternative, but Dotty Alice was even worse than what everyone already knew me as. At least I was born female: if a boy, I'd have been called Rupert. Much as I love Rupert of the Rhine, that would have been truly awful.

In the course of library work, I come across quite a few kids with unusual and often rather nice names. There are quite a few Freys and Freyas (we had a cat called Freya), a Raven, several Kais, Rowan (a boy), Phoebe, brothers called Thorfinn and Magnus (with no Norse connection) and a family with boys called Dylan, Donovan and Rafferty (I asked her if she was int0 60s and 70s folk-rock, and she looked at me in bewilderment). The traditional names of Scotland, Ireland and Wales always prove a fertile hunting ground for people looking for something a bit different. Though 'Kevin' appears to have a rather higher status in the US (think Costner and Kline) than it does here (think footballer and Harry Enfield).

The US sends names back to us, of course, and some of them seem to be given to children without any thought as to what they actually mean. Do parents really want to call their son after someone who fixes the roof (Tyler) or their daughter after the man who makes suits (Taylor)? Or the stony field (Stanley) or a wagon (Wayne)? How about the fastest-rising name, Riley (as in life of)? Mind you, good meanings don't always make for good names: Ethel is the Anglo-Saxon for 'noble'. I was amused that when Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay for 'Shakespeare in Love' (one of my favourite films) he made the original title of one of Shakespeare's most famous plays 'Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter'. In that case, an Ethel by any other name (except possibly Gertrude) would be sweeter.

Unspeakable

Yes, unfortunately, it's that time of year again. I was warned last week that they were meeting in the village, so the dog was walked earlier than usual so we wouldn't encounter them. From now on, I shall have to be careful every Saturday, listen out for signs of disturbance, and avoid going anywhere near them if I think they might be around.

Who are these hooligans terrorising the countryside? Why, the local hunt, of course.

I have to confess: I went hunting, or beagling rather. Once. I was ten, and my mother and uncle thought it would be a good idea to run around the fog-bound Essex countryside following a pack of dogs we had long ago lost sight of, with a huge lump of thick red clay adhering to each wellie so that after half an hour we could barely lug our own feet after us. Never, ever again. Of all the pointless exercises, I thought at the time, that takes the biscuit. My mother wasn't keen either, but I think she went along for her brother's sake. She had gone hunting as a child, and been blooded, a horrible experience for someone so squeamish, and had never forgotten the gleeful expressions on the faces of the farmers as the fox was torn to pieces. It was bloodlust, pure and simple, that had attracted them, and it repelled my mother.

The sight of hunt and hounds in full cry is spectacular (but then so is bull fighting). The first time we came to our village, house hunting, we saw them streaming across a distant field, traditional England in all its glory. The reality, of course, is rather different:

• Hounds being exercised down a local lane, defecating in all the gardens, and no attempt made to clear up after them
• Trying to negotiate the cars of 'followers' parked in gateways, on verges, on bends, blocking the road while they peer at the action half a mile away through their binoculars
• Walking along a public footpath with several 4x4s full of hunt supporters trying to elbow their way past
• Being nearly run down by a huntsman who came at full gallop within touching distance of my dog
• Coming across the hunt unexpectedly on one of our walks, having the hounds set off in full cry after my dog, with the huntsman bellowing in pursuit cracking his whip: poor Rowan ran half a mile home in terror. Needless to say, no apology or expression of concern
• Badgers' setts regularly blocked up even though now, with actual hunting of foxes supposed to be illegal, there is no lawful justification for it
• Crops trampled over and fields invaded without permission
• The note I found once, listing all the hounds by name, with their ages. Only two were as old as seven. In the absence of any rehoming/rescuing organisations for foxhounds, I leave it to your imagination as to what happens to them once they get to six or so.
• And above all, feeling (because of other incidents) that you can't complain because if you do you might get a dead fox hung over your gate.

All of these things I've witnessed myself, or spoken to other people who have. It's amazing the number of people in this conservative, rural place who loathe the hunt and all they stand for: not so much for the killing of foxes (though that does count for quite a lot), but for their sheer arrogance, and their assumption that only they can speak for and represent the 'true countryside'. Bollocks, to coin a phrase. So is their assertion that hunting is not the preserve of the wealthy. Well, I don't think keeping a huge £5,000 horse eating its head off all winter, plus tack, horsebox, vet's bills and paddock and stable rent can be done on the average wage, somehow. The fact that most of the hunt people I speak to (when I can't avoid it) sound excruciatingly posh is a bit of a give-away, too. I do have a friend who hunts, but she says it's more for the social life and the riding than anything else - she's much more ambivalent about the killing aspect. I shall have to give her Masefield's 'Reynard the Fox' to read. That did it for me, in my childhood, as did 'Tarka the Otter'. Fortunately otter hunting is now banned, but just as reprehensible is hare hunting, and if the Tories get in next year it'll be back again, for no valid reason at all bar the 'chase'. There are hares here, but not many, and there'll be even less if the beagles return.

