The last days of my childhood were also the last days of the village. I belonged to that generation which… — Laurie Lee

They [Lee’s uncles] were the horsemen and brawlers of another age, and their lives spoke its long farewell.  Spoke too, of campaigns on desert marches, of Kruger’s cannon and Flanders mud; of a world that still moved at the same pace as Caesar’s and of that Empire greater than his – through which they had fought, sharp-eyed and anonymous, and seen the first outposts crumble….

It was then I began to on my bed and stare out at the nibbling squirrels, and to make up poems from intense abstraction, hour after unmarked hour, imagination scarcely faltering once, rhythm hardly skipping a beat, while my sisters called me, suns rose and fell, and the poems I made, which I never remembered, were the first and last of that time….

Our village was clearly no pagan paradise, neither were we conscious of showing tolerance.  It was just the way of it.  We certainly committed our share of statutory crime. Manslaughter, arson, robbery, rape cropped up regularly throughout the years.  Quiet incest flourished where the roads were bad; some found their comfort in beasts; and there were the usual friendships between men and boys who walked the fields like lovers.