Author: The Countryman’s Daughter

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 5th October & the Gazette & Herald on 3rd October 2018

Carrot farmer Rodger Hobson with Countryfile presenter Helen Skelton

An apple a day…

A friend of mine owns a commercial carrot farm, and he was featured on Countryfile this week, explaining that his yield is 30% less than last year (which by contrast was very good). He sells them by weight, and although those from the early crop were healthily large, the ones gathered so far from his main harvest are less than half the size thanks to the persistently dry weather. The story is the same for other root vegetables like onions, and although the potato harvest is only recently under way, things are not looking good. You have to feel for the farmers who are having such a difficult year.

On the other hand, it has been a good year for our autumn fruit harvest, with very healthy numbers of apples, pears, plums, and blackberries. It seems 1978 boasted similar success in the fruit world. From his October 7th column of that year, Dad mentions that our garden had produced a bumper crop of apples and plums. We had three plum trees, but they hadn’t produced any fruit for the previous ten years which meant that only in 1978 did we discover we had in fact three different varieties – one was a greengage, one a Victoria and the third a mystery, although the plums were large and bluey in colour. Dad wondered if they were Merryweather Damsons, but wasn’t sure.

We also had four apple trees which in 1978 had done very well too although, like we have experienced in recent weeks with storm Ali, high winds meant we had boxes of windfalls to contend with.

It amazes me that, if stored correctly, apples can last several months. They are best kept in a cool, dry, frost-free atmosphere at between three and five degrees Celsius. Apparently, rooms above stables are ideal, as the heat from the horses keeps the temperature just about right. But for those of you who aren’t lucky enough to have a horse, a garage or cellar will do as long as the fruit is kept away from pungent smells emitted by things such as garlic and onions, or paint tins and the like. They don’t have to be covered, but my dad believed the best way to prolong their lives was to cover them with newspaper or straw and lay them in trays so they are not touching each other. This is very important to stop the spread of rot, which can happen if one bad apple is touching another, so windfalls should be pristine with the stalk in tact.

You can also keep them in an unheated bedroom, which were plentiful in the 1970s, although one of those might be hard to find in 2018 among us unhardy, central-heating-loving lightweights.

I would worry though, if I were storing fruit, how one keeps the rats and mice at bay as surely, tray upon tray of lovely ripening fruit would attract them into our garages? I’ve tried to find out if there is a foolproof way to deter them, but have not come up with anything failsafe. Obviously, traps and poison are an option, but I was wondering if there was another less severe method.

According to TV presenter and Guardian newspaper columnist Alys Fowler, rats hate the prickly nature of holly, so if you dry it out (it becomes even more prickly that way) and spread sprigs of it in and around your apples, it may help. They are also said to dislike fresh mint and mothballs, so they too might be worth a try.

All this talk of apples reminds me of a stay I had with a friend in London. She was in the middle of preparing dinner and asked: “Is there anything you don’t eat?”

“Only bananas. They’re the one thing I really can’t abide. Their smell, their texture, everything about them, ugh…” I said with a shudder.

“Oh dear,” replied my friend, and continued stirring the caramel sauce which I quickly found out she was making for banoffie pie.

I felt very bad, and tried to hastily remove my foot from my mouth. But I needn’t have worried. Having already made the buttery biscuit base, my resourceful friend covered one half with bananas as planned, but the other with baked sliced apple. It was delicious.

We couldn’t come up with a satisfactory name for this new half-and-half pie, though. Any suggestions? (Sources: hobsonfarming.co.uk, rhs.org.uk)

Visit my blog at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 21st September & the Gazette & Herald on 19th September 2018

Me with my son’s Elon Musk biography

My research materials for this article

The mystery bush

Reading through Dad’s columns from 1978, us children often get a mention thanks to the things we have brought back home from on our days playing outside in the countryside.

