We’re spending the weekend with my partners brother and his family down in Tilford in Surrey. It’s one of those very pretty English villages loved by crime writers and airline adverts. There’s cricket on the green outside the local pub. How many hostelries are there when you can you sit outside facing the crease, supping a pint whilst keeping a wary eye out for the occasional errant cricket ball that careens off the pub like a cannonball? Another side of the green is bordered by a meandering stream where the kids go to splash & swim whilst their parents sit with picnics & prosecco. The old single track, stone arched bridge across it is guarded by a huge world war 2 concrete pillbox which would make a great location for ‘Dads Army’ – or a local branch HQ for UKIP. On the far side of the green is a lovely village hall which was designed by Sir Edward Lutyens (his ambitions didn’t stop with village halls as he later went on to design that jewel in the Empire’s crown & capital of the Raj: New Delhi). It’s all, terribly, terribly English!

Quintessentially English, cricket on the village green outside the local pub