A wooden garage door at the roadside was decorated with corroding brasses, souvenirs from visits to various places. A visit to Ireland had added a brass from Bushmills Distillery and a plaque bearing the fading words “céad míle fáilte.” The metal ornaments included three horseshoes, one of the nails holding the largest of the three had been lost and the shoe had fallen so that its heels pointed downward.

In younger days, a horseshoe hanging in such a way would have been thought to be a sign that something bad …

Driving through Weston Zoyland, I wondered why a Saint George’s flag was flying from the church tower, then I remembered that yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of Sedgemoor.

The former parish church from which the flag was flying is the Battle of Sedgemoor Visitor Centre. The building that was once used to hold five hundred prisoners from the defeated rebel army is now a place for tourists.

Monmouth’s army were always going to be losers.

Many of them were ill-equipped Somerset peasant farmers who had nothing by …

It was not so much a bicycle, more an amalgam of bicycles, a frame from one, wheels from another, parts gathered from various places. Its improvised nature meant it was not as valued as much one that had arrived shiny and new. Once it was stolen, its absence prompting a telephone call to a local police station, where a pleasant officer asked for its description and then revealed that it has been handed in to them a week before; the thief had thrown it over a hedge between High Ham …