ISBN: 9780099286929

Synopsis Ever since Aldous Jones careened over the handlebars of his bicycle in 1955 and landed next to the Farmer Evan’s first field, it has become a tradition for him to take his family camping in Wales. At Easter, Mrs. Evans writes to ask if he, Colette and their four children require the third field for the summer; in “August”, their Bukta tent is brought down from the attic and unrolled in the garden of 89 Fernlight Avenue. Aldous has started to feel that a certain symbiosis had developed between their North London home and the Welsh village that they only ever see in August. When the Evanses acquire a milking parlour, Aldous associates it with the acquisition of the Jone’s first car – but Colette is right in seeing the culling of the dairymaids as a premonition of far more radical change. As the years pass, Aldous’s family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory.