The Farm Shop From Before the Bypass

I got lost the honest way — a diversion, a dead phone, a spider's web of unmarked lanes in a river valley I didn't know. Hungry and low on fuel, I was glad to see a hand-painted sign for a farm shop and gladder to find it open: a stone barn with trestle tables of eggs, jam, muddy vegetables, and a woman in a wax jacket who greeted me like a neighbour.

I filled a basket. Eggs, a jar of honey, a loaf still warm. She totted it up on a paper bag with a stub of pencil and named a price that made no sense — a few shillings, she said, and pence, in the old money, the pre-decimal money that died before I was born. I laughed, thinking it a bit of rural theatre for tourists, and offered my card. She looked at it politely, the way you'd look at a leaf someone handed you, and said cash was easier, love, or next time was fine, she trusted my face.

I had a couple of coins and a note. She took the note, gave me change I didn't examine, and told me the quick way back to the main road — 'over the top by Hanmer's gate, mind the ford' — and waved me off with the warmth of someone who'd known my family for years.