Country Life

Interesting article in the Guardian about Country life, and what it's really like

We investigated and found out that, with nods and winks, a group of locals had agreed to cut down our trees, in order to allow access for sailing boats down a side-creek. Nobody asked my father, and the feeling that the same people who would smile and nod and make small-talk about the weather would do this behind his back caused him to feel he couldn't live in that place any more."

There were no great surprises here for me. I've known all my life, for example, that most farmers are like Brian Aldridge from the Archers. Easy to hate, Tory bastards.

And I've never swallowed ideas of so-called community. There are always people who are trying to live a kind of community life. They organise things, they have groups and clubs and meetings. They know each other. But the problem is that these people are easy to hate too. Whether they're right-on or slightly bohemian, or a bit Rotary Club and Masonic, you can't help hating them.

I remember my sisters' kids entering a fancy dress compo at the village school fete one year. Far and away, they had the best costumes; there was simply no contest: they were practically professional. But the kid who won, wearing a white sheet over his head or something, was just from a family friendly with the organising clique.

That's what we have in this country; not community, but cliques. And there is nothing less attractive. And it's the same in the city and in the country.

People move to the country, as the article says, to get away from other people. Quality of life is better because there is less of it. For teenagers this might become a problem, a boredom problem, but I've no sympathy with kids who say they are bored. Modern life is rubbish because there is just too much of it, everybody needs a little less of everything.