This is not a new thought, thinking people have been bothered by it for a very long time. Once there were village children who could read, write and understand Grammar with a capital G. There were people from the lowest walks of life who could rise to take part effectively in a demanding public life and hold the reigns of power; (this is not the time to go into the power issue!). It hasn’t taken long for education to go through a radical, did I say “radical”? Well, it comes from “root” and so it must be correct. Our intellectual capital is about to be grubbed up. For the first time in centuries there will be no place for the pursuit of scholarship; the exploration of culture; the cut and thrust of polemic and the examination of our history through whatever means.

I seem to remember that Humanities became a dirty word three or four years ago. Lampeter University was a Humanities University, and it was good at it. You could read Classics, Philosophy, Languages - and lots of them, History, Geography, Archaeology, English, Religious Studies and Divinity and Theology. I may have left something out, there were a lot of choices. Then it became a University of “Liberal Arts” whatever that may mean and now it has no identity at all, and I don't suppose it's alone.

The people who purport to rule us have no identity as politicians; they are like school prefects trying to run the school. The teachers and Head have all disappeared because no-one has the trained brain or the depth of understanding and, dare I say, scholarship to do the job.

If our leaders condinue to be as intellectually nourishing as a celular blanket, let them. Dont be despondent. If we want intellectual nourishment we'll find it and teach it to our children or grandchildren.

Ours is a large establishment with few people and many animals. I went into the big shed with three of the dogs this morning to feed the farm cats while the youngstock were being sorted into groups. There was Cartwright, the tom cat, with his sisters reclining on a straw bail looking magnificent. Peebles is a pretty tabby and Nose is an immaculate and elegant black cat with smooth fur and a white nose and feet. But Cartwright is a huge fluffy cat with curling wisps coming out of his ears and a fluffy shirt front that is positively Regency. Most days he sits bolt up right on the forecourt keeping an eye out for intruders and making sure that his women are all safe. There’s his mother, Wilma wife of Fred who is now dead; Trug, the original black cat that Geoff found abandoned at 4 weeks old and who we brought up wrapped in a woolly hat in a garden trug. Up at the farm lives Boat, short for Bow Tie who is an awesome hunter; lean and black. And everywhere, moving in a mysterious way (like God) is Devizes, one of two Devizes. Boat had a big bow tie, but the Devizes had small bows, so originally they were called Small Bows, which naturally became Smallbones, and then Smallbones of Devizes then … well you know. Cartwright is currently the only male. There’s a handsome neutered black and white male at Panteg who is best friends with Boat. They hunt together. Cartwright will soon have his own pockets picked for safety and I don’t want to lose him, he’s so gorgeous and fearsome.

The reason why the youngstock were being sorted into groups is because we had an inspection today. It’s our bureaucratic master’s idea of making sure that we farmers toe the line. We have far too many cattle to be able to bring them all home at once to be poked and peered at by a Ministry official so we have to bring them home in batches. The Ministry official is very serious about his job but is scared of the cattle. “Good job you show your animals” he says “they would be difficult to cope with otherwise”. “Ho!” we think, “wait until you have to deal with 28 steers who have ranged wild and free all summer on the bogs of Tregaron and Fochno!” Some of them are 12 years old: great big chaps with enormous horns! But we say nothing; it may be a useful lesson to be a little scared of a very large animal with very large horns that is trying to jump out of a cattle crush. Perhaps we’re being unfair; but these guys get 60% of the money set aside for farmers for coming onto our farms and pushing us about. Not that we get much, our children pay more in tax than we earn; but the principle of the thing is still there.

If I think about it, I don’t really mind. That sounds as if we don’t need the money. Well we do in one sense. We like to be warm, fed and clothed with some kind of vehicle and time to see and entertain friends and neighbours, even if we don’t venture very far off these days. But in another sense, we don’t. We could be even more frugal than we are: it’s a good thing to try to free oneself from attachment to material things. One has to be less ambitious by definition and I rather like that, it gives one time to think about other things than Success and Achievement. What I do mind about is that the people who help themselves to our money come to our farm yard and talk down to us as if we were ivory – or maybe polystyrene - from the neck up! I am not a humble person although I try and arrogance makes me boil; especially from a jack in office.

So I won’t be alerting our Ministry man about the steers, nor will I hurry to pacify these largely very gentle animals when things get athletic as they so surely will!

Are we a co-operative animal?

