Upper Swallow is the archetypal English village. It is always Maytime. Children dance with ribbons round the pole set up every year since time immemorial in this sleepy place, remote from the hurly-burly of modern life. Children happily play rounders and hopscotch in the village school's playground. In the evening, the local team practises in the cricket nets. Girls ride their horses round the quiet, leafy lanes. There is an pub (haunted of course), a ruined castle, an old Norman Church with a graveyard full of wildflowers and bumblebees, a shop, and that's about it. Around the village are ancient English oak woods and the bright river Dart runs through them and under the old stone bridges. Cats sun themselves on tiled roofs and sparrows chatter noisily in the eaves of thatched cottages. It's not Adlestrop, but it's got the same feel:
Adlestrop
Edward Thomas
Yes. I remember Adlestrop -
The name.
Because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly.
It was late June.
The steam hissed.
Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform.
What I saw Was Adlestrop - only the name.
And willows, willow-herb and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute, a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Upper Swallow's like that. Come and spend some time with us. Maybe even come and live here (see the estate agent's window) or come for a drink in the George & Dragon. Perhaps the first place to look is the map.
Of course, this is an old place; there has been a village here since prehistoric times, as the stone circle which encloses upper Swallow testifies.
But beware; in the streets and houses of this idyllic English village, a mystery lurks. The worm is in the rose.
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