I was standing with a cheerful huddle at a farm near Monyash in the Peak District, seeing off the Four Shires Bloodhounds on a foggy November Sunday. The hounds bayed and the horses stamped, and I wished I could still run well enough to be the quarry. In the same huddle was a friend who farms not far from where we live; he and I used to train together when we were younger and he was a fine middle-distance (and I a hopeful long-distance) runner.
‘What’s going to happen with this Europe job?’ he said to me.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ I said, wondering if it was the Common Agricultural Policy, or perhaps milk prices, he was talking about. In Derbyshire when the question is Europe-centred, ‘it doesn’t look good’ will generally serve as an all-purpose reply. And I am quickly out of my depth on cow-related matters.
‘Maybe catastrophic,’ he said.
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