Timeless
Simon Courtauld Gallipot Eyes Elspeth Huxley (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.25) I played cricket at Oaksey last summer. It was a timeless occasion—the weather and the tea were very fine, we lost to the village' and the sun had nearly set before stunlPs were drawn. Had Elspeth Huxley extended her Wiltshire diary beyond March 1975 she would surely have noted this day in Ga' Eyes. The book records a year, from sPrIftg to spring, in the village of Oaksey; a Year°, which nothing happens that does 11°' happen every year, in which Mrs HuxleY takes the opportunity to investigate the history of the area and its people. There is rather too much about the Pai.st' and about the present which is—in tuer author's view—almost past. Too much °' Old Sid and Old Tom and of how it ea° never be the same again after they've gone and the housing estate was built. But !line book contains much country informant:1" and some delightful tales gathered frofils, conversations with the locals: the Oaltse't parson, during the first war, put it ab°1t that old people were to be sent to France t° act as sandbags in the trenches. There aree fields on Harold Ody's farm which havd never been ploughed, where yarrow alike cuckoo-pint flourish. One day in t1:5 'thirties, Doug Jones (Charlie Butch the brother-in-law) was called upon to fire tro Cheltenham Flyer; and they made it fr° Swindon d on mitetonPuadsd.ington in the scheduleu
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