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December 2024, on Ramblers

Dick Francis, in one of his excellent racing thrillers, featured some ramblers from Newbury who stumble across a corpse while out in the countryside. It’s unfortunate that Dick, for the sake of his story, transforms these innocent ramblers into the provisional wing of some league against racing.

The real live ramblers from Newbury who come up to Ashmansworth and Crux Easton have always been very civilised. On one occasion, they were invited to appear in a documentary on life in the English countryside, for Finnish Television. I was asked along, as a local, to make up the numbers. Why Finnish TV? Perhaps it was just the fascination that all foreigners seem to have for English eccentricity.

A couple of things still linger from that long-ago filming on the downs. There was a local doctor with us who was keen on rambling. Needless to say, he was no revolutionary: he told us he suspected, from the set-up, that the director wanted some confrontation to liven up his show – town against country, that sort of thing. We all agreed we were not town against country, and that there should be no hint of confrontation.

The director, finding us uncooperative on that point, spotted two pretty girls among us. He decided that, for his Finnish audience, pretty girls would be better examples of English ramblers than the rest of us. Well, that’s TV. And the girls would probably do more for our image, too – at least in Finland.

But whoever the girls were, they didn’t seem to know much about rambling. I seem to remember they had turned up in heels; so they provided the Finns with another example of English eccentricity: walking through fields in high heels.

It must be a rule among TV professionals assigned to film the public: ‘Always get a pretty girl at the front of each shot. In fact, play it safe, and bring a couple of them along with you, just in case.’

Our film crew even had a clapper-board which they held up to the camera to start each scene, with a title and a scene number chalked on it. Spelling was not their strong suit. One sequence showed the girls heading off along some flowery track. The clapper-board, for that particular scene, read: ‘Bridal Path.’

Agricola, December 2024

Dick Francis Dick Francis