When we first moved here the hunt met in the village only occasionally - perhaps twice in a season. Then, around eight years ago, the big dairy farmer near us retired, and the farm was rented by a couple who are keen hunters and use the land for livery and a cross-country jumping course. And now we have the Avon Vale Hooligans every few weeks, truly the Unspeakable in full cry after the uneatable. You have to be very careful walking the dog on a Saturday afternoon, and there are one or two evening meets early in the season (which is when Rowan got chased). It disrupts our pleasant weekend routine, and it happens far too often. What's more, it's daft. In a village which grows so many vegetables, rabbits are such a serious pest that the parish council paid someone to cull them a few years ago. And what is the chief predator of rabbits? Brer Fox, of course. Mind you, I saw a letter from a member of the Countryside Alliance in the local press a couple of years ago, claiming (amongst other things) that foxes didn't kill rabbits, it was all a myth put about by anti-hunting people. Which only went to show how little he knew about the ecology of the countryside he was claiming to represent and protect. It's all one with the 'evil cruel fox who kills for pleasure and deserves to die' slander. Yes, foxes do kill chickens (we've lost loads to them over the years, mostly because I forgot to shut them up before darkness fell), but if they kill a lot, it's to feed their cubs, and they'll take the corpses away and stash them somewhere for later. One buried my neighbour's ducks all over my garden one night in St. Albans long ago. Foxes are opportunists, if they didn't kill they'd die of starvation, and to attribute human vices to them is naive at best, ignorant and malicious at worst. Better a quick death from Reynard than the torture of being skinned alive by a rogue Jack Russell (which happened to 19 of our hens a few years back).

So, I'm with the foxes. They're only trying to scrape a living in a hostile world, against huge odds, and succeeding remarkably well, considering. And if you've ever stopped your car, as I have, and stared into the golden, intelligent eyes of a fox pausing on the verge in the evening sunlight, and felt a shiver of some visceral, animal connection ... I think you would be on the fox's side, too, when the Unspeakable come riding.

Back to School!

How I used to hate that phrase when I was teaching! It seemed that scarcely before you'd waved the little darlings off on their summer holidays (and heaved a huge sigh of relief that one of your colleagues would have the benefit of educating psychopathic Johnny or precociously obnoxious Joan next term), the signs would go up in the Woolies window: 'Back to School!' The shelves would fill with cheap pens, pencils, maths sets and calculators, and suddenly the six glorious empty weeks in front of you seemed less of an eternity, more a few seconds' respite from the chalk face.

Later, of course, when I became a parent of school-age children, 'Back to School' became a promise rather than a threat. Dearly though I love my boys, when they were younger keeping them from murdering each other was a constant task, made worse by the long, unregulated days of the summer holidays. I've never been one of those mums who thinks her children need to be busy, busy, busy all day long - French after school, gym on Friday, tennis at the weekend, charts and structure and educational 'play'. Much of my own free time as a child had been just that - free, freedom to read or walk or draw or just dream without adults poking their noses in - and one of the reasons for moving to the country had been to give our children the sort of childhood where they could go out on their bikes, meet friends, explore, build dens or dams and generally (in a phrase not current when I was ten or eleven) 'chill out'. However, no responsible parent, however relaxed, is going to allow a six or seven year old out alone and unsupervised, and I was no exception. So they were confined to the garden, and all too often my parental role became that of referee, when I was not in goal, fielding, or suggesting that the Lego which seemed to spread of its own accord all over the house should be put back in its box before it was lost, or maimed someone unwary enough to tread on a piece barefoot.

By design, our summer holidays were carefully broken up: a week away (the Forest of Dean, Wales, Devon, Cornwall and Swanage all feature heavily in our holiday snaps), plus five days or so visiting Granny and Grandad in Suffolk. There were huge advantages to this: it was free, in the lovely setting of my own childhood, there was a pool, tennis courts, cricket pitches, even an assault course, and the whole park with its woods and grounds to explore. The downside was that my parents, well into their seventies when the boys were born, were not used to their boisterous behaviour and still less to the four-letter words which every modern schoolchild knows from Reception onwards. Despite drumming into them at every visit the importance of behaving nicely and not swearing, one or two choice epithets did emerge, and Dad in particular was worried by Patrick's temper and Hugh's cheek. I was always sorry to leave - when your parents are elderly, you always wonder if that's the last time you'll see one of them - but at the same time relieved that we were going home where the boys could let off steam without causing tension. Mind you, when I think back to what my sister and I did to each other - she broke my finger stamping on it, I punched one of her wobbly teeth down her throat and put a spider in her hair (she's arachnophobic) - Hugh's and Patrick's spats seem mild by comparison. We ended up good friends, and I'm pleased to report that my own lads have done the same. Although the three years between them mean they don't go out much together, they talk enthusiastically about bands, music and sport, and I can't remember the last time they had a serious argument (touch wood!).

Those six weeks always seemed to go on for ever, until at last the great day arrived: the alarm set, the uniforms ready, holiday work collected, and off we would go. When they were still at the primary school, there would be the pleasure, for me, of chatting to the other mums, finding out what everyone had been doing, hearing news, exchanging opinions and gossip. My social life always leapt up in September, as our breakfast group started again, and people who'd been away for much of the summer returned to our orbit. Between the hours of nine and three, every weekday, my time was suddenly my own, to write, do my pottery class, seeing friends, shopping forays to Bath or even London. 'Back to School' meant parental freedom, and after an exhausting summer it was very, very welcome.

