Driving home through Kent the other day, I was struck by how much the topography has changed. When I was growing up there in the 1970s, first in Rolvenden and then in Hawkhurst, there were hop gardens. Today there are vineyards.
I’m not sure Alfred Jingle would recognise the county about which he stated in Pickwick Papers: ‘Kent, sir — everybody knows Kent — apples, cherries, hops and women.’ The apple and cherry orchards are not nearly as numerous as they were in either his day or mine and the hop gardens have largely, although not entirely, disappeared. As for the women, I can’t vouch for their numbers, but I’m delighted to report they remain very easy on the eye.
I loved picking hops. We youngsters would fortify ourselves with doorstep sandwiches stuffed with sizzling Kent Korker sausages (still made by the Hoad family in Rolvenden) and join vast families of East Londoners down from the smoke for a fortnight of beer, cider, general hilarity and plenty of bloody hard work.
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