Storyteller's World

A little later, remembering man's earthy origin, 'dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return', they liked to fancy themselves bubbles of earth. When alone in the fields, with no one to see them, they would hop, skip and jump, touching the ground as lightly as possible and crying, 'We are bubbles of earth! Bubbles of earth! Bubbles of earth!'

So Flora Thompson describes in Lark Rise to Candleford, one of the games she and her brother played in their 1880s Oxfordshire childhood. For those of you who have ever wondered, that's where the first phrase of my 'profile' comes from.

I've been reading Flora Thompson's book this week, and using material from it for our Harvest festival. We've come a long way from those days, and are much more distant from our roots in this soil. I'm one of the worst offenders: I actually prefer my vegetables to come wrapped in plastic, with not a trace of mud or clay on them; I like my fruit without worms, regardless of the excellent protein content the little wrigglers are said to have.

But at harvest time particularly, this just seems so short-sighted. In our reckless exploitation of the earth, and squandering of its resources, we really are sawing off the branch of the tree of life that we are sitting on. The often quoted nugget of knowledge, that to fly one kiwi fruit from the ends of the earth to our supermarket uses up its own weight of air fuel, ought to make me think twice about the next exotic fruit or unseasonal vegetable I am tempted to buy. We are throwing away our children and grandchildren's energy future, to satisfy our craving for exotic fruits. And we call the later Roman Empire decadent!