In the days when I was less happy in my skin than I am now, I used to feel stabs of envy whenever I visited the large country homes of much grander friends. I’d notice their array of class signifiers — the boot room with battered hunt coats and riding crops; the massive Victorian baths with enormous taps, weird cylinder devices instead of plastic plugs, and funny little dog foot stands; the framed pictures in the loo of Oxbridge matriculations and born-to-rule offspring posing with the beagle pack at ‘School’ — and think: if only this could one day be me.
Well now it is me, more or less. Finally, in my early fifties, I’ve got round to joining, near as damn it, the country squirearchy. And let me tell you, it’s every bit as enjoyable as I’d hoped. I get to be rude, eccentric, antisocial, reckless, prejudiced, reactionary, unkempt, unapologetically conservative and free to a degree that just wouldn’t have been possible in my benighted townie years.
The country is often stigmatised as a small-minded place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Possibly. But the secret — as most rural folk well understand — is not to care.
Maybe things were different back in the day, when you really did need to court the good opinion of whoever it was who lived in the Big House, when you really were dependent on being accepted by the community. Not in the age of Netflix, though.
Sometimes the Fawn and I can go for months on end without accepting a single social engagement. (Not that people tend to invite us any more, because they know we won’t reciprocate, which lets us off the hook of quite the worst thing about living in the country: the dreaded dinner party where you don’t get served the main course till after 10, because half the guests have to get home from their London commute).
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