Some junk mail landed this morning from a well known catalogue store pronouncing its spring and summer colours and styles for 2014. I’d just come back from a morning stroll during which I sat in the St Mary’s churchyard in Long Preston, Ribblesdale, admiring some really uplifting spring colours produced by Nature – including this ornamental yellow daisy set against a purple berberis. Advertising material is normally planted unceremoniously and unread straight in the recycling bin here, but I thought I’d check how those skinny models were portraying this year’s spring colours… black, white, grey – any sign of colour was understated. Now I know yellow and purple might be a tad OTT for some folk to wear but I did wonder if any of the city-based fashion designers had ever witnessed a spring in the countryside.