In Search of Lunch

It is a Dorset summer bank holiday morning. Blue skies, no wind, and a big yellow sun is hot and high. In good spirits, we pile into my open-topped car and set off for the nearby agricultural and sports fair. We turn off the main road, its verges neatly trimmed and manicured by a concerned county council, into narrow lanes with overgrown hedges of ash and elder and banks of bracken and nettles strewn with the confetti of pink, purple and white wild flowers. Past fields of ripening wheat – small, friendly fields in which a thoughtful farmer has planted his grain to encircle the odd oasis of sentinel trees, rather than ripping them out to maximise his cereal-growing acreage.