I’ve diagnosed myself with early onset cottage-itis. It’s not supposed to happen for another decade, but at 29 I dream of just the smallest bolthole in the country: a bothy, a gatehouse, a folly below the ha-ha in someone else’s stately home. A shepherd’s hut in tasteful shades of prime ministerial greige. Liberated from the city I would be a nicer, calmer, more industrious person. I would write my magnum opus and be self-sufficient in rhubarb crumble.
Every morning when the drills start on the cycle super-highway that will speed the passage of Deliveroo couriers through west London, I put my head in my hands and will myself into a gingerbread cottage in the country.
Be careful what you wish for, is Amanda Craig’s message. ‘In the country,’ says Quentin, the compellingly irredeemable husband in Craig’s novel The
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