Malcolm Dawson writes: it seemed highly appropriate that Kate Rusby’s version of The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society came on the radio, just as I was beginning the edit of Pete Sixsmith‘s latest offering. Immediately before dropping off to sleep the night before, I had re-read a chapter of Harry Pearson’s excellent book on North East football “The Far Corner” in which he described how, as a boy, he had seen a picture captioned ‘An Everyday English Village Scene’ in an encyclopaedia and thought it must be a mistake, as it was nothing like the villages he knew since it contained ‘cottages festooned with hanging baskets, burgeoning gardens, white picket fences, a village green, a duck pond, a cricket match, a district nurse on a bicycle and, doubtless, a future Prime Minister sitting outside a thatched pub drinking warm beer’. And then even as I was writing this introduction my 2012/13 Season Card popped through the letter box together with my Bridge magazine. Who says there’s no such thing as serendipity? Read on to discover how our ace reporter found kinship in the South coast non league scene and a feeling of isolation amongst the chattering classes …
