The Good Life
“Grazing” takes on new meaning in the country – for those who can muster polite conversation.
Michele Hewitson
Are people nicer in the country? If anyone had proposed such a clichéd notion before we moved to the country we’d have told them they were silly sods – but we’d have used words much less nice than those.
The Hewitson-Dixon household has a long-held philosophy that the world is made up of the following sorts of people: proven bastards, probable bastards and – a rare species this – good bastards. This is based on decades of close observation, otherwise known as the trade of journalism.
We are old hacks and old hacks swear, a lot. We use swear words the way other, more couth and nicer people use commas. We are what used to be called potty mouths. It took me about a month of living in the country to realise that people in the country, at least the ones we meet, do not swear. They may chuck in the occasional “bloody”, and I have heard a certain sheep farmer say “shit”, but only on the occasion of a near catastrophe. We have had to learn to bite our filthy tongues, at least when we are in the company of our new country friends.
Not using rude words is no indication of niceness, of course. But people in the country are nice. They are not effusive about their niceness; effusiveness is another thing country people do not do. But they will invite you over for a mid-winter street gettogether (in the country the nearest neighbour on our road is the equivalent of a city block away) and say they will provide “grazing”. In the city, grazing, if such a word should ever be used, might mean posh cheeses and gluten-free crackers and a bowl of olives from some artisan producer recently discovered at the “farmers’ market”, in Parnell, say. In this case, grazing meant platters of paua fritters and home-caught and smoked tuna pâté followed by lamb (from the joker up the road) sliders and slaw with home-made aioli. We staggered home with an extra slider for a dinner we would not need.
In the country, if an animal gets out you catch it and put it in your paddock. Then you phone Tony, who is a good and funny bastard, and say: “Your cow’s in our paddock. Does that make it ours now?” He’ll be round in a flash. Tony, by the way, has strong opinions on cheese and crackers, which is what he reckons posh people eat. “I never think of cheese,” he told Greg the other day.
In the city, the street we lived on had an annual summer street party at which property prices were the main topic of conversation. In the country, we have an annual cleanup-the-road party. We go out with rubbish bags and pick up discarded cans which once held bourbon and Coke, and KFC boxes and other nasties. (The litterbugs are not from the country; they must come from “town”.) Then we retire to the host’s house to gorge on bacon-and-egg pies and date scones and mugs of tea.
We came to the country to get away from people. We have never been more social. Well, what can you do when the people here are such good bastards?
Although, it’s just as well they live out of earshot at this time of the year. Luckily they can’t hear me pruning my roses. It is lucky, too, that a rose by any name would smell as sweet because mine have been called some very bad names in the past week. The roses are inherited, and some of them are not nice. They are what I call attack roses and my scratched-to-ribbons arms are the proof. Some of them don’t even smell, and I can’t see the point of a rose that does not smell. Also, they have boring names, like Sally Holmes, a much-loved rose, apparently.
I want roses with romantic names – Honorine de Brabant, perhaps, or Perle des Panachees. But Sally Holmes as a name is, I concede, easier to remember, easier to say and so easier to swear at.
In the country we have an annual cleanup-the-road party. We go out with bags and pick up discarded cans.