We were very blessed in ways that perhaps our town-living peers weren’t, and today’s primary-school-age children certainly aren’t, in that we could disappear out of the front door in the morning and our parents would not worry if we didn’t come back until the end of the day.

I was talking about this to my mum the other day, and reminiscing about how much freedom we were afforded back then. She confirmed that they never worried about us while we were out, nor felt the need to contact us in any way. If something happened, then so be it! Thankfully, bar a case of food poisoning caused by undercooked sausages the first time me and my friend went camping up the nearby field, we got off relatively lightly.

That’s not to say we didn’t have the odd scrape and near-miss (you may have read about our less-than-safe trips atop a stack of bales on the back of a tractor a couple of weeks ago). One particularly memorable occasion was the time we were playing in the hay barn right at the top when the whole lot came crashing down. We were lucky not to have been crushed or suffocated, and of course, like every well-behaved child, instead of owning up, we scarpered when we saw what a mess of tumbled down bales we had caused. I don’t think the farmer would have been in any doubt who was behind the calamity, and yet he never told us off. What a patient soul he was!

In Dad’s column from 30th September 1978 he mentions that we had brought home some red berries we had found growing in a hedgerow. Although it is likely that he knew what they were, he wanted us to find out for ourselves, and says something which I believe too (yet I might be on losing wicket): “I encourage them to do their own research, believing that it enables them to understand the value of books and also that they remember what they find if they do it themselves.”

Despite being grandchildren of an author of some 130 books, and sons of a writer, I’m afraid that these days, my own children are rarely seen with a book in their hands. ‘Research’ to them involves watching a video on YouTube or a visit to Wikipedia, which I think is not unusual among their generation. Although to give my oldest his due, I did recently come downstairs and almost fainted when I caught him sat on the sofa reading a book. It turned out to be a biography of Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk. I’m very proud to say that he has recently graduated with a degree in web programming so hopefully some of Musk’s talent and entrepreneurial skills will rub off on him so that soon, he will be able to keep his mum in the manner to which I’d like to get accustomed.

As for the red berries, we discovered from one of Dad’s reference books that they were from the guelder rose, which is a small tree fairly common among our hedgerows. It flowers in May, with beautiful umbrella-like white blooms comprising a circle of larger sterile white flowers surrounding a centre of much smaller fertile white flowers, and it is these flowers which produce the red berries in early autumn.

What is particularly distinctive is their odd smell. According to Dad’s column, it is ‘like crispy, fried, well-peppered trout’. Hmmm, is that a good smell? I’ll have to get out there next May and find out.

I have included a photograph with this article taken on one of my dog walks in early June of what I thought was a wild guelder rose, but my research reveals that the foliage is wrong. A guelder rose has leaves with irregularly-toothed prongs, not dissimilar to acer leaves, whereas in my image, although the flowers appear right, the leaves are more teardrop-shaped than ‘prongy’. The nearest I could come to finding one similar is the American wayfaring tree but, as its name suggests, it is not found over here. Can anyone enlighten me as to what mine is?

Visit my blog at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 21st September & the Gazette & Herald on 19th September 2018

I have started to watch ITV’s adaptation of Vanity Fair, and am particularly fascinated by the interactions between the heroine Becky Sharp and the servants who wait on the wealthy Sedley family with whom she is invited to stay. Clearly, they despise the fact that they are to wait on Becky, who is of lowly birth, and whom they see as rising above her true station. How annoying that she gets all the perks afforded to the upper classes while they get none. The footman, Sam, is particularly miffed, and recognises that Becky is on an urgent mission to bag herself a wealthy husband before she has to suffer the humiliation of becoming a mere governess.

Vanity Fair is said to be ITV’s attempt to replace the phenomenal success of its noble predecessor, Downton Abbey, although that has yet to be seen. Set in North Yorkshire (although mostly filmed elsewhere), the shenanigans that go on upstairs with the Crawley family are matched in entertainment by those that go on downstairs, with much jostling for position and displays of bitter resentment towards anyone deemed to be growing too big for their boots. The class system stretched from the very top of the aristocracy right down to the lowliest role.

