School Stories [antikvár]

VILLAGE SCHOOL Laurie Lee The village to which our family had come was a scattering of somé twenty to thirty houses down the south-east slope of a valley. The valley was narrow, steep, and almost entirely cut ofF; it was alsó a funnel for winds, a channel for the floods and a jungly, bird-crammed, insecthopping sun-trap whenever there happened to be any sun. It was not high and open like the Windrush country, but had secret origins, having been gouged from the Escarpment by the melting ice-caps somé time before we got there. The old flood-terraces still showed on the slopes, along which the cows walked sideways. Like an island, it was possessed of curious survivals - rare orchids and Román snails; and there were chemical qualities in the limestone-springs which gave the women pre-Raphaelite goitres. The sides of the valley were rich in pasture and the crests heavily covered in beechwoods. Water was the most active thing in the valley, arriving in the long rains from Wales. It would drip all day from clouds and trees, from roofs and eaves and noses. It broke open roads, carved its way through gardens, and filled the ditches with sucking noises. Men and horses walked about in wet sacking, birds shook rainbows from sodden branches, and streams ran from holes, and back into holes, like noisy underground trains.