A 260 mile roundtrip yesterday to Worcester to watch England A playing Sri Lanka.
I love England at this time of year. Trees coming into leaf, lambs hither and yon, blue skies and so on.
I’m much too young to be getting Proustian nostalgie, aren’t I? But seeing the countryside in May revived memories of the same feelings from past years.
About 10 miles east of Wincanton the A303 climbs up onto Salisbury Plain. One year, probably 1999, driving my much-missed Citroen BX from Exeter to London on a fine May evening up that hill I was utterly dumbstruck by the serene beauty of the rolling fields and the freshly-broken out greenness.
The sense of fertile homeland stretching to the horizon in every direction was very powerful. I’m not ashamed to say that I love England, only with the necessary condition that I dislike the English, at least the ones I don’t like very much.
The other Madeleine-esque trigger for me is seeing horse chestnut trees flowering. There was one in the far corner of the Worcester County Cricket ground. The candles weren’t quite fully out but the tree still looked lovely.
In four or five months those will be conkers and summer will be over.
I used to want my ashes scattered at Goodwood racecourse, which is in an incredibly pretty ‘England, oh my England’ pastoral setting. I think though my heart really wants to go back to the earth in the shade of a horse chestnut on the edge of a village cricket ground.
No, I didn't vote BNP.
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