‘Property is theft’ is a catchphrase coined by the 19th-century anarchist Proudhon.
It is a fact that I own one acre of land – incidentally the smallest amount of land that qualifies for membership of the Country Land and Business Association.
And since the former Labour government was ousted in 2010, thickets of shrubs and evergreens I planted have grown exponentially – beneficiaries of the drenchings that were a once-in-a-generation event but now seem to happen yearly and trigger what a neighbour has identified as the Refrigeration Effect.
This neighbour, a vulcanologist and avid supporter of Israel’s conduct in the war, claims that, with cold air running over saturated ground, it’s no surprise that laundry never dries out.
In summer, English yeomen swear when their petrol mowers won’t start because of damp plugs. In winter, they swear because their bonfires won’t start.
And yet, in Canada, you can store a pile of hardback books in a windswept barn for 50 years or more without ill effect. Dry cold is a different kettle of fish from sodden cold. Try that book-storage technique in Blighty and you end up with a mildewed pulp, with mushrooms sticking out at right angles.
With Mary in London attending nightly book launches where too many authors are clearly chasing too few readers, word reaches me that the bottom has fallen out of the second-hand-book market. Only first editions are worth keeping. And only those in good condition.
Unlike the vinyl market, where even scratched records are in demand because of the ‘authenticity’ of the experience of playing them, there is no similar demand for books in bad condition.
I will delay the book cull until her return, but Mary’s absence is a good opportunity for me to have a general clear-out. First, the diseased rose clippings, which even the woke RHS reluctantly concedes are best consigned ‘with a heavy heart’ to the bonfire and not to the fashionable, ecologically correct ‘slow heap’ which consists of the likes of brushwood, brash and hedge trimmings.
Slow heaps now occupy around 30 per cent of my land. Mix in the national collection of 21st-century rank weeds and you can be sure that the jerkin-clad neatness obsessive Alan Titchmarsh would not approve.
Now a tame baby muntjac seems to feel at home here. I haven’t the heart to persecute it, even though I can witness the terrible damage all deer wreak on the bark of young trees.
It’s only a matter of time till I am paid a visit by a council snooper. Under the last Labour government, I spotted two of them, taking photographs of my plantation from my perimeter fence.
It’s only a matter of time till I am paid a visit by a council snooper. Under the last Labour government, I spotted two of them, taking photographs of my plantation from my perimeter fence.
The spies declared that, acting on a tip-off from a neighbour, they were gathering evidence of ‘rat harbourage’.
The neighbour had complained that my plot of land was covered in newspapers. He was correct.
Having joined the Henry Doubleday Research Association, I had been inspired by their citizen science findings that newspaper ‘mulch’ was the progressive non-toxic solution to the problem of perennial rank weeds.
I was duly ordered to remove said newspapers, but it’s an ill wind etc. As a lifelong citizen scientist myself, I noticed that the rare, spring-occurring morel fungi sprouted not from the tabloid mulch, but from the rotting broadsheet.
I will never have the opportunity to experiment with the Guardian. Yet another example of how Labour suppresses aspiration.
Now fast-forward to a new Socialist regime, the UK now running the most repressive government there has ever been in Europe, according to US Vice-President Vance.
Moreover, Labour doesn’t understand growth – and certainly not slow vegetative growth. No doubt only underfunding is preventing their surveilling my own fiefdom via drone technology, but I expect a foot patrol from the Kafka-esque forces any day.
Our occasional tree surgeon called the other day. ‘Labour really hates the countryside,’ he alleged. ‘They are not just coming for agricultural inheritance tax; they want your shotgun and firearms licence as well. Even trail-hunting is in their sights. Got any chickens? A wood-burner? Not for long, mate.’
Miraculously, they haven’t yet thought of coming for my ‘polluting’ bonfires.
Now, as any amateur pyromaniac will confirm, the first few lighting attempts will fail. You are effectively just drying out the material. You must create a heart: a burning furnace, a terrestrial version of that pale orb called the winter sun.
When you have used your last newspaper/ cardboard box/ Hoover bag and candles and still failed to get your bonfire going, you mustn’t pour petrol on it from a can. It will light the bonfire but likely you as well.
My blood is up. I have flammable items. I am lining up obsolete hardback reference books, which most households are reluctant to incinerate owing to cultural taboos associated with authoritarian regimes of the past – let alone those of the present.
And, yes, those mail-order ‘fur-effect’ boots that gave me blisters are now toast.
The joy of a real country bonfire on private land. Safe for now – but for how much longer?
