If you read more, worked harder, thought things through smartly, or wrote or argued better than other people, you won.

Books were considered a sign of idleness at best and dangerous at worst.

The only way out was to go back the next year and buy his sheep and pay over the odds to make up for it, so he did. Neither of these men cared remotely about “maximizing profit” in the short-term in the way a modern business person in a city would; they both valued their good names and their reputations for integrity far more highly than making a quick buck. If you said you would do a thing, you’d better do it.

It was like his code of honour. Work that needs doing should be done. Work is its own reward. Never step back from work or you look bad.

I didn’t know anyone in London, and I never wanted to be there. This was not how my life was meant to be, but needs must. It was as if the gods were showing me how tough everyone else’s lives were, and what I had left behind. I understood for the first time why people wanted to escape to places like the Lake District. I understood then what National Parks were for, so that people whose lives are always like this can escape and feel the wind in their hair and the sun on their faces.

When we call it ‘our’ landscape, we mean it as a physical and intellectual reality. There is nothing chosen about it. This landscape is our home and we rarely stray far from it, or endure anywhere else for long before returning. This may seem like a lack of imagination or adventure, but I don’t care. I love this place; for me it is the beginning and the end of everything, and everywhere else feels like nowhere.

Later I would understand that modern industrial communities are obsessed with the importance of ‘going somewhere’ and ‘doing something with your life’. The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn’t count for much.

It feels strange to be home, as if I am now just a visitor to the land that I love, no longer really a part of it. I understand for the first time that our sense of belonging is all about participation. We belong because we are part of the work of this place.

Later mum had a fridge magnet that said 'Dull women have immaculate homes

She didn't really understand our world [and] lived with the unquestioning belief that these things were foolishness and fancies, the rubbish of now. So she taught us good rules that no longer made sense.