I was born long ago and far away. I ended up in Cheshire reluctantly and quite by accident. It happened like this. About ten years ago I was offered a different job. A change seemed like a good idea at the time, although in retrospect I should probably have stayed put. The job necessitated a house move. I like living in the country and I like hills. So I looked at houses in Derbyshire, but it did not work out. A month before I was due to start the job, an estate agent told me about a house in a Cheshire village. I went to have a look.
The house was adequate, but I did not like the place. I nevertheless bought the house because the location was convenient and ended up living in mid-Cheshire in that relatively unspoilt triangle of Cheshire Plain between Northwich, Warrington and Frodsham.
I thought the county was too flat. Even to a superficial gaze, it was blighted by extremes of wealth and poverty, industrial decay, intensive agriculture and barn conversions. As I continued to live in the area I came to passionately dislike the de rigueur rigidly geometric hedges and toxic green lawns of Cheshire gardens. Neither do I much care for the large monotonous fields growing potatoes or wheat or rape, regularly and heavily laced with weedkillers, pesticides and fertilisers. Wildlife is seriously in trouble here. I am frequently moved to escape. And yet, there are newts in my lawn, sparrows nesting in gaps in the oak beams holding up my cottage, rabbits and badgers in the field. So I stay, hoping to make a difference.