Strange, after nearly fifteen years of slavery to the academic year, that it won't be long now until 'Back to School' no longer resonates in our household. Hugh is off to Uni in a few weeks, Patrick is just starting in the sixth form. I'll miss the days of their childhood, I love having them around, but there's one thing I'll be looking forward to this autumn when they've both gone 'Back to School' - at last, unrestricted access to my laptop!

Perdy

Forty-seven years ago this morning, in a hole dug under a fallen tree, a small cream-coloured puppy was born, and found a place in our hearts that she still holds: the dog against whom all others are measured, against whom only one has ever even come close.

Perdy's mother was our yellow Labrador Vicky, a large kind dog who had already had two litters of puppies, one legitimate, one not. This time, it was my fault, as I'd left the door open and she had met a dog from the village, a 'Labrador type' who, to judge from his offspring, must have had greyhound and golden retriever in him as well. When her time was near, Vicky began excavating under the fallen tree, and every time she was let out would take refuge in it. She got so distressed when we tried to persuade her out of it when labour began, that my parents thought it would be best if she had the first pup in the hole, and then they could persuade Vicky back to the official maternity ward in the house. This worked, but every time they opened the door to see how things were going, Vicky stood there with the puppy in her mouth, desperate to go back to the hole and have the rest. In the end, she was overtaken by events, and the five remaining puppies were born in the right place: a total of two girls and three boys, plus one girl who didn't survive.

'101 Dalmations' was our favourite film (I'd seen it six times over the summer holidays) and so it was inevitable that they would be named after dogs in the film, regardless of the fact that ours didn't have spots: they were all varying shades of yellow, from cream to ginger biscuit. So we had Perdita, Pongo, Lucky and Prince, and the other girl was called Carmen because she was so vocal. Gradually they all found homes, except for Perdy. She was smaller than the others, her ears were set funny, she looked a bit odd. It was obvious that she was very intelligent, and my sister and I loved her dearly. At one point there was talk of sending her to be a guide dog, but eventually, almost by default, we kept her.

That winter, 62/63. was one of the hardest ever, and Perdy had numerous escapades. She fell through the ice on the kitchen garden pond. She learned how to chase deer. On one of the coldest nights, my father let the three dogs - Vicky, Perdy, and my aunt's poodle Puff, who was staying with us while she was in hospital - out last thing, and only two came back - Perdy was nowhere to be found. He searched for her in the snow for over an hour, without success. Eventually my mum thought to check my room. She had sneaked back inside, and crept into my bed, under the clothes, without waking me, and Puff had then curled up on top of her!

No doubt of it, Perdy was a bit of a tearaway. Dad tried to train her as a gun dog, alongside her mother, but with limited success. She would enthusiastically retrieve the pheasant, but obviously thought it was hers: however, she didn't like the taste of feathers, resulting in 'instant pluck'! Several birds came roasted to the table looking a little the worse for wear, with toothmarks in them. Once he stashed a pheasant six foot up in a gnarled tree for collection later: Perdy went back, climbed the tree and pulled it down. She used to take herself off for walks on her own, or disappeared chasing deer: I must have walked miles, and trespassed quite a few times, in pursuit. She also liked chasing the small Shetland Sheepdog belonging to one of my aunts: my sister and I loyally assumed she thought it was a rabbit, but it led to some family bad feeling.

One one memorable occasion, she and Vicky went off together - two dogs are a pack, my mother always said, and do things they'd never do on their own - and were gone all day, and into the night. We called and searched all over the park, without success. Eventually, long after dark, there was a phone call from the people in a house a mile upriver. Perdy and Vicky had fallen into the disused dry dock near them. They had heard barking and gone to investigate: the two dogs were standing on a pile of rotten wood, while the tide was rising around them. They had to be rescued by the Fire Brigade. Fortunately, they had our phone number on their collars.

After three years of this sort of thing, we thought that becoming a mother would quieten her down, and Perdy duly produced a litter of six. Shortly after the birth, she disappeared for several hours. We were just trying to find something to feed the poor little things with when she returned to do her maternal duty, with noticeable reluctance. As soon as they got teeth she gave up on them altogether, and Vicky, always a very kind and motherly dog, took over with enthusiasm, doing everything except feed them until they went to their new homes. Perdy did calm down a bit, but she was still very naughty. She chewed all sorts of things, specialising in the Sunday papers, which always arrived while we were at church. Once she ate my champion model yacht, Typhoon, which had beaten all comers in the swimming pool races. When burglars called, the dogs posed absolutely no threat. But her lovely, loving nature, her intelligence and her willingness to join in her games ensured that we were all devoted to her, despite her faults, even Dad! She accompanied us on our camping holiday, and encountered cattle for the first time when one stuck its head through the tent flap: Perdy tried to hide in my sister's sleeping bag. She was also chased by a herd of them, in the field above the camp site. In Shropshire, we entered her in a dog show: the judge kept trying to pull her ears forward into proper Labrador position, and they kept folding back! Her speed, her ears and her deep chest and narrow loins all pointed to more than a touch of greyhound.

