Country fairs were once an important way of trading farm and agricultural produce. Animals were bred and reared locally, and food grown nearby.

The Foot & Mouth crisis showed how much this has changed. Animals and food are now grown, transported and sold on a national and international scale. Supermarkets demand that animals are driven hundreds of miles to slaughter in their own abattoirs instead of the local one. This can allow diseases to spread rapidly across the country.

The decline in the numbers of small farmers, and the use of machinery instead of horses and men, has changed rural life. Unwanted farm labourers had to move to the towns to earn a living. Wealthy townspeople moved into the pretty country villages and commuted to work. This pushed up house prices, forcing young villagers to settle elsewhere. A unique culture began to disappear. Is this a good or a bad thing?

When it came to horses my Granddad was the cleverest man I knew. He was a farmer and there wasn't much about horses that my Granddad didn't know: genetics, breeding, foalbirth, care of, feeding, healing, backing them, he'd worked with horses his whole life, and even experienced vets from miles around would consult my Granddad when they had particularly tricky cases to deal with.

He was a Sagittarius of course. If ever I wanted to know anything at all about horses my Granddad was definitely the one to ask.

So when I was fifteen years of age and urgently needed to know if I was, or if I was not in love with a tearaway boy called Mick Green, I decided to consult my Grandma.

My Grandma had a magic all of her own. Her stories could change the weather, could let you see the world in a different way, and she certainly knew a thing or two about love. But still, and even so, I didn't want to be openly parading my newly emerging, fledgling love life in front of people, even my Grandma, so I attempted to reach an answer to my question by a subtle route: "Grandma? When did you first know that you loved Granddad? Was it love at first sight? Or was it much longer than that? Days, weeks, months, years, what?"

My Grandma gave me a cool considering glance, I blushed, she smiled. "Not quite so easy to say," said my Grandma, "was it love at first sight? perhaps not, but he certainly made a good first impression. He was lucky with the time and the place, mind, a July morning, bright and warm, on a lovely green lane between Hadley Woods on one side and those wide fields of wheat and barley on the other. I saw him before he saw me.

He came striding out of the sun with his shirt sleeves rolled up and bare sun browned arms, and his nut brown curls and rowan red cheeks, and he was singing a song out loud and not caring who heard him, and he looked so self-assured, and so at one with himself and the world, and I thought he looked right manly, and handsome with it. And I thought this one's definitely worth smiling at, so I did, and I saw that his eyes were as black as night and bright as stars. And by the way he was gawping at me I saw that I had definitely made an impression on him of my own. And I realised that pleased me immensely.

Further on up the path, I met a woman who answered the questions I couldn't help asking about the lad with the nut brown curls. "Dan Lee," she said "the pride of Wildhill, on account of his gift with the horses, he's so good with them there are those who reckon that he turns into a centaur on nights when the moon is full," and at that she laughed, and she said, "and I reckon, lucky would be the lass for sure who could throw a saddle on that one."

I found myself thinking about him constantly and I couldn't wait to see him again, and I longed for that 'again' to be soon."

My Grandma paused, she looked at me thoughtfully, "I wasn't much older than you are now," she said, and she smiled and I blushed, again. It occurred to me that recently this uncontrollable blushing business was happening more and more frequently, I made a mental note to myself to make a serious attempt to get it under control.

"Anyway," said my Grandma, "I knew Barnet Fair was coming soon, and I knew he was bound to be there. I counted the days and I counted the nights and the night before the fair was the longest night I'd ever known. When the morning came at last I got up early and I made myself look nice for him, not so nice that there would be talk, but nice enough I was thinking, to cast a spell on Mister Dan Lee. Barnet Fair… anything you wanted or needed you could strike a deal for at Barnet Fair, and such a laugh they were with the rides and the side shows, the booths, the fortune tellers and people would come from miles around, and… ah, we don't have the fairs now like we did back then, important they were, you know, for giving life to the local traditions. And we produced for the market hereabouts, nowadays the work it's all changed, it's big business and the supermarkets that say what we should do, and how we should do it. Some things are better, and that's for sure, but not everything, not everything. I remember when you knew when you sat down to eat that there was going to be some proper nourishment in the food on your table, now you take this Foot and Mouth crisis -"

"Grandma!" "What? Oh, sorry my love, where was I? Oh yes, Barnet Fair, your Granddad and me. I saw him there and I noted with approval that he'd obviously made an effort with his appearance.

He looked more than smart enough, attracting the attention of every girl who passed him by he was, he knew how to wear an hat well did your Granddad. And then, I thought 'right this is it,' and with a belly full of butterflies, I contrived to appear all of a sudden before him.

He blushed, and I knew then that he did like me; he smiled, and the way that he smiled his 'real Dan Lee smile,' I knew then that he really liked me; he tried talking to me, and bless him, he couldn't get his words out, not into anything that remotely resembled a reasonable sentence, and I thought about how sure of himself he had been that morning when I first clapped eyes on him, and there he was then, a bag of nerves, and all on account of me, and that's when I knew that I really, really did like him.
And, to cut a long story short, a year to the day we were married."

She smiled at me and suddenly the years fell away and I saw my Grandma not as my Grandma but as a young woman sitting by her fireside, smiling on her wedding day, and she was gorgeous.

Then my Grandma giggled girlishly, there was a worrying twinkle in her eye "so what's his name?" she said. I blushed.