COUNTRY LIFE
Ir used to be the custom of the boys and girls of the little village on the other side of the hill to go out at Easter and spend a day burning gorse, drinking lemonade- from those bottles with glass marbles in the neck and eating hot-cross buns. They would return at dusk, bleary-eyed, a little smudged with black ash and smelling strongly of fire and smoke. I heard about this custom, appropriately enough, while helping my neighbours to restore our defences against the sheep. We had to have the fire brigade after the gorse at the top of the gardens caught fire. First it- crackled and died, and then the wind took it, and the flames sprang as high as the telegraph-poles. In a little while some of us were open to the field, and all the houses down below were filled with the scent of burning gorse. When it was over, a black devastation remained. The long, arms of blackberry were charred. The undergrowth had disappeared, and only here and there the grotesque skeletons of what had been round, yellow-spattered gorse-bushes were standing. " Ah well," said my neighbour, " it reminds me of my boyhood and the days we spent on the mountain with our lemonade and hot-cross buns," but I had no such memory, and was far from consoled with the thought that a few nettles have gone, for the aftermath of a fire is a depressing sight.
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