When my father became headmaster, we had to give up the Buck House, the house in the grounds where we had always lived, and moved into a flat on the top floor. Perdy, by now middle aged, proved a huge hit with the boys. She used to lie in the sun on the floor of the South Hall, and every child who passed gave her a hug or a pat. Several of them used to compete to take her for walks. When my sister moved to Geneva for a year, she became briefly 'my dog' and slept on my bed: I usually woke with her pale yellow face on the pillow beside me. But when I left home as well, to live in Oxford as a mother's help, Perdy pined. She grew thinner and thinner, and cancer was diagnosed. I came home for a couple of weekends, and she regained some of her old energy and enthusiasm. But not long before my employment ended, I had a sad phone call from Mum: Perdy had had to be put down. She was only nine, and I cried for her far more than I had cried for anyone else I'd lost, including my grandmother.

But forty-seven years after that fateful day, I still remember her with huge affection. Of all the dogs I've known since, only Rowan looks back at me with the same love and intelligence, the same knowingness. I could write much more about Perdy, but for the sake of space I'll stop here, and quote a verse from Rudyard Kipling that says it much better than I could:

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!);
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart for the dog to tear.

Homesickness

It's the sort of thing that afflicts the young: the child on an overnight school trip, the teenager backpacking abroad. You shouldn't feel longing for somewhere else, somewhere you haven't lived properly since you grew up. By the time you get to fifty-something, you should be above all that. This is my home now, my house in Wiltshire, large and rambling and untidy, which will probably hold the same place in the affections of my own children as the place where I grew up does in mine. I'm very fond of this village, the boys have lived in it almost all their lives, we have many friends here, I know its landscape and history intimately. I love the downs, the huge views that you could never get in Suffolk. It's wonderful to stand on top of Roundway and see the Priddy Mast, on the Mendips thirty miles away, or King Alfred's Tower above Stourhead, nearly into Dorset. On a clear day four counties are within sight. And there are no less than three World Heritage sites (Avebury, Bath and Stonehenge) within half an hour's drive.

And yet ... and yet ... I still sometimes dream of the Buck House, so called because it was originally an outhouse in the park where deer carcasses were butchered and hung, before my parents converted it as newly-weds. Just the other night, I washed the windows and tidied the garden of a house I haven't gone near for over a year, and woke feeling sad and nostalgic. Partly, I think, it has to do with the sea. We lived within sight of the Orwell estuary, a mile-wide, ten mile long inlet of water and mud that ends at Ipswich, and if you stood on one of the high points of the park (this is before the trees grew up) you could see the thin grey horizontal line that was the North Sea, out beyond the river mouth. On foggy winter mornings I remember lying in bed and listening to the Cork Lightship, snoring out on the sandbanks off Felixstowe like a vast slumbering animal. 'Uuuur-uh! Uuuur-uh!' When I was about six or seven, my grandmother moved back to Aldeburgh, where she had spent much of her married life, and lived in an old people's home, run by a relative, right on the sea front. We visited her every week for many years, so the ridged pebbles and grey, forbidding waves of Aldeburgh beach was the sea I knew best. We swam in it in the summer (I remember being slammed face down on the pebbles one rough day), hunted vainly for amber and cornelians, and resented the fact that there was no sand. Later, when we were older, Mum used to drop my sister and me off at Thorpeness Meare, a mile up the coast. This is a wonderful place, a huge boating lake like an inland sea, with islands, reeds, wildlife and places to moor and explore. Mum had rowed on it as a child in the 1920s, and it's the perfect place to play at Swallows and Amazons, or pirates (there's a fort, complete with cannon). We fell in regularly, but as the water is barely two foot deep, only our pride was ever hurt. Sometimes we walked back along the coast road (squelching a little), with the sea behind its high shingle banks on one side, the flat marshes on the other, and ahead of us the huddled houses of Aldeburgh, the remaining part of a town half lost to the waves. All along that coast the sea takes with one hand - from Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Walton - and gives to the other, the other in this case being Orfordness, that extraordinary spit of shingle, ten miles long, that shepherds the River Alde down to Shingle Street before allowing it to flow into the sea. The Great Flood of 1953, which happened when I was a baby, was a salutary reminder of how precarious life can be on the edge of the land. On one of our regular walks along the river shore, we used to play in the ruins of cottages that had been devastated by the surge of water coming up the estuary on that dreadful January night.

It's not just the sea that I miss. The hugeness of the skies above the desolation of the marshes: the birds calling on the river in the dark: the distinctive houses with their colour-washed walls, ridged tiles and dormer windows: the local accent, that even professional actors can't imitate (somehow it always comes out Somerset). And more specifically, the park at Orwell, a place where as a child I knew every stick and stone: the cork tree, with its fantastic bark: the pigeons cooing in the old trees around the swimming pool: the tantalising glimpses of Pin Mill across the river: the Buck House, long and low, covered in wisteria, surrounded by trees, a place so inextricably meshed with our family memories that no matter what happens to it in the end, it will always be ours.

I had always assumed that we weren't 'true' Suffolkers, but incomers: my father's family come from East London, and before that they were Protestant refugees from France. My mother's ancestors hailed from Northumberland, Ireland and, more distantly, Portugal and the West Indies. But when I was researching my family tree, I found that my great-grandmother, Dorothea Gooch, was descended from a very old Suffolk family who had gone to Northumberland to become ironworkers and engineers. The thought that a very small part of my DNA came from the people of East Anglia, of St. Edmund and the Wuffings, Boudicca and the Iceni, made me feel ridiculously pleased. Stupid though it may seem, now I know that the land of my birth really is my home.

