Although ‘Green Twining’ is set in the summer of 1985, Joe Coffin’s father, Sid, could easily remember the old times when the whole, icy cold winter was spent digging trenches by hand, back and forth across the fields.

The horizon was long and level and barely changed as young Sid moved slowly across the field, with just the odd, small, bare, winter tree breaking its horizontal ruler-straight line.

The far hedge of the field grew very slightly nearer with each heavy clod of clay dug from the water-logged land, but so slowly that until you got to within the last few yards the distance hardly seemed to change. And then you had to start again a little further along and dig the whole distance in reverse. Back and forth… From dawn till dusk…

That was how you drained the Marsh. That is how you coaxed field crops from the heavy bolder clay.

And it was difficult not to let this harshness seep into your body and mind, making it hard for tender new inner growth to emerge without whole winters of back-breaking effort.

But although the land and the way of life sustained by it had become reluctantly slow-moving and restrictive, Joe had a new job in the nearby town of Scawthorpe, bringing with it a new and colourful injection of life into Green Twining Farm.

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