Jeremy Clarkson journalist, grumpy old man bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax which he runs badly. The farm is in a beautiful part of West Oxfordshire, and he named it Diddly Squat, originally as that was the amount of tax he was going to paying on it but now also what he is earning from the farm.

The year he covers in the book were his Sunday Times columns and later it became a TV series, during the Covid period and post-Brexit. The world is going to hell in a handcart, and everyone is to blame except Jeremy. He usual _targets are the Socialists (not in power since 2010), vegetarian (can’t blame him), the government (fair enough) and other assorted fools. He tends to forget that those in power were his conservative party friends.

He was finding that besides caring for animals and crops there is a mountain of paperwork though the farm has given him plenty of boy’s toys. This includes his Lambo tractor. He also describes the many idiots that all farmers have to deal with especially city dwellers who turn up and think they can tramp across all the land. How many of them have no idea of the country code or even the basics like taking home your rubbish.

While you have to put up with the usual Clarkson rants and is a mildly interesting book. ( )

same old stuff but still a nice read amd full of Jezza humour ( )

I'm glad I tried this book -- as someone unfamiliar with Clarkson, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I have enough of a sense of humor to recognize that's what's in front of me, but it's not really my cup of tea. He's got some great messages in behind the exaggeration and bombast, but he's like that loud uncle who yells "can't you take a joke??" if you disagree with anything, and that really isn't my thing.

Simply splendid ( )

loved it,very funny ( )

Those who are having The Grand Tour withdrawal symptoms may or may not enjoy Jeremy Clarkson’s life on the farm. If you’ve missed it, Jeremy decided to give farming a go at his home in the Cotswolds and it can be seen as the limited series Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime. This book is a collection of his newspaper columns about life on the farm. Some may have read them already, but I hadn’t. I think I enjoyed them even more than his car columns.

The book is divided into seasons, then months of life on the farm covering just over one year. Unfortunately for Jeremy, that year was 2020 so things were made even more difficult with COVID-19 and lockdowns. It covers general farm stuff, from tractors (Jeremy’s is a Lamborghini), the problems of hitching up anything to said tractor and the problem of fitting that tractor into the shed. I found the sections on sheep particularly funny and the things that they do that frustrated Jeremy no end. There are other things that frustrated Jeremy too, such as the control the government has over what is grown, Brexit laws changing the way things work (like having seeds stuck in France with no way out) and general government bureaucracy. Then add on frustrating farmer things, like the wrong weather at the wrong time, mending fence posts and the price the farmer is paid for goods. Like the name of his farm, the farmer makes diddly squat.

Clarkson raises a number of issues with farming in the UK that the general public wouldn’t know about, which seem to be quite a bit different to in Australia as the government seems to have more control over what is grown. I enjoyed comparing what I know of Aussie farming with Clarkson’s experience in the UK (I still can’t get over that each field has a name). The columns are humorous, easy to understand and give an insight into different aspects of farming (right down to the farm shop). It’s clear that even for all its frustrations, Clarkson enjoys farming and it really shows through his writing. There’s a sense of pride and love in sharing his farming life.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )