A strange Easter in our corner of East Hampshire, as I write. We live on the edge of a small village through which 19 footpaths and bridleways pass. All are now sealed off, their entrances barricaded with foot-and-mouth notices.
The Government insists that the countryside isn't closed, but that demands an odd definition of 'closed' even in areas like ours that have escaped the disease so far. Not far away, one village reported an early case, which proved a false alarm. Since then Hampshire has been remarkably untouched by the tragedy - not just of the wholesale slaughter and of farmers facing ruin, but of the long-term implications for rural economies like that of the Lake District and the West Country, which may never recover. Certain breeds of sheep may be wiped out, for example. Uplands previously grazed bare may be covered in bracken thickets in a matter of a year or two. Farms unable to survive might become anything from golf courses to camping sites depending on local circumstances.
One of the abiding images of my childhood is the newspaper pictures of burning carcasses and our local Cheshire farms besieged behind disinfectant-soaked straw barricades. You would have thought that science would have come up with a solution, that foot-and-mouth would be eradicable like smallpox. Yet it's back, and reaching towards the Scottish lowlands as I write.
