A London meeting keeps Leeds at bay for a day longer than expected, giving me the luxury of a morning run at home.
It wasn’t a great run, but it was the kind of morning that makes you value those ordinary things that the 21st century wants to beat out of you with a computer keyboard. The sunny lanes with their tall, dense hedges and twitchy rabbits; the long shadow of the medieval church, the avenue of oaks through the park, the deer by the lake, the two old horses nodding over the fence, a skyful of birds.
Americans love to reassure each other that they live in the greatest nation on earth. Such vulgar arrogance is beneath us of course, but can anywhere really generate more joy than the heart of rural England at 6:30 on a midsummer morning?
[Voice in head retorts: “What about Loftus Road at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon?]