For example, at the top of the servant hierarchy was the housekeeper (female) and the estate steward (male). The cook was also extremely important, and male cooks were more sought after, though less numerous, than females, with a French male cook seen as the best of the best. They held great influence and importance in the household, as what they produced when entertaining guests could make or break their employers’ reputations. If it wasn’t fashionable, of exquisite quality and visually spectacular, then the hosts could face public humiliation. At the bottom of the pile were the scullery maid and laundry maid, alongside the stable boy and grounds keepers.

In my dad’s column from 23rd September 1978, he talks of the perils servants faced if they didn’t understand certain etiquettes, which often only came to them naturally after years of experience. He found the information in an ancient little handbook that he’d forgotten he had.

The servants had to get their heads around the many, many rules. The etiquette for knocking on doors, for example, was enough to baffle anyone, never mind having to familiarise themselves with the rest of the household conventions. Servants must never knock at a sitting or dining room door, unless they are the cook, who absolutely had to knock. Servants were, however, expected to knock on bedroom doors. If an ignorant servant did knock on the wrong door, then they were displaying their lack of breeding, and if they had recently arrived from another household, then they were demonstrating that their former employer was not very noble.

Another essential skill was to be able to enter and exit a room as quietly as possible, ensuring that the latch went into the socket with very little noise. They must also always close the door, even if they were entering for just a short time, as warm air was very precious and would soon be dispersed by draughts allowed in through a door carelessly left swinging.

It may seem odd to us today, but those being waited upon rarely said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the men and women serving them. A mere shaking of the head, or a face turned away, was enough to signify rejection of whatever was being proffered, while acceptance was assumed unless otherwise indicated.

Saying ‘thank you’ was only acceptable if some extra service was performed. For example if a diner accidentally spilled something and the servant rushed forward to help, then it was fine to thank said servant.

These are just a couple of the rules of old etiquette, but there are so many more. Can you imagine being a novice servant? The opportunities to get it wrong must have been immense, and would no doubt have left them quaking in their boots.

So now, thanks to this column, I have become acquainted with the fact that you can never be too careful when employing your servants. So when I find and marry my aristocratic nobleman, I will make sure that all our servants are given a copy of my dad’s little handbook.

Visit my blog at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 14th September & the Gazette & Herald on 12th September 2018

Me and my best friend Rhiannon on the farm in 1978

Ragwort on fields high above the farm in 1978

Country folk know the dangers of ragwort to horses and cattle, although I didn’t realise that most cases of poisonings come not because an absent-minded animal ate some by mistake, but because it has been hidden in contaminated feed, such as silage or hay. Due to the bitter taste of the plant, the animals sensibly give it a wide berth while grazing in open fields.

In his column from 16th September 1978, my dad tells the tale of some of us children bringing home a bunch of yellow flowers gathered from a nearby farmer’s field, not knowing that this wild flower was in fact that troublesome weed. As far as we were concerned, this tall, handsome bloom could rival any you might find in a shop.

A large part of my childhood was spent helping (or hindering…) the farmer who owned that field. He had a herd of Friesian cows and a number of pigs and my best friend Rhiannon and I would regularly spend all day on his farm, just a short walk from home, mucking out the cows, feeding the pigs, helping with milking, or making dens in the haystacks.

Some of my favourite memories involved harvest time. The farmer, who ran the farm with his son, had some fields high above the village where he grew straw and hay. Once they’d been turned into bales and placed into square stacks of about 24 each, they would attach a piece of equipment to the back of the tractor that could grab the stack, enabling them to transport it down to the barn.

Rhiannon and I would climb on to this metal grabber (apologies to aficionados of 1970s farming equipment, I have no idea what it was called!) and hang on for dear life as he bounced and rocked up the hill to the top fields. There was one particularly steep bit with deep trenches that would send the tractor lurching from side to side as it navigated the ruts. We were tossed about like damp tea towels on a windy washing line, and the threat of losing our grip and being flung off never seemed far away, which of course is why we loved it so much.

The return journey was even more thrilling, and the fear of mortal injury was ever present (imagine the Kumali roller coaster at Flamingoland, but much cheaper and without the queues). After he’d loaded the bale stack into the grabber, we’d clamber on top, and sit there, both hands gripping the metal frame, as he made his unsteady way back down to the farm. When we reached the extra steep bit, the sensation of tilting from side to side was even more exaggerated from atop the bales, and I’m still not sure how we never came a cropper. Thank goodness our mums never knew what we got up to!

The farmer and his son were the most tolerant and friendly of sorts, typical jolly North Yorkshire farmers, and didn’t seem to mind that we hung about so much. In the winter, the cows needed fresh hay and bedding straw each day, and we sometimes helped the son with those tasks.

Like his father, he was ever cheerful, and used to whistle and sing constantly. There were a couple of phrases he’d come out with that I never questioned, but now wonder where they originated.

If he expressed surprise, he’d often say: “Heavens to Murgatroyd!”

Or sing: “Where was Moses when the lights went out?” To which we’d respond: “Underneath his bed, looking for some matches!”

I have found that ‘Heavens to Murgatroyd’ is first recorded as having been said in the 1944 film musical ‘Meet the People’ starring Lucille Ball, but was popularised in the 1960s by the Yogi Bear TV show. More interestingly though, I also discovered that in 1371, a constable called Johanus de Morgateroyde was appointed to the West Yorkshire district of Warley, and his name meant ‘John of the district leading to the moor’.

As for ‘Where was Moses When the Lights Went Out’, it is the title of a song that has been around for a couple of centuries, although we must have made up our response, as our words do not appear in it at all! Can anyone else shed light on these expressions, I wonder? Source: phrases.org.uk).

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This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 7th September & the Gazette & Herald on 5th September 2018

Me in my mud-eating prime

The sexton beetle

When I was very young, and when the weather permitted, I spent most of my time outside playing with friends, or entertaining myself in the garden by digging in the mud to discover what little creatures I could find. I was a proper scruffy little tomboy and a family tale goes that I even quite enjoyed the taste of mud (I don’t myself remember eating it, but am assured by the rest of the family that I did!). I think it must account for my rather robust state of health over the years, as I am seldom ill, although I suppose I should add a disclaimer for today’s youngsters: Do not eat soil. It is a cat’s toilet.

In his column from 9th September 1978, Dad mentions finding an upturned margarine tub on the front doorstep and when he lifted it up, he found a large beetle beneath it. He had no idea who had left it there, although I think I am probably the most likely culprit as I would have still been just 11 years old, and my siblings were all teenagers who by then entertained themselves in far more sophisticated ways than me. I’d probably found it in the garden during one of my forages, left it on the doorstep, then no doubt got distracted by something else and forgot all about it.

The beetle was about 3cm long, flatish, mostly black with two thick bright orange wavy bars across its wing cases. Dad identified it quickly as the nicrophorous vespilliodes, or common sexton beetle.

He goes on to explain its rather gruesome, but highly effective, method of survival and reproduction, which is worth repeating here, as A. it is fascinating and B. it makes this beetle the ultimate ambassador for eco living! (But if you are of a delicate disposition, you might want to look away now….).

Traditionally, a sexton (of the human variety) was responsible for digging graves and this is where the beetle gets its name, for it is a pretty effective gravedigger itself (although today the role of the human sexton has evolved into that of maintenance of the church building and its surroundings, as well as the graveyard).

Like a pair of nocturnal scavengers, male and female sexton beetles work together to seek out dead or decaying small animals, attracted by the smell of rotting flesh. Their antennae are equipped with super-sensitive receptors that can detect the stench of death from metres or even kilometres away. Once they find a body, they might have to fight off their competitors and, as is only fair, the boys fight the boys, and the girls fight the girls. The most dominant pair wins the spoils.

To avoid the threat of any determined rivals coming back to steal their prize, the winners set about burying the corpse by burrowing underneath it, until the whole lot sinks and is ultimately consumed by the earth. Animal cadavers can be buried up to eight inches deep, and the industrious couple complete the process quickly and efficiently – a rat that has died in the evening would be entombed by morning.

To celebrate their successful endeavours, the couple then mate (well who wouldn’t?) and the female lays her eggs beneath the corpse, with her and her partner feeding on it to keep their strength up for parenting. Sexton beetles are unusual in the insect world in that both the male and female take part in raising the babies. Once the eggs turn into larvae, they also feed on the deceased creature, and the little family live together in their cadaverous eco-home (known as a ‘crypt’) until the youngsters are strong enough to fend for themselves. Only then, satisfied with a job well done, will Mum and Dad fly off to corpses new to start the process again.

It’s no wonder then, with such a system of beetle-style holistic living, that the sexton fares so well. They are plentiful, and look set to remain unthreatened by the advances of modern life. Hopefully, in forty years time, my successor will not be writing otherwise!

Having said that, despite some rain recently, the ground is still extremely hard underfoot. It makes me wonder if that has affected the ability of the beetle to burrow and bury? Perhaps someone with the right knowledge will kindly contact me and let me know (Sources: wildlifetrusts.org, animalcorner.co.uk).

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This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 31st August, & the Gazette & Herald on 29th August 2018

Dad’s Ryedale Hen Watching Society file

Dad’s Ryedale Hen Watching Society file

While researching this week’s piece using Dad’s column from 1st September 1978, I came across his very first mention of the Ryedale Hen Watching Society. I wonder how many of you have heard of it, or indeed if any of you ever considered joining it?

Until I read that I had no idea how long it had been going, but had been aware of it growing up as Dad used to mention it occasionally, and always with a chuckle. The ‘society’ came about, so my dad’s article reveals, thanks to a conundrum that had arisen in the valley where we lived.

“In this quiet valley there rages a controversy of tremendous proportions. In the pubs and clubs, homes and tents, people are arguing and discussing a point upon which there seems to be no known answer,” he says.

And the point in question? At the exact moment that a hen lays its egg, is the shell hard or soft? This mystery troubled many a scientific brain over the centuries. Apparently, someone in the village had spent hours watching her hens to ascertain the truth, but to no avail, for whenever she found a suitable observing position, the hen would turn round just at the precious moment, obscuring the view.

I remembered seeing a folder in my dad’s archives entitled ‘Ryedale Hen Watching Society’ and so dug it out. Inside was a large collection of newspaper cuttings and letters, all connected to poultry, starting from the late 1970s, and the latest from 2006. As usual when I start digging around my dad’s stuff, I got sidetracked by all the clippings and articles. Topics included giant prehistoric eggs, a bantam adopting motherless puppies, chicken overtaking beef as the nation’s favourite dish, and even the case of Esmeralda the hen, who survived incarceration in a deep freeze for two whole weeks after having been tossed in there in a sackful of unplucked dead birds. Poor Esmeralda!

One of the most curious cases concerned the community of Anfield, near Liverpool, which was rocked by the discovery of a foetus in a back alley. Police cordoned off the area, and the rumour that a dead baby had been found spread like wildfire. Emotional residents started leaving cards, flowers and teddy bears at the scene. Several days later, they found out they had in fact been mourning a dead baby chicken.

But by far the most numerous cuttings were dated between 1981 and 1983. They concerned the debate over battery hens and protests against this method of farming were at their height. Arguments continued for many years, well into the naughties, with the practice of battery farming continuing in the UK until it was finally banned in 2012 (though not in Europe). Large-scale chicken farms could no longer use the tiny cages of the past, which were around the size of an A4 sheet of paper. Instead they introduced ‘enriched cages’ which could house up to 90 birds with the freedom to move around. They also had to provide perches, a darkened ‘laying’ area and litter on the ground which enabled the birds to enjoy their natural behaviours such as flapping their wings, scratching, stretching and foraging. Although they weren’t perfect, they were a significant improvement.

As for the question about when the egg hardens, after some exhaustive research (a couple of minutes on the internet) I discovered that the hard outer shell of a hen’s egg takes about 20 hours to form, and occurs before it is laid. If only that poor woman had access to the internet in 1978!

If this column has sparked in you an interest in joining the Ryedale Hen Watching Society, I’m afraid I have some bad news. The society was in fact a fabrication of my dad’s creative mind, the like of which can be found in his Constable novels. Well, he always loved to play a good yolk! (Source: British Hen Welfare Trust, bhwt.org.uk)

A quick thank you to Mrs Marie Marsh who, following my piece about Mastiles Lane (Making a Wrong Turner, 1st August) wrote to tell me of many a trip up that very lane, the first time in 1956 in a Standard Vanguard car, and other trips with her family on motorbikes. Her last sentence is a delight: ‘Nowadays we are armchair travellers living on memories.’ Keep on travelling, Marie!

Visit my blog at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 22nd August, & the Gazette & Herald on 20th August 2018)

My brother and I in our borrowed dinghy on Brothers Water in the Lake District in 1978

Me playing on the shores of Brothers Water in thrvAke District in 1978

I’ve said before how my dad preferred to spend our family holidays in the UK, and reading his column from this week in 1978, he is talking about our annual week’s break in the Lake District. It means that already a full year has passed since I last wrote about our trips to the Lake District in this column. How time flies!

In sharp contrast to 2018, August 1978 it seems was not very dry at all, as Dad describes when mentioning a trip to Borrowdale, which he tells us was once said to be the wettest place in England. “It was to that district, however, that we journeyed on holiday during what must have been one of the wettest and most miserable Augusts in years.” Oh dear!

A quick search reveals that indeed, Borrowdale’s village of Seathwaite holds that distinctly soggy crown still, with the last annual rainfall having been recorded as 3552mm (the national average for 2017 was a mere 1372mm).

I do remember some very wet days, but also plenty of lovely dry ones too. On warmer days, we treated the shores of Lake Ullswater as you would a Mediterranean beach, but although us children loved it, that was one of the more popular places to go and so on fine days could be rather busy.

Dad hated busy places, and took the time to discover the quieter lakes that were less populous. A firm favourite was Brothers Water, which was a mere puddle compared to the likes of Ullswater and Lake Windermere, and as such significantly quieter. But we loved it there, and even on dodgy weather days could spend hours exploring its waters and shores. One year, we borrowed a little dinghy from a friend to take out. I wasn’t allowed to use it by myself to go very far, but my 16-year-old brother was considered mature enough to row us both across the lake all the way to the other side.

There is something dark and mysterious about the very centre of a deep lake. As we floated across, the water below us got blacker as it got deeper and my young self feared it might hide some mysterious relative of the Loch Ness Monster. I imagined it ominously observing our passage from the safety of the murky depths.

Thankfully, we made it there and back without becoming a lake-living leviathan’s lunch, but I’m glad that as a child I did not know the story of how Brothers Water got its name.

The lake was originally called Broad Water, but was changed to Brothers Water following an apparent tragedy in which two brothers are said to have drowned. There has been some debate as to whether this accident even occurred, but having delved deeper into the tale, it seems it does bear truth.

Many tellings and retellings of the story over the years have muddled timescales, facts and the names of the unfortunate victims, and for some time I was still none the wiser as to a definitive account.

However, I fortunately came across the blog of a chap called Raymond Greenhow who did a lot of research on this topic and, based on the evidence he found in archive newspapers and parish records, I think he has come up with the most likely and truest account. So I’ll summarise briefly what he believes happened.

