Whatever Next

I suppose not everyone would be happy with this as the outlook from their holiday bedroom. I rather love it as an encapsulation of the area. The make-do-and-mend mix of materials; its semi-dereliction indicating its declining commercial usefulness - part of the wider economic context of struggling small farms shifting their focus to tourism and hospitality. The combination of soils and climate offer very few farming options other than traditional livestock husbandry - a hard life for very limited financial reward and an uncertain future, unattractive to most people young and fit enough to cope with it

For me, the shed is nostalgia, picturesque decay, a physical manifestation of a long, complex history, part of the experience that makes me happy to pay the rent - so, to an extent, it is still paying is way. The future may be uncertain, but that cuts both ways. Who knows what uses it may yet be put to, to justify the next wave of fixing up. I can almost hear the rasp of the saw and the knocking in of nails

The extra was the remnants of Easter Sunday breakfast, as we wondered what arrangements our large group might make for lunch. I suggested that if we could find a couple of fishes it probably wouldn't be a problem. An article in today's paper asserts that few people under thirty would understand this joke. It is not only livestock farming that has lost its old certainties