Cold Comfort Farm

 

Author:  Stella Gibbons

Begun: March 12th 2025

Finished: March12th 2025

Type: Audiobook 

Narrator: BBC Radio 4 full cast dramatization 

Rating: 7/10

I saw something nasty in the woodshed

There'll be no butter in hell!

21 year old orphan Flora Poste foists herself on her Starkadder relatives on Cold Comfort Farm, near Howling in the wilds of Sussex.  She determines to "tidy things up".  Shenanigans, often absolutely hilarious, ensue. 

And now I must regale you with quotes that had me snorting with laughter.  

OH! Before I do, here are the names of the animals:

Cows:  Graceless, Aimless, Feckless, Pointless

The bull:  Big Business

The horse: Viper

"That would be delightful, agreed Flora, thinking how nasty and boring it would be." 

"On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me.  Also, they are uncivilized."

"By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed?  I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure."

"...a tall young man whose riding boots were splashed with mud to the thigh, and whose coarse linen shirt was open to his waist.  The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rhythm with the porridge."

"The man's big body, etched menacingly against the bleak light that stabbed in from the low windows, did not move.  His thought swirled like a beck in spate behind the sodden grey furrows of his face.  A woman...Blast! Blast!  Come to wrest away from him the land whose love fermented in his veins like slow yeast.  She-woman.  young, soft-coloured, insolent.  His gaze was suddenly edged by a fleshy taint.  Break her.  Break.  Keep and hold and hold fast the land.  The land, the iron furrows of frosted earth under the rain-lust, the fecund spears of rain, the swelling, slow burst of seed-sheaths, the slow smell of cows and cry of cows, the trampling bride-pride of the bull in his hour.  All his, his...

"Will you have some bread and butter?" ask Flora, handing him a cup of tea.  "oh, never mind your boots.  Adam can sweep the mud up afterwards.  Do come in."

Defeated, Reuben came in.""

"Ye know, doan't ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand in takin' a cake out of the oven or wi'a match when ye're lighten' one of they godless cigarettes?  Ay.  It stings wi' a fearful pain, doan it? And ye run away to clap a bit o'butter on it to take the pain away.  Ah but' (impressive pause) 'THERE'LL BE NO BUTTER IN HELL!"

"Is there a rug? she asked, hanging fire.

"Nay. The sins burnin' in yer marrow will keep yer warm"