Country Life by Richard Williamson

I was staying briefly at a small country estate in Yorkshire with mother, as guests of a wealthy family who had observed that my mother needed a spell of re-adjustment after a hectiv five years running a farm during wartime.

So I found myself among strangers in an alien county like a sort of evaquee, becoming a go between for the two participants in the gentle love duet that took place that far-distant spring and summer on the wolds.

Later I called the match the blackthorn wedding, and every spring since, when the blackthorn blossoms suddenly and fiercely with such passion and density as it has this spring, I am taken back to those days of blue sky, against which the brilliant white clusters of flowers seemed set to last for ever.