Moving back to the countryside has summoned all kinds of surprising childhood memories. So much has changed since I was a kid, but some things are reassuringly the same. If we leave our beloved bit of Wales to go back to England to visit family and friends, our entire journey is punctuated by a pastoral poetry of handwritten signs. With easy access to cheap printing in the city, I had forgotten about the wobbly beauty of a knocked-up sign, painted in whatever colours are kicking about, on a bit of wood you found in some shed. This would look unprofessional anywhere else, but in the countryside it’s an indicator of something good, something worth stopping for.
Whenever I see one, it takes me back to watching my mother paint her own, with her very particular Es, to go with her roaring trade in free range eggs sold from the farm gate. There were duck, goose, guinea fowl (very nice hard shells), hen and occasionally peahen eggs (great for a five-person omelette, in case you were wondering)
What I love about seeing these signs, from the frequent (logs, potatoes) to the rarer (pygmy goats – always hard to resist coming home with a few of those) is how they speak of time. There’s a good chance they won’t be out when you are passing by because these are signs of the seasons.
I also love how they talk about place. My childhood in the south of England had asparagus, watercress, apples, bedding plants; but here it is more likely to be Suffolk x Texel rams. My current favourite is a small, easy-to-miss sign selling morning sticks, not too far from the borders. This is very old-fashioned term for kindling and speaks of a time when no one let their fire go out completely at night and the embers could be revived in the morning with a few small, easily combustible sticks. But nothing says coming home like passing “ELVIS” painted incongruously on a large rock on the A44 on the border of Ceredigion and Powys. I was told it was painted after his death in 1977, but the internet informs me its origin is in a “misspelt act of graffiti in support of a local politician”. When Presley died, an L was turned into a V and, for ever more, the King welcomes us home.
• Alys Fowler is a gardener and freelance writer
