A country life is sweet/In moderate cold and heat. So runs part of the old song The Useful Plough. Whatever it was really like in former days, what of the modern countryside in the era of climate crisis? A reserve for the green-wellied rich, a summer playground, paradise lost or preserved, a chemical-drenched wasteland, a depopulated machine-dominated wildlife-inimical nightmare?
You are invited to submit your thoughts and observations on any aspect of country life, broadly interpreted, past or present, in up to 16 lines by 23rd August, in time for a sort of digital Harvest Festival on September 1st.
It ill becomes royal beasts to rhyme
But we return in three months’ time.