RURAL MY ARSE
It's said there's a secret tunnel built by the Knights of St John from Valletta to the Vatican, but I’m not too sure about that. The A303 is real, though, I know, I'm stuck half way down it. HELP ME!
*Please forgive me if you are currently dealing with something worse than having to leave a nice neighbourhood in London to move to a nice neighbourhood in the West Country lite*.
In what were my most self-pitying, and yet bold, financially sensible and curious moments, I searched RightMove in Wigan, then Grimsby, even Scunthorpe. It made me feel like I was better off: big house in a nice part of Grimsby for 800 quid. Could work? But that potential future reality came with an anticipatory flash of eviscerating loneliness.
Instead, I took a well-trod migration route that is a monster of a relocation cliché. I think friends expected better of me. “Oh dear,” said my friend Danny, who lives in the cosmopolitan heights of super original Frome (pop. 24,000). Why hadn’t I moved there? He seemed very unimpressed that I’d chosen a small town seven miles away.
“Not Frome then?”
No, I don’t know why you would, unless you want access to a Marxist post card, a wooden spoon hand-turned by a middle aged hipster, or big Sainsbury’s and over-priced health foods.
“What about Wincanton, it’s up and coming,” said my sister.
Castle Cary’s nice. Mells is fun. Tisbury’s Very London…
I have moved to the country.
“Where?”
and cowpats
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