The Rain Before it Falls is a quiet book written by Jonathan Coe and published in 2007, the year we moved to Shropshire, where it has hardly stopped raining since. Coe muses rather nicely on the timelessness of Shropshire generally and the Shropshire hills in particular.
Of the Long Mynd one of his character says:
Places like this are important to me – to all of us – because they exist outside the normal timespan. You can stand on the backbone of the Long Mynd and not know if you are in the 1940s, the 2000s, the tenth or eleventh century....It is all immaterial, all irrelevant...You cannot put a price on the sense of freedom and timelessness that is granted you there.
Later, another character thinks:
These Shropshire lanes. Mud everywhere. Burnt umber hedgerows, dishevelled, wind-battered. Ploughed fields rolling on either side. Grey sky, looks as if it knows no other colour. This place feels ancient. Half a century behind the rest of the world. Feels like nothing has changed since I was here, nothing.
Of the Long Mynd one of his character says:
Places like this are important to me – to all of us – because they exist outside the normal timespan. You can stand on the backbone of the Long Mynd and not know if you are in the 1940s, the 2000s, the tenth or eleventh century....It is all immaterial, all irrelevant...You cannot put a price on the sense of freedom and timelessness that is granted you there.
Later, another character thinks:
These Shropshire lanes. Mud everywhere. Burnt umber hedgerows, dishevelled, wind-battered. Ploughed fields rolling on either side. Grey sky, looks as if it knows no other colour. This place feels ancient. Half a century behind the rest of the world. Feels like nothing has changed since I was here, nothing.
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