It's a dank January in the Worcestershire village of Black Swan Green and 13-year-old Jason Taylor - covert stammerer and reluctant poet - anticipates a stultifying year in the deadest village on Earth. But Jason hasn't reckoned with a junta of bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, an exotic Belgian emigre, a threatened gypsy invasion and the caprices of those mysterious entities known as girls.