Bucolics

In Competition No. 2384 you were asked to supply an extract from an imaginary translated novel which unwittingly conveys the utter boredom of simple agricultural life.

The great boring British novel in this genre is Mary Webb’s Precious Bane, recommended to the nation by the prime minister Stanley Baldwin and parodied soon after its publication (1925) by Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm. Set in darkest Shropshire, it is, according to my Reader’s Encyclopaedia, ‘a story of fierce, morose country people, in which Prudence Sarn, the narrator, finds a husband who appreciates her in spite of her harelip’. Having been a publisher, I have been subjected to many a ponderous tale of reindeer-herding Lapps and root-grubbing tribal folk, but this week I felt lapidated by turnips. It hurt — my own fault. The prizewinners below get £25 each, and John C.H. Mounsey has the extra fiver.

Heidi put her sheets through the mangle before raking the clinker from the stove. She ate some dry bread and began lacing her knee-length lederbooten. Criss-cross, criss-cross, back and forth, her fingers deftly threaded the thick greased cord until, barely ten minutes later, she was ready for the five-mile walk to round up the heifers. She smiled: tonight, dressed in her smocking top, she would be at the Cobblers’ Ball — what fun that would be! All the side-shows and brilliant entertainments: the cheese-sniffing contest, the display of hoes and billhooks, the yodelling marathon …old Pietje would be there with his collection of bradawls and the Burgemeester would be presenting the prize for the biggest turnip. There was even talk of the fence around the village hall having been repainted — it might not even be dry yet! That would certainly be worth a look.
John C.H. Mounsey