England: Village life is something England does well. In the Buckinghamshire village I once lived in - "I be Bucks and I be buggered" was the local saying - the pub would ring to a bawdy rendering of To Be a Farmer's Boy, the singers often accompanied by someone playing the saw, writes Mary Russell
A person's politics were defined by the church they attended - Methodist, Congregational, United Reformed or C of E, and if you were ever looking for someone on a Sunday afternoon in summer, you'd find them over at the cricket field.
It's 35 years since Ronnie Blythe wrote Akenfield, the best-selling story of an East Anglian village, though apart from the accents, the apples and the horses, it could have been any English village. Now, Craig Taylor has been back to Akenfield and his book gives voice to the people there today, including the farmer, the publican, the migrant worker and the blow-in.
There's the man who remembers the old tractors which had neither cabs - which meant you could hear the birdsong - nor lights, so you worked by moonlight. Now, they have air-conditioning, wraparound sound and amateur radio: "At about four o'clock in the morning," says Nick, a 38-year-old farm worker, "the Australians and New Zealanders come awake and we have a chat."
The number of farms has dwindled and the ones that survive are those that diversify. Where before, they grew apples and plums, now it's blackcurrants. Sheep are giving way to alpaca with shearers from New Zealand coming for the seasonal work.
The old days were terrible, of course. One man recalls his family being moved four times, from one tied cottage to the next, until they finally got a council house with bath and lavatory. Till then it had been a "bucket and chuck-it toilet".
But disappearing too are the country skills. Freddie, a 91-year-old gamekeeper, who was given a silver ashtray when he left his job after 40 years of service, knows all about how to despatch an injured bird after a shoot: "You'd just get hold of its head, give it a jerk and break its neck. Have you seen the Queen when she kills hers? She clouts them with a hammer . . .".
Some newcomers fit in and others don't. One lot bought a cottage, did it up and called it a Hall. The local tradesmen, of course, saw them coming: they had to have their driveway done three times.
No mention, however, of the farmers' wives who, let's face it, put the dinner on the table. And where have all the poachers gone?
Craig Taylor is a Canadian who keeps his distance, letting the distinctive East Anglian voices work their magic, and the cheering thing about this book, which might otherwise be a lament for times passed, is that there are still young people who want to work on the land.
Aaron "Harry" Semmence is a 17-year-old horticultural student who, saving up from his work at the sawmills, was 13 when he bought his first tractor, a 1948 Grey Fergie. He keeps a photo of it in his mobile phone. Harry's ambition is to plough a straight furrow. When his parents went out one day, he thought it would be a good idea to plough up part of the field: "My mother didn't say a lot when she came home. I don't think she was very impressed but my furrows were alright."
With people like Harry, the English countryside will be in good hands. As for "my" village, when I last went to the pub, after a funeral, it had become a wine bar.
Mary Russell is a writer. Her most recent book is Journeys of a Lifetime
Return to Akenfield By Craig Taylor Granta, 228pp. £14.99