Spring

Yet the countryside still looks its best at this time of year......

What’s happening? Does this Spring somehow seem different to others? Why should that be? Hardly the Trump effect – yet he’s getting talked about in many different contexts, both good and less good. But at least he is causing dialogue to take place (Ukraine, Iran, Gaza, Canada and Greenland … wherever that may be) which is surely better than missiles doing the talking.

And this strange spring is not the result of recent local elections – where the outcome isn’t this time being explained as a ‘protest vote’ but more as a shift in British politics. Really? Admittedly there doesn’t seem much support for the present Government which just doesn’t understand people’s opinions – whether in the cities or the rural areas. And the IHT debate isn’t going to be amended much – although (albeit in time)  this new level of taxation is likely to fundamentally change the countryside.  As for the last government, they still haven’t worked out how much disillusionment they have caused.

Is it the weather, perhaps – from six months of ‘wet’, to three months of ‘dry’? Yet the countryside still looks at its best at this time of year – green and calm and …..safe? And back to farming circles  – the difference isn’t just the sudden uplift in livestock prices (noting cereals haven’t followed suit). Anyway, what’s behind this price rise? The blue tongue midge, Foot & Mouth in Europe, alleged shortages, global supply and demand – Trump again?

Or could it be the push for development and all the environmental tags that have suddenly been brought in to go with the whole planning process? Where did all that red tape come from – someone, somewhere must have been preparing it for years?

Farmers and country folk have always been adaptable – grass to corn; horses to tractors; Hampshire Downs to Texels! They just prefer it to happen in their time and with their knowledge rather than it being enforced by invisible people who seem to gain their opinions from theory not practical experience. Change is more likely to be sustained if it happens following a natural and willing course (or cause), as that brings satisfaction and the success that encourages a repeat.

So, this Spring a sense of uncertainty and insecurity seems to hover. We are going through a fundamental change yet have no clear idea or vision of what it will finally look like; yet we know it will never be the same again.

Everything on the surface looks fine; below the surface something is different. Maybe like Covid, or Brexit, or the worldwide web, or more historically, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the moon landing, Vietnam or – particularly now eighty years on – Victory in Europe Day,  we have to wait for history to tell us the meaning of it all, as hindsight brings it into order and focus.

And maybe it will be a ‘generational thing’: a time that comes and then moves on, and our ‘young ones’ simply embrace the new order and sort it out….  Right now, we just feel in the middle of it –  a new experience where we haven’t been before, hence the questions – and a longing for the reliability, trust and optimism that we think provide the foundations for the future.  It’s worked before; we just need to believe and encourage it to happen again this time.