Valuation

The Westminster pantomime has stopped at "Oh yes he did". A future pub quiz question: What links Al Capone and a former minister who floodlit his horses at the expense of the public purse? Now you will know the answer (the tax office was the downfall of both of them!)

We paused on a walk, reaching the brow of the hill, looking back the way we have come. The village allotments - much loved and highly productive - are laid out below us. Beyond them, the church tower, which Historic England tells me is 14th century and "of 4 stages with embattled parapet, 8 pinnacles and gargoyles" - and sometimes the nest of a peregrine, I might add. The higgeldy-piggeldy roofs of the old village houses; green fields and tall hedges on the far slope of the valley; a tree-line on the horizon, beside the road running along the watershed

Front and centre of all this is a new house; large, square, flat-roofed, glass-fronted, the architectural school of the mid-1960s electrical sub-station, a visual joke at our expense. A very rich man; I wonder if he pays his taxes. Living in a golfish bowl like this, I imagine he will want to screen himself from prying binoculars. There is a nearby landscaping business that will transplant trees that are already 10 metres high if you can pay for it; I hope he finds them

Behind us is a field of winter wheat, looking rather bedraggled after snow, frost, rain and a lot of gloom. Its a long time since I had much to do with farming, but I remember enough to know that, actually, it is in good heart. There are plenty of plants, no gaps due to slugs or rabbits, deer or geese. Each plant has "tillered" to produce plenty of individual stems. The sparseness of the leaves at this point is a virtue, not a vice - it is less of an invitation to the fungal or viral infections that might make early headway in a lush green crop. Spring sunshine will galvanise it into explosive growth; it will be fun to watch

Beside us are two new stumps, and beside them the partly-dismembered trunks that they used to support. We catch our breath and grieve a little. The glaring circular cut is close to 50cm across; these trees must have been here for something like a century - a lot of cabinet ministers. It's impossible to know the story; perhaps it is a response to ash die-back, so a wholesome choice. Perhaps someone is concerned that the trees shade the crop each year, or harbour the rooks that dig up newly-planted seed - not a choice I would be proud of, but I'm not walking in their boots. Many trees have been planted in this area in the last 20 years - often by rich men and women, possibly with half an eye on their tax bill, but no matter. Perhaps we can forgive the loss of two common ash

Finally, there is this stump - the remains of a previous visit from the woodcutter, and now host to this magnificent bracket fungus. I have no idea what species, but we were lucky enough to catch it just as one of the "sunny intervals" passed over us, adding a vibrance to the crescent rims. Exciting; thought-provoking; life-enriching; no riches needed; no tax to pay