Farewell, Cobham — oh flat, boring, lovely Cobham; hello, Dorking

Farewell then, Cobham. You were the place I ran to when the metropolis became too much, and urban life overwhelmed me. You were to me a shining beacon of blandness in an otherwise frighteningly exotic world. I loved you and held you in mythical esteem. In times of disappointment, I yearned for you every bit as much as Margo Leadbetter did.

‘Cydney! We’re moving to Cobham!’ I would shout at the spaniel whenever Lambeth Council did something Marxist, which was often.

We didn’t ever quite move to Cobham, but we kept the horses there. For nearly 15 years, this gave us a bolthole down the A3 to escape to, from Balham. We would get in the car — after going to get the car from a street in Streatham, obviously, because we couldn’t afford a £300 permit to park it outside the house — and our hearts would leap at the thought of what lay ahead in a convenient 40-minute drive.