Village Vegetables

Rest assured, this is not about the kind of people you see comatose in the corner of the pub just before closing time. This is a village devoted to market gardening, and carrots and cabbages, broccoli and leeks, have been grown here since the 19th century. Apparently, when the weaving trade collapsed with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the villagers turned to growing vegetables in the light, sandy, hungry soil, and made such a success of it that the business is still thriving today.

As a historian, I find it very interesting. Here, in the 21st century, is a place where people are still visibly working on the land. They're not insulated in cosy tractors (well, most of them aren't), but out in all weathers, apart from hard frost and snow, pulling carrots, cutting cabbages, harvesting potatoes and onions. Parts of the process are mechanised - sowing the seeds, setting out the young plants, spreading muck and fertilizer - but you won't see any of those huge contraptions they have in the Fens, the moving tents/conveyor belts/soil looseners/washers under which the workers spend all their time. Our farm workers pick and bunch the carrots entirely by hand, working in groups of three or more: they wash them off using a hose or a trailer full of water, and pack them in boxes ready for Sainsbury's (I was thrilled to see some of our carrots on sale there a few weeks ago). I think the supermarket contract must be fairly recent, but it's obviously lucrative, as suddenly carrots in various stages of development are being grown everywhere.

Not just carrots, of course. Over the eighteen years I've lived here, I've seen pretty much every outdoor crop being grown in the fields around us. I had an old book, a soil survey of the village done by the Min of Ag sometime in the 30s, which basically said that yields would be a lot better if only these ignorant yokels could be persuaded not to plant so many potatoes. There are still plenty of them, alongside everything else. Sometimes you wonder whether there's a demand for it. Who still eats marrow in that sort of quantity these days? Do they actually sell all those pumpkins in the brief run up to Hallowe'en? Why does that farmer grow so many beetroots and then fail to harvest them, year after year?

There's a lot of waste, of course. Forget how much is thrown out by the supermarkets: here in our fields there's enough to feed half the country, just lying discarded. Sometimes you can tell why: green spuds, forked carrots. But quite often there doesn't seem to be any reason why some veg fails to make the grade. I know of at least one person in the village who used to run a market stall purely on what had been rejected at the packing warehouse. If you're discreet (walking around with a bulging plastic bag is not exactly tactful), you can create a whole meal with what's thrown away in the fields. We had some very nice stuffed round courgettes a few weeks ago, salvaged from a heap dumped beside the path, and my 'pick-up soup' is very popular in the winter months. Other people are less scrupulous. A few years ago one of the growers experimented with unusual vegetables, including purple brussels sprouts. My husband, walking past, took some off one stem to try (they tasted just the same as normal ones). I mentioned the purple sprouts to the farmer when I met him a couple of weeks later. 'And you know what,' he told me in disgust, 'some bugger had the whole row a few nights ago.' Even though Steve had only taken two or three, I didn't know where to look. Needless to say, the purple sprouts didn't appear next year, but the black 'Tuscan' cabbage has been widely grown recently, along with lots of different types of squash. The only crops I've never seen on a large scale are peas and beans: they do well in the soil (I have them in my own garden) but maybe the hassle of supporting the plants with sticks and poles is too labour-intensive.

I think the fact that there has always been plenty of work available on the land has kept many of the old families in the village. It's not quite the 'place with only three surnames' but when Hugh started at the school, ten per cent of the pupils went under the name of Paget, and if you counted the ones whose mothers had been born a Paget, it was more like twenty per cent. Apparently they all go back to one 19th century couple with about six sons who all stayed in the village. Some other Wiltshire villages have 'local names' but not to this extent: every time the blood donation people come to the Social Centre, they run a sweepstake on how many Pagets will turn up. There are Fennells and Mortimers, Kings and Hughes and Amors as well, and some of them have ancestry in the village going back hundreds of years. This, I'm sure, adds to the thriving community spirit here: unlike the place I grew up, where all the houses have been sold to people who work elsewhere, so that it's become a dormitory of commuters who don't know each other, and don't care.

The old fashioned farming methods affect the landscape too. Most of the village is built on a plateau, but on the western side the ground falls away steeply to a narrow river valley, where one of the mills once stood, and which is still known as the Common, though it was hedged long ago. Here there are pasture fields full of sheep, cattle and horses, as you can find in thousands of places up and down the country. But above them, on the flat sandy soil between the hill and the valley, the vegetables are grown as crops were grown in mediaeval times, in long strips divided by tracks and banks, with very few hedges or trees: so few, in fact, that the rather ordinary mature oak in our field is covered by a preservation order because of its contribution to the landscape. A local artist once did a picture, which we gave to a friend leaving us, of the lines of cabbages disappearing into the distance, leading towards the graceful Perpendicular spire of our church: it summed up everything I love about this unusual, delightful place that has been our home for more than eighteen years.

If You Don't Have A Kid, Get A Dog: Or, How To Become Part Of Your Village Community

I meant this to be the next post after 'The School Gate', but in all the Ashes excitement I delayed it. This is my second tip for those people who want to 'Escape To The Country' but are worried that they won't 'fit in'. Well, you don't have to wear green wellies and ride a horse: nor do you have to go around saying 'Ooh arrrgh' and drinking cider. If you have children, send them to the village school: and if you don't, get a dog.

