Happy eating

To get to the nearest main road from here, you have to drive for five miles along a cow-shit-covered country lane. Two-thirds of the way along, where the lane is joined by a farm track, stands a wooden hutch on legs. More often than not, there are new-laid eggs inside. The eggs, lovely brown eggs marked with yellowy-green chicken-shit and bits of straw, sit neatly in rows of circular holes that have been jigsawed out of a sheet of plywood. A hand-written sign says the eggs are £1.20 a dozen and would you please put the money in the money-box, thank you. Beside the eggs is a haphazard pile of damp egg-boxes. You help yourself to as many eggs as you need, up to 36, which is the maximum capacity of the jigsawed sheet of plywood. If the egg-boxes are very damp, you have to be careful getting them to the car because they tend to fall apart.