10 things I love about country life. And ten things that do my head in.

I like skipping in my underwear and Cyrus the postman. But where are the f***ing fresh vegetables?

For a few weeks I’d considered writing ten good and ten bad things about the country here. I didn’t. Every time I started to type I was struck by what a miserable cow I sounded. People ask me, Are you enjoying Bruton? Do you like the country? And I always answer with “meh” noises because I don’t know how I feel. It just, is. It’s a change. Is it better. Or worse. I don’t know. It’s different. “No one lands up here because they want to,” according to a woman I met in the pub a few weeks ago. Her point being, there’s less people here who arrived with a dream, and more who arrived to escape a nightmare.

Doesn’t mean the country is bad. Just, how does a person experience it. For too long my experience was heavily filtered through why I came. Jump to TEN THINGS…if you want to skip the intro, which rehashes what brought me here to Bruton in Somerset two months ago (it’s about 1600 words).

I can have a go at writing that list now. In recent days a shift in my mood has struck me. Friends keep telling me I can come back to London if I really want to but in my head I can’t countenance what the return entails, on my budget, a seedy neighbourhood, a home with small proportions, a high cost lifestyle in a city that constantly shoves wealth inequality under your nose.

Hard to admit this, but I’m gone. I’m done. It’s over. Unless my fortunes radically change, I accept that London is behind me. It’s a struggle to type this out loud. It worries me to admit it. But I need to. Subconsciously, I think I knew this was coming.

The blazing sunshine helps. And seeing my old Style deputy editor, Lucas Hollweg, at the Three Horseshoes, where we had a drink and peculiar combination of food - crunchy raw sugar snap peas, deep fried courgette flowers and devilled pig skin. The dogs have a good life here, though dogs are eminently adaptable like most successful animals. A human is an animal, can we adapt? We need to if we want to endure as a species. If we want to be a successful animal.

Good things about the country town shizzle

Adapt and survive.

Adapt and survive.

Adapt and survive.

Adapt and survive.

The Burrow Hill cider bus.