It’s the first day of Summer. The sky looks like a swimming pool and
the Southern Peak District is a green dream. The sun isn’t just shining but
gleaming. Radiant. Someone must have plopped it in Goddards silver dip. Up here in Derbyshire we’re in
the middle of the Midlands. Slap bang in the crux of it all, but somehow
remote. If Britain is a crown then here is the well-cut centerpiece stone and
it’s a sparkly emerald. Lying with a friend on a blanket in a buttercup field
it feels like we’re curled up in Britain’s belly button.
It’s fascinating driving around here for the first time. The landscape
feels wild and manmade at the same time. There’s a gritty industrial
practicality about it all. It’s peaceful now, but skulking around is a certain
atmosphere of earth-exploiting inevitability; as if the former wilderness has
only just come to terms with and forgotten the rudeness of it’s being ripped open
by industry. Time’s healing hand has soothed the gaping quarry and mine wounds.
Time’s aging has smoothed buildings rough edges. The gritty past is housed
nicely in a romantic box.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that here is a place where industry
has sprouted from the earth. Turn-of-the-century ‘machine’ buildings are dotted
about like warts on landscape skin. But not altogether ugly ones; they’re
somehow endearing, with character. Lovable. It’s a crust dug into, like
a child’s fist in a fresh loaf of bread, but the winds breath smells of
buttercups.
Wiggling up and down the lanes we stop at pretty views and when
hand-painted signs say ‘church teas’ or ‘flower festival’. The first flower festival of the season! The scent
of lilies wafts out of the church porch, as does the softly muted sound of the organ.
I love that church scent of cool, thoughtful mustiness and pedestalled flowers;
to me infinitely peaceful and comforting.
There are installations of flower arrangements everywhere. The theme
is ‘classic books’. I find a window decked out as Cold Comfort Farm by Stella
Gibbons. It’s one of my top top books and a joy to see it interpreted in
flowers!
We sit on the green outside on my ever-ready car blanket reading the
Saturday paper, drinking delicate cups of tea and chomping through a strawberry
sponge (or cricket cake as one of my clients calls it, because it's a staple at
his cricket teas he says). What a happy way to start the summer and another
lovely ‘half-way’ break.