Of course, this doesn't apply to people who think that regular exercise is what you do when the TV remote has been mislaid, or to those who come out in a rash at the very thought of fur, or who have chronically weak stomachs. For them, I'd recommend the am dram group (there's one in every village, for conoisseurs of forgotten lines, rogue props and plummetting scenery), or, for those who like to be big fish in a very small tank, a stint on the village hall committee. But if you like animals and the outdoors and fresh air (and let's face it, if you don't, what on earth are you doing in the country?), then a dog is ideal.

I have to admit to bias here - I grew up with dogs, mostly genial Labradors, and to me a house without animals is incomplete. I know they can be a tie, and it's a pain when the perfect holiday cottage is flagged 'No Pets', but for me the benefits vastly outweigh minor incoveniences, though I wasn't thinking that way when I came downstairs a couple of weeks ago and discovered that Rowan, our normally strong-stomached Irish Water Spaniel, had eaten something that had violently disagreed with her. Still, that's what husbands are for, so I told poor Steve, and he nobly cleared it all up. Fortunately, the effects were temporary, and I could soon walk Rowan again without worrying if two poo bags would be enough, or whether I should take the whole packet to be on the safe side.

Where was I? Advising you to get a dog. Well, assuming I haven't put you off the idea entirely, this is why. With a dog in tow, people will almost always stop and talk. If they have other dogs who are similarly good natured, then your dogs will play, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes, while you chat. Not only does this mean that your dog will need less exercise and you can curtail your walk (useful if it's cold, or raining, or there's something good on the telly), but it ensures that you make friends. An elderly lady of my acquaintance moved to the village some years ago with her husband, who died suddenly, leaving her alone in a place where she knew very few people. She got a dog, and her world opened up: not only did she have someone else to look after, she had to get out to take him for walks, and when she was out both she and her dog made friends, myself and Rowan included. When her little dog died, she told me that her daughter had tried to dissuade her from getting another, because she felt it would be a tie: but she was adamant. "I made so many friends when I went out with Ross, and I really miss it without him," she told me, and soon afterwards Chloe appeared on the scene, to everyone's delight.

In fact, there's only one trouble with living in this village, with its beautiful scenery and its many miles of footpaths, and that's the small but vociferous 'anti-dog brigade'. To listen to some of them banging on, you'd think Rowan and Chloe and the others were only one generation away from wolves, dangerous and destructive beasts who have to be kept under fierce control at all times. We're not even supposed to walk the footpath across the village field with a dog that's not on a lead, despite the fact that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, there's no-one else on the field at all - so what harm can it do? Dogs have been blamed for damaging crops, running across the protective sheeting that covers the carrots in early spring, and of course for fouling the footpaths. Quite apart from the fact that most of the dogs I see loose in the fields belong to the farmers themselves (and they're all viciously yappy Jack Russells who shriek at Rowan as she trots past), I suspect that in a village with a lot of wildlife, much of the alleged damage has actually been caused by deer, rabbits or badgers, and the fouling could well be done by foxes.

So we're back to poo again (I'll spare you a description of how you can tell dog from fox from badger). That's another thing that dogs have in common with children - somehow, the topic always returns to the basics. But I'm proud to own Rowan, with her soft brown fur and her lovely friendly nature - yappy Jack Russells apart - and over the years she and her predecessor, a huge white Labrador called Maddie, have made me many friends here, human and canine. I've followed in their pawprints up hill and down, watched them stroked by admiring children, left them outside shop and post office, school and pub, and enjoyed every minute of it, even in the rain and snow, because walking seems pointless unless you have canine company.

Yes, a dog is for life - and a dog is also for all the exercise you'll take, the fun you'll have, the people you'll meet, the places you'll go, and above all for the love and loyalty that looks back at you from those intelligent golden brown eyes (just before you realise that the remains of the roast chicken have disappeared off the table). And unlike the kids, you can put it in the boarding kennels while you go on holiday.

I Don't Like Cricket ... Much!

Heretical, I know, when you consider my family background - my father played for Essex before the war, and for Suffolk after it. My earliest memories of cricket are of sunlit days, playing with my toys behind one of the stands at the Felixstowe ground, or at Saxstead Green in the shadow of the windmill. Later, attending a boys' school, I had the chance to play, but proved useless - a single run was my biggest score. My sister, rather better at sports than I was, was the only child in the youngest group able to bowl overarm. When the First Eleven played, on Saturday afternoons, we all had to watch. In my case, it meant that I could roll up in my rug and surreptitiously read - until one day I was hit on the head by a boundary I hadn't seen coming, and my shameful secret was exposed to all. Going to a girls' school, at the age of thirteen, meant I was able to exchange the boredom of cricket for the horrors of hockey and netball. Honestly, I don't know which was worse.

