It underlines a tragic loss of contact with, and appreciation for, the real world around us. Especially while thousands of hungry field-eaters are poised behind remaining hedgerows to charge in on the back of a highly dubious “build-out-of-recession” gospel.

As a lad of post-war years illuminated by gratitude for chances to rebuild families and communities at the heart of agricultural Norfolk, I hold dear countless impromptu outside lessons as much as the homely education on offer inside our small but vibrant village school.

Collecting eggs still damp and warm and fetching milk straight from a bustling dairy contrasted starkly with singling sugar-beet along endless rows and muck-spreading on mornings full of frost and chores, We knew bread and beer were glorious prizes for helping to bring in the corn harvest as well as a few bob towards a new school blazer.

Failure to put bullocks ahead of books or chickens in front of cricket could incur the puckish wrath of venerable sons of our soil anxious to convince errant rustic apprentices how three milk bottles in a hedge was tantamount to a cows’ nest.

At least we avoided chortles of........

© Eastern Daily Press