June was a busy month. There was grass to cut, sheep to gather and shear, fences to repair and gates to hang. A real-ale festival, which drew in hundreds was organised by parish folk and this was closely followed by the annual summer music concert to which dozens of local people contributed. Two weeks later it was the flower festival and ‘madrigal-fest’ during which villagers created wondrous artistic displays depicting nursery rhymes. All this happened in just one parish but was echoed around the Leadon Vale Benefice.
For example; Dymock organised a weekend of remembrance for the soldiers who died during the First World War. Composers such as Frank Jephson from Derby were featured and, as their thoughts and music hung suspended in the air, a friend turned and said, “It is important for us to be here tonight. ‘These men have contributed to our culture and to our history as a nation and a people”. He went on to say that, “Their life and work helped to form us during our early years when we did not even know we were being formed, and so it is right that we remember them and do not forget their names”. My friend put into words my own thoughts on that matter, and if there is a moral to be drawn from the opening paragraph of this article it is that ordinary folk are still resourceful, creative, energetic and are capable of achieving artistic and practical success when their backs are against the wall. Maybe this fact should be an inspiration to those metropolitan people who still seem to feel that unless we are told what to do by some distant official we are incapable of doing good things by ourselves.
As I write, it is July and I am still not convinced that global warming will make it possible for me to end my days sipping Marsala whilst sitting under my own olive trees gazing at the distant Cotswold Hills. Indeed, if the contributors to one website https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/cooks-97-scam-debunked/ are to believed, the planet has been recently cooling not warming. Although this is denied by those already convinced it is warming, the climate issue appears to be a bit like the Brexit campaign in that some chicanery has gone into the figures. Thank goodness I was brought up to listen to ‘experts’ but not to assume that their superior knowledge in one area applies to everything else they say.
This means I did not take the advice of an enthusiastic ‘warmist’ to plant olive groves. I must admit however, that recent winters seem to have led to the current explosion in the rabbit and mole population. Friends who go lamping report success, but bodies on our lanes and roads suggest that more are killed by traffic than by the gun or ferret.
Although rabbits may be on the up, song birds are down. This is despite new rules on hedge-cutting to preserve food and nests. Their predators however are numerous and only last month a friend on his tractor counted 28 buzzards on the ground in one field alone, and every year outside our cottage, we see a pair of magpies ‘working’ the hedges for the eggs and chicks of the songsters. It seems that despite the efforts of country folk to keep corvid numbers down we are failing to provide a safe habitat for song birds.
I often wonder when the charitable bodies for birds will accept that you cannot let a top feeder breed to the point where it wipes out the prey species. After all, these same charities are quick to say that the burgeoning number of humans is wiping out numerous species. Why then can’t they say that the same logic applies to the growing populations of Buzzards, Corvids and the like? I think country folk will draw their own conclusions.
As for my conclusion; … One of the joys of writing this column is that I am never sure myself where it will lead and my earlier references to climate, animal charities and song birds has reminded me that a few years ago at a countryside show I noticed that Greenpeace were selling their own brand of battery driven clocks. I thought it incongruous that an organisation supposedly dedicated to saving the world and reducing waste etc, should be depleting resources by using batteries, when a zero energy alternative exists that uses gravity as its power source. I explained this point to the sober looking Greenpeace man handing out leaflets, but he looked puzzled at my suggestion that he should instead be selling grandfather clocks with a pendulum from Birmingham, and not a plastic clock with batteries from Shanghai.
As he turned away I remembered an account of how a grandfather clock incredibly stopped at the precise moment of its owners’ death ……… when it fell on him.
View from the Pew 