On the Black Hill - Feb 2021 Book Group discussion thread

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Peregrinator Feb 2021 10:46pm, 21 Feb 2021 807 posts	0 Peregrinator Reading back - As Raggedy runner suggests, going into this I was expecting something more lyrical of the countryside. It wasn't that, nor "how grim is my valley" grinding, draining, no-options poverty. But a lot about the blinkered limits, some self imposed, on people's lives. I read Dipp's comment as "skipped to live with a window in a modern bungalow" - blimey that is real poverty...
Serendippily Feb 2021 11:03pm, 21 Feb 2021 20,941 posts	0 Serendippily I still don’t get how they had the loose cash to buy tracts of land for light entertainment in later years without apparently the manpower or equipment to manage it
Diogenes Feb 2021 11:47pm, 21 Feb 2021 57,804 posts	0 Diogenes I chose this because, at the time I first read it, i found it a warm and enriching read. I liked the idea it gave one of how lives might be lived within such tight constraints, socially, geographically, and in terms of ambition and expectation. I thought it captured very well the diversity of character in society where there was both a pressure to conform and an acceptance of eccentricity created by isolation and hardship. I did wonder about the acquisition of land and equipment but felt it was a product of careful management, modest living, and some ambition. I thought this was a warm an evocative novel which celebrated a simpler way of life without presenting the lives or characters of the protagonists as being other than complex human beings engaged in a constant struggle for satisfaction and betterment. Re-reading it, I didn’t love it as much as I did on first read, but I still think it is very good.
Diogenes Feb 2021 11:49pm, 21 Feb 2021 57,805 posts	0 Diogenes I’m not sure the above says what I meant it to say, but I haven’t got my glasses on. Time for bed.
Peregrinator Feb 2021 8:09am, 22 Feb 2021 808 posts	0 Peregrinator I think most farms would've made money most years between the wars, and outgoings could be cut to a minimum. As was suggested in On the Black Hill, buying land was seen as an investment, but spending money on machinery, improving land, stock, quality or productivity wasn't. This limitation meant people bought Irish butter, not Welsh butter, for example.
Serendippily Feb 2021 8:50am, 22 Feb 2021 20,943 posts	0 Serendippily I suppose it just contrasted too much with what I saw in the 70s which was two decades on. I’m finding I’m agreeing with all the comments to a degree. The second half still didn’t grip me though
Hanneke Feb 2021 10:01am, 22 Feb 2021 70,757 posts	0 Hanneke Serendipilly, i can answer that. Farmers in this part of the world live a harsh life. They tend to go without everywhere in daily life, yet put almost all their income away, in a sock, under the mattress. They still do!!! Wear the same clothes, day after day, sleep in them, wear out the bedsheets, vacate the top floor of the house when the roof starts leaking, accumulating tens of thousands of pounds just so that they can buy that pocket of land they irrationally have their eyes on. Rather than repair the roof over their heads or installing running water or an inside loo. I have viewed farms here, the one we eventually bought was the same, that I felt you could not possibly live in, yet they do, happily. You think these people are poor, yet, they are not! It is a life style, a life choice. Their wealth is measured differently: in acres, in head of life stock and what tractor you have. This is why all farms here are surrounded by junk: old cars, farm machinery, the old rayburn you name it. Our farmer kept using a horse until he could afford the best tractor, rather than buying a perfectly good one years sooner, for example. So there was a ruined house that we had to re-build, with a spring running through the kitchen for years, a barn with a fallen in roof and a massive hole in the side wall because the doorway had collapsed so that was how they got the hay in... But an £65000 brand new tractor in the yard, for which they had taken a whole wall out of an old barn, rather than repairing the aforementioned barn doors, to park it dry. To put that in perspective: that is half of what we paid for the whole smallholding!!!!! And farmers NEVER sell land, unless they are truly desperate, then they buy some more! It goes totally against what we deem to be common sense. Chatwin truly captures what people are like around here. Google Llwyn Celyn, now Landmark trust. I rather suspect it and its inhabitants, two brothers, were an inspiration for OTBH.
Hanneke Feb 2021 10:06am, 22 Feb 2021 70,758 posts	0 Hanneke And I am pretty sure Lurkenhop is Llanthony. Llwyn Celyn was part of the Llanthony estate, historically.
Columba Feb 2021 7:04pm, 22 Feb 2021 20,873 posts	0 Columba Once Amos had bought the farm (thanks to Mary) he would no longer have been obliged to pay rent, so that would be a saving. A lot of the local farmers have several strings to their bow with regard to income. All sorts of things going on "on the side". But that's now, of course, whereas the book ends in the 1070s.
Columba Feb 2021 7:06pm, 22 Feb 2021 20,874 posts	0 Columba I'm liking it even more on a re-read. It's almost more about Mary than about the twins. She is a complete hero (heroine?), the things she puts up with, and the resourcefulness with which she copes, especially considering it's not what she was brought up to.