I remember it well, I would be maybe 6 years old (so 1955) and the binder was pulled by a tractor (Fordson Major - the only one the farm had everything else was done with Shires). My uncle sat on the binder which spat out ‘stooks’ of corn tied with binder twine. As the area of standing corn (actually barley) got smaller and smaller rabbits would bolt out of it making a dash for cover before being caught by terriers and lurchers. There were always one or two retired old gents hanging round smoking pipes ( coughin’ and aspittin’). How things were about to change! Mixymatosis already raging in the south hadn’t reached Yorkshire but soon would. The point Alan makes about tractors going too fast for ground nesting birds (poor little bird ain’t got no wings) is prophetic. The change from hay making (around end June/beginning July) to silage making (2 or 3 cuts starting early May) was disastrous for birds like Lapwings which didn’t have time to raise there chicks to fledging before the forage harvester arrived. You couldn’t blame the farmer, he was just doing what the government wanted - giving the country food security following World War 2. Alan Smethurst captured it all in this song - there was a touch of genius in this man that was overlooked at the time, probably still is apart from the intuitive souls who have acknowledged it here.
This man was an absolute poet and genius. His incredible ability to document the life around him in Norfolk is just magical. One of my favourites is: Down The Old North Walsham Line . I am not a Norfolk man but the sheer nostalgia of this song brings tears to my eyes. As suggested elsewhere, there should be a statue of him in his birthplace.
We have a statue in Thetford of Captain Manwaring how about at true hero in his adopted county, Alan was not born in NORFOLK. Let us not forget to our shame as Norfolk people ,Alan passed away in a Salvation Army hostel in Grimsby on Christmas eve 2000
I'd love to see a statue of him in Sherinam, (Sheringham) but he was born in Bury, Lancashire and move to Sheringham at the age of two. He was a real one-off!
