The World is a Bundle of Hay: Memories of the Somerset Levels - Tapa dura

Charming. Just the way it was then. Clear readable style and explains many things I had almost forgotten about traditional farm life, with some deeper thoughts. Quality paper and binding so a nice book to keep. --Reader

Really loved the vast levels of meaning in this book looking back in time and yet so current - very readable. --Reader

It is an interesting book to read. I really enjoy reading it. In chapter 5 Winter. It describes vividly how the author played with the hays in the fore-stall while he carried the hay from the rick for cows. It was really a childhood full of fun and happiness. I had similar experience too. I remember in summer when rice harvest, we children played 'hide and seek' in the middle of bundles of straw almost everyday. Although the climate was really hot and humid, we ran and hid here and there among the straws, sweated all over the body, shouting and laughing, only stopped when everyone got exhausted. The newly rice straws had a very fresh grass smell. For years I haven't had a chance to touch the newly straws again, though I still can feel the good smell of them. When we got little older, the game was no longer attractive as just what is mentioned in Dylan Thomas' poem Fern Hill. When I finished this chapter I found out the poem and read it over again and realised that I had much clearer picture of that poem than ever before. Thank you so much for writing this valuable and nice book for everybody to read. --Reader

A personal memoir of growing up and working on a family farm in the 1940s and 50s: a short and unique period just after the second world war when the English countryside was flourishing, but modern farming was still mostly in the future. In this time of transition many aspects of the way of life and sustainable farming practices had not changed for centuries. The author sets out to record and re-create the flavour of life in the special landscape of the Somerset Levels while setting his story in a wider context of history and ideas which may offer some insights into modern dilemmas.