Bucolics

In Competition No. 2384 you were asked to supply an extract from an imaginary translated novel which unwittingly conveys the utter boredom of simple agricultural life.

The great boring British novel in this genre is Mary Webb’s Precious Bane, recommended to the nation by the prime minister Stanley Baldwin and parodied soon after its publication (1925) by Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm. Set in darkest Shropshire, it is, according to my Reader’s Encyclopaedia, ‘a story of fierce, morose country people, in which Prudence Sarn, the narrator, finds a husband who appreciates her in spite of her harelip’. Having been a publisher, I have been subjected to many a ponderous tale of reindeer-herding Lapps and root-grubbing tribal folk, but this week I felt lapidated by turnips. It hurt — my own fault. The prizewinners below get £25 each, and John C.H. Mounsey has the extra fiver.

Heidi put her sheets through the mangle before raking the clinker from the stove.