A newspaper article dated 25th January 1786 stated that two brothers aged 16 and 19 had set out across the frozen lake one winter’s morning to visit a friend on the other side. Their father was working in nearby fields, and at the end of the day saw his sons start to make their way home. The father knew the ice had thawed somewhat during the day, and desperately tried to warn them. But sadly, they didn’t hear him, or misunderstood his signals and he was too far away to prevent them walking towards the centre of the lake. Under their weight, the ice fractured, and their father watched helplessly as his two sons fell through to their deaths.

Other sources suggest a separate earlier incident also involving two brothers, but it is less certain as to whether it happened or not. Nevertheless, the name was changed from Broad Water to Brothers Water as an everlasting memorial to those poor lost souls (Source: scafellhike.blogspot.com).

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(This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times  on 17th August, & the Gazette & Herald on 15th August 2018)

In his column from 19th August 1978, my dad talks about a letter he deceived from a reader who hailed from Devon. She’d recently visited North Yorkshire and was impressed by our quiet roads, spectacular countryside and pretty towns and villages. But what stood out more for her was the kind nature of its residents. “She writes that the people of the region are most friendly and helpful. She found helpfulness wherever she went, particularly in the shops and cafes,” he tells us.

As I write, I’m listening to BBC Radio York’s Yorkshire Day coverage (you might recall I write these columns about two weeks in advance) and that spirit that Dad talks about is more than evident. I’m filled with a real sense of pride listening to people from all over North Yorkshire who have come together to celebrate the day in the station’s ‘Cake and a Cuppa’ drive.

The initiative has the aim to not only bring people together, but also to help tackle the isolation and loneliness felt by some in our area. Initially, events were held once a month in various locations around the county and they would broadcast for the day from wherever it was.

But the idea gathered momentum, with some villages and community groups deciding to set up their own and hold them regularly. It led to the idea of a massive Cake and a Cuppa event specifically for Yorkshire Day and more than 50 communities all over the county (and even one in India!) took part.

The value of such gatherings cannot be underestimated. In my home village, we have a mini version every week after the morning service in the Catholic church hall. Volunteers bake cakes and serve tea and coffee and it is open to absolutely everyone, not just those who have attended mass.

I know my mum won’t mind me saying how beneficial she has found it since the deaths of my dad and sister. We other children visit as often as we can, but we live some distance away so of course my mum has to face many days alone. This is a place to go where people know her, know her situation and where she is always welcome. It’s one of many small things that enable her to get through each week.

Mum made a valid point to me yesterday about rural life in that you can live in a place for many years, and if it wasn’t for gatherings such as this, you might never know who lives on the other side of the village. Our local shop is at the centre, and the main street is more or less one long straight mile. So you walk to the shop, buy what you need, then go back the same way without venturing into the other half of the village. And no doubt people living in the other direction do the same, and so they don’t get a chance to get to know one another. It was at a recent communal picnic that my mum met a lady who had lived on the other side of the village for a number of years, and yet they hadn’t met until that day. So we need to encourage things like Cake and a Cuppa, as they really do help tackle the problem of loneliness and isolation.

One of the things that struck me as I listened today was the comment made by one young man, who said something along the lines of: “You don’t need to be old to feel lonely,” which I thought was a valid point to make. Indeed, when I went along to my village coffee morning, although most were elderly, there was also a young family with two very small children enjoying the chats and the cake.

What I also noticed was the amount of energy the youngsters injected into the room. They naturally lifted everyone’s spirits in a way that children can effortlessly do (admittedly, they can have the opposite effect on some people, but not on this occasion!).

It’s nothing that we don’t already know, of course, and events like Cake and A Cuppa prove it all the more. So let’s build on what’s been started and bring more people together over a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Listen to my 9th August interview on the BBC Radio York Adam Tomlinson and Anna Wallace show: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01yq8ky

Visit me at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug.

ENDS