These are Francis’ associations with the countryside in Cambridgeshire. Read them to see how close were your predictions.

• Wide hedgeless fields, black soil, rows of vegetables stretching into the distance.
• Long straight narrow roads with drainage ditches by the side.
• Ugly brick houses, isolated, and surrounded on three sides by tall trees as a windbreak.
• Vast wide open sky.
• Lines of telegraph poles and wires across the landscape.
• Rumours of vast overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers, though this is the most fertile soil in England.
• Roads and rivers/drainage canals running along on banks high above the field level (as soil erodes and land sinks).
• Being stuck behind lorries loaded with sugar beet going to the processing plant.
• Hand-written signs (unconventional spelling) advertising vegetable/fruit sale from farmyards; sheds by the roadside.
• Landscape almost without people.

TASK

• Francis is also going to talk about his life on a Scottish farm 30 years ago. How different is this picture going to be?
• Which of the ideas listed above are not going to be mentioned?
• Can you think of any images of a Scottish farm in the 1960s? Share your opinions with other students.