How difficult it is not to take something of one’s own time back to the past. If one tries too hard not to one is left with a dry and unappetising bit of writing that interests almost no-one. If you don’t develop your narrative voice the characters can be modern and unconvincing. The writing of history as a story, and let’s face it, that’s what it largely is, is an art; few people can do it: Mantel, Seton, Renault, Sutcliff and possibly Graves.

Many years ago in my early teens I read Anya Seton’s Katherine. It was my first taste of historical romance and I was captivated. Seton’s book, so evocatively written, has been the inspiration for Alison Wier’s Mistress of the Monarchy Wier’s book, as usual, is minutely researched but not scholarly, so it should be a good read, but somehow it isn’t. She gets bogged down in evidence and forgets to finish what she’s actually saying. You have to pick the bones out of a lot of assertions. Nevertheless, she puts some of Seton’s historical “factoids” right and that is always helpful. It is hard for us to imagine the immense wealth of someone like John of Gaunt whose estate was worth some 8 billion in today’s terms. Or is it? He owned a third of England and large parts of France and Spain. There are people as comparatively wealthy today. What do they do with their wealth? What they and Gaunt have in common is their ruthlessness.

Ruthlessness is human, isn’t it? I’ve just been looking over the 2031 Transition discussion document for the Lampeter region and it has no place for personal ruthlessness. The document is accompanied by a questionnaire. One of the questions is whether we think that a very seductive vision for the future that includes a large element of co-operation and thrift is realistic. I would love to think it was, but since comparatively few people seem to think that a little thrift and community spirit is a Good Thing maybe it isn’t realistic after all. This means that we haven’t a hope of convincing them otherwise. What this may mean for all the little Transition towns in every country is that the population is polarised and the energy, health and education services that could be made available are not forthcoming. By that I mean that if a significant amount of people wish to continue to consume, then it will be at the expense of the rest who wish to live more sustainably. After all how do you exclude a large percentage of the population form using the good things whilst continuing to use and use and use?

We're moving cattle on the road today. The sight of a farmer driving his animals along the highway is an unusual one and I haven't got a photograph of it. Nor will I have because I still don't have a camera. But here is one of the end of a recent drive. The steers are coming into the Panteg farmyard with Geoff and Lilley behind them on the quad.


As I said it's an unusual sight, cattle being driven on the road, and not one that is always appreciated by passing traffic.


Up here in these remote hills it was not that long ago that we had the privilage of the roads to ourselves. Or if we didn't the people who drove up here were more familiar with rural ways, more forgiving and in less of a hurry. Of course it was unforgivable of us to stop in the road as we passed a neighbour and chat in the sublime knowledge that we weren't holding anyone up. Or not for long anyway. Visitors hoot at us now.


We can't really blame them; the world is getting more and more crowded and we are failing to understand that. So we continue to clutter up the road. they hoot crossly at us and we apologise for the inconvenience. To our relief some say graciously "lovely cattle, very quaint, please don't mind us." Others, the important looking ones, try to push past us; they have meetings to attend, work to go to. We, on the other hand should know better than to hold up the march of commerce. But pushing past on horned cattle, however, docile, on these narrow roads is rather a waste of effort.. The cattle stroll on in a leasurely way, they know the road and they dont like being hurried. The driver guns the engine to try to intimidate the hairy mass of horns and muzzles and then the vehicle gets bogged down in the ditch and in a frenzy he or she hoots and shouts and finally stops and gets out. We hear that we are not popular. We are very sorry but must get on. We leave him or her behind commenting on the brass face of the hayseeds who have usurped the sovereign right of a car and it's driver to dominate the highways. Or in our case, the byways.


Moving animals is best in the early morning. Especially on the top road above Banc Anton. That new washed heavenliness is everywhere. Below us there are two valleys. In the valley on the left the mist is puncuated occasionally by a black slate roof and the rising sun makes the tops of the hills opposite look as if someone has tipped a tin of golden syrup over them.


We work well together; Geoff with his dog and I with mine, keeping the animals to the road. We're on open moutain and among the sheep here, so we need to keep our charges focused on the road ahead not allowing them to dash off onto the open land on either side and get mixed up with the sheep. I am always morbidly anxious that they don't do this becaue I have visions of the dogs, in an effort to chase the sheep away and the cattle back to us, will inadvertantly chase one or other, or both, over the cliff and down, down into the valley hundreds of feet below.

