I wanted to spend time stopping and really looking at things. He seemed really smart and I admired smartness, despite having no interest in school. While others ran around, unable to make things go as fast as they wanted, he’d be in a slow gear and yet get loads done. And he did something which I thought magical. He knew the answer to anything I could conceivably ask about our land and this valley, more aware than other people – for example, he knew exactly where the foxes went under the wire fence, as he kept an eye out for fox hair. Maybe not a very good dad to his son, but very kind to me. What was great about my grandfather is that he looked like he belonged in his place in the world. It took me some years to realise: “Actually, this isn’t all our fault – this is history’s fault.” There was a real fear of debt, but I never wanted for actual food, growing up on the farm. There was the fear of debt, things were falling apart, but there was an old-fashioned stubbornness in our family, a feeling that you should be rising earlier and slog more to out-work the changes. In fact, neither Mam or Dad were able to do all they wanted. She had to come back to the farmhouse and arrange a big meal in 15 minutes. I can remember my mother, who worked on the farm more than my grandmother, being quite stressed about food, because there was a feeling that she couldn’t measure up to her mother, not least in the kitchen. I wondered if they even loved each other, to be honest, but after he died, she talked about nothing for years except how wonderful he was. I have memories of him being chased – semi-seriously – by my grandmother wielding a frying pan.
A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the fells.If my grandmother went away to see her sister, someone would have to rescue my grandfather in the kitchen, as he’d be frying spam in a saucepan on really high heat and the whole cooker area would be plastered with speckles of horrible fat. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations.
Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. 'The nature publishing sensation of the year, unsentimental yet luminous' Melissa Harrison, The Times, Books of the Year 'Triumphant, a pastoral for the 21st century' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year A story of survival - of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life.
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