July 24th – One of the sights of summer I’ve so far missed is the crop sprinkler. Near Shenstone today, one solitary spray, watering a field of fine looking potatoes. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can get a full rainbow in their mist, but my efforts to find one today wee fruitless. 

If you’re even luckier, it’s near the road, and there’s a delicious game of dare as you try to cycle past without getting sprayed.

Wehen I was a youth, you could hear these – and there would have been large numbers of them – for miles, the light rushing sound and the toc-toc-toc of the rotator, but since crops have switched more to cereals, they’re a rarer sight.