The Induction Continues

 

We were this week visiting friends from London who moved to Somerset about 10 years ago (although, as I have no doubt made clear before, we thought of it first). I was keen to impress them with our new found country ways, and told them we had this week had firewood delivered.

"Did you chop it down to size with an axe?"

Er no, it came ready chopped.

"How did you get on stacking it?"

Er, I paid £20 extra to have it stacked.

They informed me I was not a Local, I was a Londonder playing at being a country dweller. They meant it in a caring way, but I knew I had to get back to my country life induction programme. 

Last week I shared the first module (dealing with tradespeople’s distant relationship to timekeeping). It’s taken a few different incidents, but I think the second module has to be Dealing With Wildlife.

It started with the field down the road, the venue for Mishka’s morning walk. You might remember this one, with the view of the rolling hills that propels me into Romantic-Poet-paroxysms. Except now it’s full of cows.

The right of way still applies, in fact the farmer has helpfully put a plastic covering over part of the electric fence (slightly too high to step over and slightly too low to go under), to show that the path is still open. Problem one, though, is I can no longer look up towards the distant hills, for fear of stepping unwittingly in a country pancake. The sheer volume of ordure is beyond comprehension. I have to deftly tug the lead left and right so that Mishka jumps between the floppy brown ovals like a computer game character (Pat Dog IV: Revenge of the Bovines).

Then there are the cows themselves. They have a disconcerting habit of galloping up behind you, the only solution being to wave your arm in a wide circle while shouting gibberish at them in a deep loud voice. This generally impresses them, and from that point on they resort to creeping slowly behind us, which is almost as scary. 

"Which bit of 'moooooo' did you not understand?"

Back at home the primary creature of note is the spider – specifically the one with spindly legs that you never see in the city. There are a lot of them, suspended from cupboards and other protruding structures. We decided living in harmony with them was probably more time efficient than trying to remove them all, especially after I read that the typical house in the country probably contains 100 arachnids. Before the cows appeared in the field you could see, revealed by the dew, tiny spider webs on the grass, probably about 15 per square foot. They’re presumably all buried under cow pats now. A bit of a bummer when you're a spider thinkiing the rapidly descending shadow above you is a fly about to drop into your lap.

We’ve had our first rat sighting. I had my mother to thank for this, who saw one sitting on her bird table nonchalantly eating the sparrows' food. We subsequently found it apparently poisoned – not by us I hasten to add – and when a second body turned up it seemed there was a serial killer moving amongst us. Mishka, being a miniature schnauzer, is bred to be a ratter, but I’m not rushing to put her in the ring with one of the furry-faced troublemakers – especially with a serial killer that might mistake her for a rat.

Module three of the induction is Visiting London (London!), and weighing up whether it feels like coming home or going away. I had the opportunity last week when I made a couple of trips up to work with a client in The City.

As my train pulled out of Taunton I felt a stirring of excitement. Though, I confess, I have felt the same stirring of excitement when my train has pulled out of Paddington. Let’s be honest, I find trains exciting. So no data of any use there.

My grandmother once observed that the best thing about living in London was you never had to talk to anybody, and I have always found the anonymity of the crowd quite attractive. In London you can be outlandish and still remain unremarkable, whereas I am haunted by the idea I may be known in the village as him-with-the-floral-shirt (in medieval times I would have been introduced as Philip Rosejerkin). First blood to London – but hold up, the way to be anonymous in the rural world is to climb a hill, or set off along a footpath. Solitude does not judge you. And it brings silence. On which note…

Characters in a Thomas Hardy Novel walk along the country lane to market to sell their milk. Errr no, wait a minute...

The City is a noisy place, and I really noticed it after a few months in the country. And everyone’s in such a hurry! Where are they going that’s so urgent? They tumble out of the entrance to the underground in an unstoppable river. I used to be able to move across one of these streams on autopilot; now I stand hesitant on the bank, afraid to plunge in lest I am swept away and deposited far from my place of origin. TS Eliot caught the feel of it in The Waste Land:

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many...

...Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

And that was in the 1920s; it's by no means a new phenomenon, no matter how many commentators tell us about living in an unprecedented turbulent age.

I used to hurry as well. I would charge up and down escalators as if someone was handing out free Five Guys burgers at the other end. It would be a little disingenuous to say I don’t rush any more: I’m either doing my work virtually from a home office, or I’m travelling up to London on a train designed to get me in an hour early just in case, with a fixed train ticket, so rushing to get an earlier one won’t help.

I think I’m misguided looking for a winner in the town vs country contest. My – ahem – “hair stylist” and I both agree that the sheer diversity of London gives it a welcome frisson that the country life can’t equal. But then there’s the frisson of looking a cow in the eyes and knowing they are your equal in many ways, a creature just trying to get on with life. With the bonus they don’t make judgments on my choice of menswear.