The Blue Field by John Moore - excerpt 1

This is the most wonderful, charming & impish account of a semi-fictional English village just after the Second World War. It follows in the vein of Corduroy (Adrian Bell) and Akenfield (Ronald Blythe) for being great vignettes of English rurality.

Anyway, it also contains some wonderful passages:

"So there you are," ended Mr Chorlton, "we know all about him. But old schoolmasters like me are very foolish to pursue these inquiries. It is only once in a blue moon that we have the pleasure of teaching a boy who is not a dolt or a blockhead or a rugger hearty or a simple cretin; and almost invariably, when we follow his subsequent career, we discover that he either writes immoral novels or unintelligible poetry or preaches a political doctrine which is highly repugnant to us. These are Time's revenges upon my miserable profession!"