A burial in a Norman village. I ask for details from a farmer watching the procession from a distance. ‘He was still young, barely sixty. They found him dead in the field. Well, that’s how it is … That’s how it is …’ This refrain, which struck me as comical at the time, has haunted me ever since. The fellow had no idea that what he was saying about death was all that can be said and all we know.
