Roy Hattersley

There was, the architect said, no hope of getting planning permission for an extension. So I had the ingenious idea of solving our bedroom shortage by building what amounts to an annexe on the ‘footprint’ of the dilapidated potting shed on the other side of the orchard. The plans which we submitted to the Peak Park Authority were headed ‘guest accommodation’ — an anodyne description which I barely noticed. The same could not be said of my neighbours. As soon as the bright-yellow statutory notice was nailed to a door in our garden wall, half the village assumed that we were proposing to go into the bed-and-breakfast business.

I spent much of my early boyhood in a disused cemetery — a Gothic beginning to my adolescence which was the result of nothing more romantic than the fact that only a high wall, over which I could climb with the help of an elderberry tree, divided our back garden from the overgrown graves. I spent much of my early boyhood in a disused cemetery — a Gothic beginning to my adolescence which was the result of nothing more romantic than the fact that only a high wall, over which I could climb with the help of an elderberry tree, divided our back garden from the overgrown graves.

I played my youthful cricket on wickets  which were cut into steeply sloping pitches. Cover drives which should have raced over the outfield either thumped into the hillside or sailed out into space, and batsmen, who believed that they had perfected the backwards defensive shot, were regularly caught by fielders who had taken up a position ten yards from, and six feet below, the bat. When I moved into this High Peak village, I assumed that it would be the same here. But our cricket team plays on a pitch which is almost as flat as the famously sloping Headingley and Lord’s and, unlike the village cricket clubs of my youth, it is sponsored by local businesses.

The bad news was broken to us by the parish magazine.  Christmas Eve  is a Sunday this year. So the vicar, who presides over three parishes and must spread himself over as many evensongs, will not be available for the carol service which is traditionally held on the village green. It seemed outrageous that Christianity should be allowed to get in the way of our Christmas festivities. But, on the first Sunday in Advent, Saint Giles more than made up for the seasonal errors and omissions. The children of the church, augmented by a couple of adults, presented a pageant of village history. Two tinselled angels — one silver and one gold — acted like a Greek chorus, setting the scenes and commenting on the action. Some of it was pure invention.

We celebrated harvest home last Sunday — late in the season by conventional standards, but postponed from the early days of autumn for the best of reasons. In our village, church and school are indivisible and it was agreed that the pupils should not switch from work to worship until half-term was upon them. So, in the words of the hymn, the thankful people came to a family service last Sunday morning and the school was grateful for all things bright and beautiful on Wednesday. Harvest Festivals are not what they were in the days when Canon George Cherry Weaver MA (Oxon) was vicar of the village in which I was brought up.

We are a canine village. Of course people outnumber dogs. But I doubt if the ratio is much above three to one. Like the rest of the country we favour Labradors and Jack Russells — most of which (or whom as their owners would say) are imaginatively called ‘Jack’. There is the occasional scuffle when incompatibles meet. My Buster was actually attacked by three inoffensive-looking golden retrievers who belong to an even more inoffensive-looking middle-aged lady, whose woolly hat creates a false sense of security.