Cricket came back into my life with my two sons. My dad's sporting ability - he played cricket, golf, football and squash to a very high level - had passed me by entirely, but surfaced in Hugh and Patrick. We bought a cheap set of bat, ball and stumps and I began playing with them in the garden. My neighbour, knowing nothing of my unusual childhood, thought it was strange that I knew the right terminology and the rules, until I told him why! It soon became apparent that both boys were good, though not exceptional. Dad was impressed with Hugh's bowling, and gave him some coaching and much confidence. We joined Devizes Cricket Club, and began the summer routine shared by parents across the land: training sessions one evening a week after school, matches every Sunday. One of the nicest things about playing in Wiltshire is the lovely locations of many of the grounds. Erlestoke in a walled garden nestled beneath the hills: All Cannings at the foot of the downs: Bishop's Cannings down a little country lane: Devizes itself with lovely views, and a ringside seat when the police helicopter took off. Both boys were enthusiastic players with potential: both, surprisingly, bowled left-handed but batted with the right.

Alas, to my Dad's disappointment, their cricketing careers fizzled out. For two consecutive seasons, Hugh didn't play: appendicitis one year, a broken collar bone (diving for a catch!) the next. Then he had back problems and was unable to bowl as fast or as accurately as he once had. Patrick was a good bowler with a rather eccentric action (if not reminded, he tended to throw), but unfortunately the club changed to a more competitive league and the team was rather cliquey: he went for match after match without either batting or bowling, which would sap the enthusiasm of the keenest player, and eventually he gave up altogether. I was sad for them, for I always thought that with better coaching and regular match practice they would both have done well in adult teams, but selfishly didn't miss those long, tedious hours with the Sunday paper, hoping vainly that Patrick would at last be given the chance to shine, or that Hugh wouldn't slog it straight to slip.

And now it's the Ashes again, and it brings back bitter-sweet memories - because exactly four years ago my mother died very suddenly, leaving my dad alone for the first time in his life. In the agonising days between her death and her funeral, the final Test provided a very welcome distraction for my poor father, who did not know what to do with himself. For hours I sat and watched it with him, and in the process learned far more about the finer points, technical and tactical, of what he called 'the beautiful game' than I ever had before. And when, eighteen months later, he gave up the miserable struggle to live without her, I wrote this poem for him in tribute to a true English gentleman, and it was read by my nephew Matt at his funeral:

A GOOD INNINGS

The shadows are long and the day's play has ended,
The last ball bowled to his crease.
But though he is out we remember the glory,
And rejoice that he now has found peace.

He's said his goodbyes and gone home to his wife,
But the pavilion still rings to his name,
How, winning or losing, he always played fair,
And without him it won't be the same.

It's a beautiful game, he said once to us,
And though it was cricket he meant,
His life was the same and he never gave up
Whatever the bowler had sent.

So he's had a good innings, one of the best,
Filled his time with success great and small,
And as we look back at his long happy life,
We salute him with bat and with ball.

If England win this weekend, I'm sure that somewhere, he will be smiling.

I think he is.

The School Gate

You can take a girl out of the countryside, but you can't take the countryside out of the girl ... After years of living in towns, seduced by the convenience of being able to walk up the road and go into proper shops and restaurants, I bowed to the inevitable and persuaded Steve (brought up above a hardware shop in Balham High Road) that green fields and fresh air were what we wanted, especially if we were planning to start a family. So we moved to Wiltshire, selling my three bedroom semi in St. Albans and buying a detached bungalow with half an acre of garden - and had enough change to do it up and buy new furniture.

Threee years and our first baby later, we moved to our present house and have remained here ever since - the longest I've ever lived anywhere. It's also the only time in my life that I've truly felt part of a community. I grew up in a small village on the other side of the country, but didn't mix with the other inhabitants - my father was headmaster of a private school, which held itself aloof from the hoi polloi, apart from graciously hosting the local flower show every year. Unless the villagers did our garden, cleaned our house, serviced the car or (like poor Mrs. Brown), washed my nappies, I didn't know them. And as I went to my father's school and then on to another private school in the nearby big town, I didn't know their children either - apart from some deeply embarrassing forays to the youth club (for which I wore ski pants - with my thighs! Aagh!). I was shy, they doubtless thought I was posh and stuck up, and no lasting links were ever forged.

Even in our first Wiltshire village, we never felt part of it. This was mainly down to the bungalow's position, right on the outskirts, with a half mile walk across the fields the only safe route to the pub. But here, things are very different. Why?

Well, first of all, there's a lot going on, not just Jam and Jerusalem. There are groups to cater for every age and taste (even, so rumour had it, a wife-swapping ring, though we never sampled that!). But even in a socially thriving place like this, you have to go out and meet your opportunities, they won't come to you. And we had the perfect key to open the door to community life - our children. Toddler group, playgroup, and then the primary school, led us and the boys to new friends, new experiences. I'd always said that the school (at the end of our road, about 10 minutes' slow amble) would have to be Dotheboys Hall before I didn't send the children there. It wasn't, and off they went. At the school gate, at the end of the day, I usually arrived five minutes or so early, and there was always someone else to chat to. Parents came from every social class - even, for a couple of years, the child of the 'big house' - and on the whole the children mixed together very successfully, though once, I and another mother had to bribe our sons to go to the birthday party of a boy in their class who came from the 'pariah' family in the village. I joined the playgroup committee, then the PTA, helped at the school and when my younger son turned 11 and went off, with the children he'd known all his life, to the local 'bog-standard' comprehensive, I had to give it all up with some relief, but also with real regret. I still see my closest friends on a regular basis - we meet every Friday morning for breakfast in each other's houses - but occasional encounters in the village shop or post office or at the Carnival are no substitute for the easy, friendly camaraderie of the school gate.

