Thanks to the financial crisis, we’re all economists now

I was standing with a cheerful huddle at a farm near Monyash in the Peak District, seeing off the Four Shires Bloodhounds on a foggy November Sunday. The hounds bayed and the horses stamped, and I wished I could still run well enough to be the quarry. In the same huddle was a friend who farms not far from where we live; he and I used to train together when we were younger and he was a fine middle-distance (and I a hopeful long-distance) runner.

‘What’s going to happen with this Europe job?’ he said to me.

‘It doesn’t look good,’ I said, wondering if it was the Common Agricultural Policy, or perhaps milk prices, he was talking about. In Derbyshire when the question is Europe-centred, ‘it doesn’t look good’ will generally serve as an all-purpose reply. And I am quickly out of my depth on cow-related matters.

‘Maybe catastrophic,’ he said. ‘Italian bonds have eased back a bit, but now it seems to be Spain’s turn — though we’ll have to see, what with their elections. And there’s no way we’re immune in Britain. If the European economy goes down, so does ours; half our trade is with Europe. There was too much easy credit for too long, and we’re all paying the price — though how the Greeks get out of their hole it’s really hard to see…’

And I had thought his world was farming. I looked at his huge, leathery hands and wondered if it would even be possible for him to target a single key on an iPhone, rather than a cluster. True, he’s a clever and thoughtful man and could have made a go of anything — politics, economics, retailing, middle-distance running … well, maybe not ballet dancing — but he made his choice decades ago, and you might have imagined horizons had closed in around him.