Category Archives: This sceptred isle

Pitney lies three miles distant from High Ham. A tiny village tucked into the fold of the undulating Somerset countryside, it has suffered the fate of many similar villages. Its school is long closed. The church of the parish of … Continue reading →

Why do school students go backwards? Why do so many of the people who could hold a sensible and mature conversation in Year 7 become immature children who sit and giggle in Year 8, and diffident and uninterested teenagers in … Continue reading →

Do not ask children questions about what they think if you are not prepared for truthful answers, they will tell you exactly what they think, untarnished, unmoderated, sometimes without thought as to what they are saying. So it was on … Continue reading →

Waning crescent? Is that the right term? It was only last week that I discovered the meaning of “gibbous.” Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the copy of Old Moore’s Almanack bought by my grandmother every year. I … Continue reading →

It would be difficult to imagine a family more conservative than my own. Generation upon generation of small farmers in a small rural parish, they were not people given to radicalism. Farming life allowed little leisure, the sheer physical effort … Continue reading →