‘That ’on’t take long now.’ Eli showed Jimmy how to fill the kettle with water from the churn using a large soup ladle, placing it back on the hob. It sizzled immediately and began to hum. Before long we were sitting outside, enjoying mugs of scalding hot honey-sweetened tea, with Eli teaching us how to distinguish different birds from the cacophony of song in the woods that day.

The chiffchaff was the easiest, because the song simply consisted of repeating its name over and over again. Robins, blackbirds and wrens were more tuneful, but to my ear they all sounded much the same. The cuckoo, on the other hand, was unmistakeable.

‘Me heart allus lifts when I hears the first one each spring,’ Eli said. ‘It tells me I’ve survived another winter.’

‘Don’t they sing in the winter?’

‘Happen they do, but not here,’ he said. ‘They only stick around a few months, then they fly south, like the swallows. To Africa, so folk believe. They’s naughty creatures, though, laying in the nests of littler birds and pushin’ out them fledglings. But their song do cheer me up, all the same. Brings good luck, but only if you hears it with your right ear.’

That made me laugh. ‘How can you tell which ear you’re hearing it with?’

He ignored my question, cocking his head and concentrating hard. ‘Ah. Now here’s a new ’un. Listen to them whistles and clucks.’ He listened some more. ‘Is a barley bird,’ he declared triumphantly. ‘First of the year. You’re mighty honoured, my little friends.’

‘Barley bird?’

‘Cos it come with the first heads of the barley. Most call it a nightingale. Listen.’ Now I could hear it, a series of ticks and gurgles followed by a few rising liquid phrases, not really a song in the proper sense.

‘I thought they only sang at night.’

‘Thass only cos most birds stop arter dusk, so at night you hear just the nightingale. Best sound in the world, when the woods is silent.’

He sat back, closing his eyes, to concentrate. I tried it too, and it was remarkable how much clearer the sounds became. When I opened them again I watched Eli, his face peaceful, pipe resting in his hands. Even the deepest wrinkles seemed to flatten out and he appeared younger, the most contented man in the world.

‘You love it here, don’t you, Eli?’ I said.

‘Who wouldn’t, with an orchestra like that on me doorstep every day?’

‘What about the winters? Don’t you get cold?’

‘There’s plenty of wood for me little stove and we gets by well enough, doesn’t we, Sarge?’ he said, rubbing the dog’s scraggy neck. It groaned appreciatively. ‘Well, we woodda, if they’d ruddy well let us be.’

Something in his tone alarmed me. ‘Who’s they, Mr Eli?’