Notes from the Potting Shed

 You know, I was standing by the compost heap earlier - a fine place for contemplation, especially when the breeze is in the right direction - and I found myself pondering the curious affliction that seems to grip certain members of the elder demographic round these parts. Namely, the unwavering belief that everything was better in the past. That jam had more plums, that children said "please" more, that the vicar’s sermons were shorter, and that the milk never went off, even in a heatwave.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I adore the old ways. I believe in tying up beans with baler twine from 1974, and in the restorative properties of goose fat. I consult the phases of the moon before pruning my brambles, and I still refer to Thursday as “Widdershins-day” for reasons even I can’t entirely explain. But I’m also not under any delusion that the world was somehow purer or kinder just because petrol used to smell nicer.

The truth is, some folk round here treat the past like it’s a particularly exclusive tea dance they weren’t quite ready to leave. They speak in grumbles and knowing sighs. They whisper of modernity like it's a stain on the upholstery. You’ll hear them in the village shoppe, lamenting the end of the bus route to Lower St. Bogwither in 1997 as though it marked the end of civilisation itself.

Mr Hench, for example, refuses to enter any building constructed after 1983. He once spent a week trapped in the new community centre’s conservatory because he mistook it for a car showroom and was too proud to ask for help. Meanwhile, the Widow Crumble still uses a television that emits a high-pitched whine only animals and teenagers can hear, and she insists all actors should still wear proper hats.

But here's the rub: that sort of thinking has crept into wider places, and not in a nice way. The idea that all change is bad, that anything new is suspect, and that only the old ways are “real” or “right” – well, that’s a stick being picked up by folk with less innocent intentions. People who like to tell others who they can be, where they can go, what books they can read or which clothes are “traditional.” I’ve lived long enough to know when a nice old biscuit tin has been repurposed to hold something a bit rotten.

My own views? I’m all for preserving what’s good and kind and slightly bonkers. Let us keep the bellringers and the seed swap, the Maypole and the beetroot wine. But let us also be brave enough to ask, “What else?” I’ve been known to quiz Keith on the Internet (I thought it was a sort of fishing device), and I once ordered a set of Swedish hexagonal plant cloches from a digital catalogue by accident. They turned out to be collapsible foot spas, but my carrots appreciated the humidity.

The past should be a place we visit, not one we barricade ourselves inside with a tin of condensed milk and a faulty gas lamp. The future is coming, whether we’ve set the table for it or not. So I say: polish the silver, put the kettle on, and keep a space by the fire for whatever or whoever arrives next. We are at our best, I think, when tradition meets curiosity – even if the resulting handshake is a bit sticky and confused.

Yours in the eternal hope of better jam,
Virgil Twobyfour
(Aged somewhere between the invention of the biscuit and the first cordless kettle)