Country Life
MANY thousands of people dream of retiring to the country and finding some quiet corner where they can spend their days in peace. A large number never realise their dream. A few come away from the town and find the quiet life unbearable and one or two remain, content. We pulled in at a petrol pump in an out-of-the-way village the other day and the owner of the pump remarked in a good strong Cockney accent that I was a foreigner in that part of the world, as he was himself. I smiled at this because if I cannot count myself a native of Wales I never consider myself a foreigner among so many friends. Unlike myself, the man from London had selected a place where only Welsh is spoken. He was happy, however, and had found what he had been seeking, a village where the quiet afternoon was punc- tuated by the cackling of hens, where a river runs out of the hills and old Welsh farmers stop to talk In hesitant English, find- ing something in common with a man from Bow. Quiet ? ' I heard an incomer say once, ' I never notice the quiet now.' In his native place he might have said the same thing about noise.
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