About ten years ago, a small family moved into one of the houses in our road, stayed a year or so, and then left, saying they'd never felt part of village life. To me, the reason for this was blindingly obvious - they hadn't wanted to move their little girl from her existing primary school, so they missed out on the community readily available to them fifty yards away at our school gate. I feel sorry for all those other children who, for whatever reason, live in the village but go to school elsewhere. Some of them attend the shabby private school a few miles away - it has limited facilities, but only a dozen in a class, so people think it must be worth the exhorbitant sums it charges - and others the spanking new state primary in the next village, getting the benefit of showy pristine surroundings but surrendering the benefit of being able to walk there, and to learn alongside their friends from playgroup. I've never regretted sending my sons to our own school, where they mixed with children from a wide variety of backgrounds, learned to get on with all sorts of different people, never thought of themselves as privileged or superior, and could walk or cycle there, when old enough, on their own.

So, if you want to take a full part in village life, get a kid! And, if this is not possible, get a dog - which will be the subject of my next post.

In Praise of Bombastic Rock Groups

I've toyed with the idea of doing a blog for a while, though I already write a daily diary. That, however, is done from a historian's perspective and tends to be a record of what's happening, rather than what I'm feeling and thinking. But I went to see U2 last night at Wembley, and I wanted a record of it that was a bit more than a couple of lines of tiny scribble at the bottom of my page for August 14th, 2009.

In over 40 years of gigs, this was the biggest. Nearly 90,000 people, apparently: looking down at the solid mass of people clogging Olympic Way as they shuffled home towards the tube, I could well believe it. Even Glastonbury, the one year I went (1981 - I couldn't remember who was headlining and had to check online - it was Hawkwind). I'd bought pitch standing tickets on ebay, and was petrified that (a) they wouldn't arrive and (b), if they did, they'd turn out to be fake. When I pressed mine against the barcode reader and the light went green, I was somewhat relieved! Steve and the lads (Hugh, 19, Patrick, 16) also got safely in. Hugh had told me that U2 were deeply uncool, but he hadn't turned down a free ticket! He expressed surprise at the crowd. 'There's lots of young people - I thought they'd all be about your age!' I'm 57 (God that sounds old), and Steve's 50. Not that much older than U2 themselves, in fact. And it wasn't more than five minutes before the boys disappeared into the throng, anxious to get to the front (or to put as much distance between themselves and their uncool parents as possible).

Elbow were playing, but due to transport problems we'd arrived late (4 hours it took us from home) and we missed all but their last song, which was 'Rise'. A shame as I like the little I've heard of them and the reason we chose to go on Friday rather than the Saturday was that they were in support. Our lateness also meant that most of the food (but not the drink) had run out, and the only sustenance on offer was a khaki brown shiny bratwurst in a stale bun. It had the look of plastic, and reminded me of those hot dogs that you used to get in cinemas in the 60s and 70s. Well, it filled a hole, as my mum would have said. We fortified ourselves with a pint of Coke each, and launched ourselves into the fray.

More by default than anything else, we ended up just by the left hand claw. Did I mention the stage? It was surrounded and surmounted by a vast 4-pronged structure which supported the lighting, sound and a huge central video screen that could be lowered and raised. There's been a lot of criticism of this but I think it misses the point - that a rock band in a stadium like Wembley will be tiny doll-like figures to 95% of the audience. Something this big acts as a focus for those people who can't get close enough to the action, a visual spectacle to enhance and complement the music. And it certainly was amazing - colours, pictures, smoke, clips of the band, even, at the end, the impish, chuckling figure of Desmond Tutu, appealing for our help in Africa. It didn't matter that, being under 5 foot 6, I could only see Bono if I craned my neck and if the idiots in front didn't start waving their hands in the air and jumping up and down. I was there, and he was singing, and the Edge was playing, and everyone else was singing too, a community for one night of nearly 90,00 people.

I've liked U2 ever since I watched Live Aid and was blown away by their performance - I'd never heard of them before. Joshua Tree confirmed it, with moments, all too rare in music, that lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. With or Without You has been in my top three favourite songs for more than twenty years - God, he sings it sooo sexily - and although I don't like all their output One and Beautiful Day come pretty close to it. Hugh had called up the playlist for earlier gigs in this tour online, so we knew what was coming, and weren't disappointed. Perhaps the sound quality could have been better, but it was pretty good down by the claw, the Edge played amazingly, Bono sang his heart out, and two and a half hours of standing flew by a lot quicker than it does in the library.

The best, the most awe-inspiring, the most wonderful moment, was when they began I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. He sang a line, two lines, and we all joined in - ninety thousand people who all knew the words, and the tune, and the phrasing. Amazed, delighted, they stopped playing, and we carried on, unaccompanied, for a whole verse. I will never forget that moment: I've watched recordings of it on YouTube today and it still tingles the blood.

So, yes, it's all huge, overblown, a tad ridiculous. It cost a fortune to stage, and will make a rich band very much richer. But it made us richer too, in a different way. Rock groups have to be larger than life, or there's no point to their existence. That's what we want to see: we want to make them gods for an evening. And for one verse, we became gods too, under the Wembley arch.