Flora Thompson

Unlike most great talkers, the rooks are good workers, too.

It is the fashion to talk of our changing climate and bewail the hot summers and hard winters of tradition, but how seldom we pause to marvel at the remarkable constancy of the weather from year to year.

Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.

"Coming events cast their shadows before" quoted the clergyman...

Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.

Nature knows no calendar, the seasons move in a circle.

They didn't want votes, either. A vote wasn't going to raise wages or make bread cheaper. What did it matter to them what Government was in power.

It was still the custom of the countryside to build with local materials produced as close to the selected site as possible, for transport was difficult, even the best of country roads being more fitted for horseback traffic rather than heavy loads.

"I don't believe in folks making a sort of mystery of themselves. I believe in being neighbourly , I do".

and so the shadows ripple on
until it's time to part

Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward.

It was a hard life, but, physically, they throve on it, the men standing up well to the hard labour of the fields and the women, in addition to their washing, scrubbing and cooking and nursing, bearing a child almost annually.

'Thank God for my good dinner. Thank Father and Mother. Amen' was the grace used in one family, and it certainly had the merit of giving credit where credit was due. <small>— (ch. 1, Poor People's Houses)</small>

Words as to the inner emotions do not come readily to me, for I have led an isolated life mentally and spiritually.

Pale purple as the bloom on a ripe plum, veined with the gold of late flowering gorse, set with small slender birches, just turning yellow, with red-berried rowans and thicket of bracken, the heath lay steeped in sunshine.