News from the Duchy

A quiet summer afternoon finds the narrator on a modest pilgrimage to a remote parish church, drawn by an unpretentious fascination with a lone Norman porch. He boards a slow, rattling local train, sharing the carriage with market‑women, a pedlar and a local policeman, while the landscape drifts past in pools of meadow‑sweet and lazy butterflies. The journey is deliberately leisurely, allowing him to linger on the rhythm of the rails and the simple pleasure of watching the countryside unfold.

When the train slows near a familiar bend, the narrator’s ordinary view transforms into a startling tableau: eight naked men gathered beneath an oak, one blowing a flute, another squeezing a concertina, the rest clapping in time. Nearby, a troupe of navvies stumbles into a clumsy waltz, their dance forming a surreal ring around the scene. The absurdity is both comic and unsettling, leaving him as awake as Macbeth and eager to follow where this dream‑like vision leads.