This week we are in the Cotswolds. We have come, not just to gorge on honeyed hamlets in a pastoral idyll. But to jog along our thoughts on a very middle aged, middle class dilemma. To move, or not to move to the countryside. Arguments for and against are legion. Mostly I listen to my gut. My gut tells me I’m a Londoner. That said, my gut warned me against my husband, at least until date number 3. It wasn’t until some unsuspected hip manoeuvring during one life changing salsa session, that my gut woke up to my guy. It still works a treat, I’m glad to say, the hip manoeuvre.
So, the Cotswolds. Painswick, to be precise, colloquially known as the Queen of the Cotswolds. She’s undeniably well kept. One street boasts the first Post Office in the country and a row of Tudor houses with Georgian facades, as immaculate as the virgin birth. The streets are spic and span. There is no litter and no dog poo. Obviously, no graffiti. Entering our holiday home’s long gravel drive after a morning run, I spy a solitary empty crisp bag. Salt and vinegar, Waitrose own-brand. It’s rubbish collection day and the bin men of Stroud District Council have missed a crisp packet. It was conspicuous for being the only piece of litter in evidence, anywhere. And, being so, I found myself all the more inclined to pick it up and dispose of it in a civic and ecologically minded fashion. Ordinarily, I might not pick up a stray piece of litter. Would moving here change my habits? Make me less tolerant of litter? Could that be anything but a good thing?
Another thing that impresses straightaway is that there is a lot of lawnmowing going on in Painswick. Our host, John, a charming septuagenarian with an uncommon knack of engaging my boys, was mowing as we arrived. He had a good half acre to get through. By the end, the lawn was a premium grade carpet. Soft, springy, even, green. The next day, John was back on his ride-on mower, at it again. It was a glorious day. My sense is he was just enjoying himself. But he wasn’t alone. One man – is lawn mowing something only men do? – seemed bent on eviscerating every last daisy from a patch of otherwise blameless grass. And, where there’s lawn mowing, there’s topiary. Most impressive perhaps, the manicured yew trees surrounding the village church. 99 in total, so the guide books say. The devil wouldn’t allow any more, apparently.
Yesterday we drove to Gloucester, the county capital, not renowned as a place of intrinsic beauty. But I saw a mural, a giant mural, of Salvador Dali and a rugby player, on the side of a house next to the car park, and I felt a surge of pleasure. A gut reaction. Not that I’d like to live on a dilapidated brownfield site next to a parking lot. But just then, it felt like home.
Ariadne Birnberg 