IMPORTANT NEWSFLASH 21st-Century Yokel Is Currently FREE To Listen To On Audible

I feel duty bound to inform you that my 2017 book 21st-Century Yokel is currently available to listen to for FREE on Audible, worldwide. If you’ve never tried one of my books, it’s not a bad place to start. Yokel was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize, which is the big nature writing award here in the UK, but it misbehaves a bit to truly qualify as a nature book, being a combination of folklore, wildlife, social history, walking, memoir, stories about the behaviour of my LOUD DAD, place writing and general silliness. It’s an important book for me because it marks the point where, against much “sensible” advice I was receiving at the time, I decided to break away from writing less conformist, predictable books for mainstream publishers and do my own thing. Robert Macfarlane called it “utterly its own lawmaker”. It broke the record for crowdfunding a book in the UK - reaching its target in just seven hours - which meant that this time seven years ago, well over 1000 hardbacks arrived at my house (some of them of them areseen above guarded by my late, adored Ralph) for me to sign and stamp with badger linocuts designed by my mum, Jo. Shortly afterwards, I drove up to Leicester to record the audiobook: the first I’d ever been permitted to record myself (for my previous two the audiobook company had insisted on using an actor to “be” me).

I’ve posted a little excerpt below from the second chapter of the book, for those wanting a written taste. The chapter is called WOFFAL, which is the acronym of my dad’s favourite catchphrase (“WATCH OUT FOR FUCKWITS AND LOONIES”)…

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WOFFAL

A few of us were sitting around having a chat in my mum and dad’s living room in Nottinghamshire: me, my aunt Mal and uncle Chris, my mum and dad and my cousin Fay. My dad, who was wearing Chris’s jacket, having stolen it from a coat peg in the hall when Chris wasn’t looking, was telling everyone about the area’s annual festive hunt, which was taking place in the fields to the rear of the house. An hour previously, accompanied by a slightly reluctant me, he’d driven three villages east to watch the hunt begin in weather that made your teeth hurt.

“COME ON! GET IN THE CAR, YOU BIG TWAZZOCK,” he’d said. “I KNOW YOU HATE IT AND I DON’T LIKE WHAT THEY USED TO DO EITHER, BUT THEY HUNT A MAN IN A FOX SUIT NOW, NOT A FOX, AND IT’S REALLY SPECTACULAR WHEN THEY ALL COME OVER THE HILL, JUMPING THE HEDGES.”

“But it’s the same people who did hunt foxes, before it was banned?’ I asked.

“NO,” said my dad. “THIS LOT ARE ALL FROM SOCIALIST WORKER MAGAZINE.”

My feeling about fox hunting is this: if you do it, I don’t want to be anywhere near you, let alone in a situation where I might have to speak to you. Recently the prime minister, David Cameron, had been edging worryingly around the subject of re-legalising it, making noises about some kind go compromise which he described as a ‘middle way’. To my mind the only acceptable middle way for fox hunting would be if the foxes were replaced with hungry wolves, hounds were banned and each hunter was forced to hunt alone with his hands tied behind his back. But I make may living from writing about the countryside, which I know means I should take an interest in all sides of it, dark and light. There was, on the surface of things, a mixture of the two here. On the one hand, a man in a furry bright-orange suit, capering around, watched by giggling children. On the other, the parents of these children, dressed in black, some in veils, all in big hats, celebrating the tradition of ripping a wild animal apart for fun. They looked like the guests at Death’s wedding.

I was glad I’d gone with my dad: it took me far out of the arguable oversafe bubble of animal lovers I normally spend time with. Also, the beginning was as explosive as he had promised, a thunder of hooves that reverberated across a dozen fields or more. Even more explosive was the moment five minutes earlier when a man had shouted “Loose ‘orse!” and a chestnut mare galloped through the crowd, almost trampling us, chased by two huntsmen.

‘IT WAS FUCKING SPECTACULAR,’ my dad told everyone now, in the living room. ‘WE ALMOST GOT KILLED. YOU SHOULD HAVE COME. TOM DIDN’T LIKE IT AT ALL. I THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO THROW HIMSELF IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE HORSES AS A PROTEST FOR A MOMENT, LIKE A SUFFRAGETTE. THEY’RE COMING OVER THE BACK FIELDS BY HERE IN A MINUTE. JO! GET THE CAT IN! HE’S ORANGE. THEY MIGHT MISTAKE HIM FOR A FOX.”

The conversation moved on, somehow, to owls. I told my cousin Fay about the noisy tawnies who roosted in the trees behind my house, which reminded me of the time that, upon the birth of her son, who is named Hal, a colleague of his father had sent the family a card which had said, “Congratulations on the birth of your son, Owl!” We talked also about Granny Pam, Fay’s dad’s mum, who nobody ever seemed to call Pam, always Granny Pam, and who lived in a high-rise flat in an area of Nottingham later to be even better known for gun crime than many other areas of Nottingham which were known for gun crime. I remember Granny Pam as a long skinny grin in a cloud of cigarette smoke, who - despite barely knowing me - always bought me amazing, imaginative Christmas presents, but Fay explained that Pam had a less well-known vengeful side too, especially when it came to her parking space outside the flats.

“She once got mugged and turned around and punched the mugger in the face with her keys inside her fist.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Did I tell you about her lipstick?” said Fay.

“No,” I said.

“When I was a kid, if ever anyone nicked her parking space, she’d say to me, ‘Right, get my lipstick! Then we’d go outside and, while she put a chain across the space and padlocked the car in, she’d get me to write all over the car using her lipstick.”

I was keen to find out what Fay had written on the cars in question, but she didn’t get chance to tell me, as the phone rang at this point. My dad picked it up. “HELLO?” he said. “FUCK OFF, YOU BASTARD.” He put the handset down and turned to us. “IT WAS ONE OF THOSE BASTARDS YOU GET SOMETIMES.”

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You can order the paperback of 21st-Century Yokel, with free international delivery, from Blackwells. Same applies to my other recent books Help The Witch, Ring The Hill, Notebook, Villager and 1983. 1983 will also be published in the US and Canada THIS TUESDAY.

New WOFFAL bookmarks by my mum. I’ll be sending some of these out to new annual subscribers.