This has never happened and we walk swiftly past Careg y Bwchi, the ancient stone that is the subject of so much controversy. Is it the remains of a Roman Fort? If so those Legionaries, probably Iberian, that came up here must have thought that they'd come to a peculiarly British kind of hell: dank and wet and remote. But then they would have experienced the heaven of an early morning, and would have found this mysterious foriegn land delight, if rather chilly. A cow's eye view from the top field at Gilfach of the forest and hills beyond.

Perhaps careg y Bwchi is just the stone of the bull, or a place of meditation for New Agers. Or just a bloody great stone. What I do know is that it is a sublime place to climb up onto the look down on our valley: the one on the right that is filled with growing light. Down there we can see the three farmsteads and their little surrouding fields: Panteg, upright and sturdy, Gilfachwen looking as if it has grown out of the ground with its three glinting lakes and a few cows grazing beside the chestnut garden fence and in the middle Ystafellwen, the biggest and once the wealthiest of all three, but now a ruin among its trees. Beyond them is the forestry, and the slate blue and lavender of the distant hills.

The fields where we are taking the cattle are lower down and you don't get the amazing vista that you get from Careg y Bwchi. Mind you, the cattle are perfectly happy with that. They have the shelter of the trees on a bad day and a bog to graze in and the company of each other. What more could a beast want, good company, good grub and a cosy bog?

Work on a farm doesn't stop for bank holidays or any other public holiday. True, there are times in the year that are less busy than others, but winter isn't one of them.

So on Christmas day we work. It isn't a day like any other because here in the Valley we like to make much of Christmas. So we have a lie-in until 9 o'clock, maybe even a second cup of tea!

There's yard work to be done and the animals know it. Domestic animals like routine. As we put out books and cups down and begin to plan the day the dogs can hear us and we hear them snuffling, getting out of thier baskets or, in Charlie's case strumming on the metal mesh of the gate to his dog place. Charlie has a troubadour's heart, chivalrous, devoted but aware of his own charms.

Everything now is geared to breakfast. The cattle are waiting for us as we drive up on the quad bike. And the cats are all assembled too. Once they are all fed, we and the dogs can go home for our breakfast. Ours is a bit special because it's Christmas day. It might be smoked salmon and boiled eggs; it might be kippers. It's never the full English for some reason. Perhaps it's because we may be offered mince pies later on in the day. For the dogs' is just dog food because they don't see why they should celebrate Christmas. Midwinter is no threat, never was since they became domsticated, and in any case dogs don't really do ritual; not in its strict sense.

Christmas day is the one day that I can accompany Geoff on the road rounds. It's not that I couldn't on other days, but this one day is a date for both of us. Since it has to be done it makes the daily routine a bit more festive if we do it together. We work until 3 or 3.30 and then we come home; breath puffing in the cold air, cheeks pink and warm as toast from the exercise. I may be wearing a red pointy felt hat that makes me look very silly.

We've stopped at Pen Bryn for coffee and a present swap. We've waved to neighbours out walking their dogs, or frowsting inside and looking out of the window at us, poor us!
Sometimes we've even been to the Pub for coffee and brandy.


These days there is little to do after we've come home. A few years ago there was an evening routine to do as well. There were calves in the sheds to be strawed down and fed. It was often dark when we finished work. These days we have open sheds and more land so the cattle see to themselves outside. Highland cattle are very good at that. They are not happy living in sheds; they sweat and their coats become rank and matted. Outside, especially in the snow, they glow with health.


I wish I could have shown you the big room at Gifachwen this Christmas! My camera isn't working so you can't see the four christmas trees and the big candles that we lit on the dresser, the sideboard and the table for Christmas dinner. The big room is majestic and made for feasts. So we feast, just the two of us. It's wonderful.


And so to New Year's day. I always feel a bit let down by New Year, if one goes out one is left with a feeling of anitclimax. Having friends and family to dinner and dance the old year out is wonderful but one can't do it every year. At my age it's too exhausting! Staying in alone, however, works every time for us. More feasting, lovely music, candle light and very good wine. And so to bed to wake up to a new Year.

New Year's day can be like any other of course. There's still the yard and the road rounds to do. By now the house needs a bit of a wash and brush up and the Christmas lights don't seem to shine with their former charm. I look on them now as things that must soon be cleared away. They gather dust; one of the trees has a sinister lurch and most of the fruit and nuts have gone leaving a large dish with a lonely huddle of 3 or 4 wizened clementines. They look dejected, as if they're waiting in the rain for a bus that will never come. I gather them all up and hustle them into the fridge to await pulverisation and incorporation into a clementine cake. Serve them right for looking so unappetising!