Home Front

Alice Pitman

Whenever our London friends Tom and Caroline visit us in suburbia, there always comes a point over drinks when they ask, ‘Why exactly did you move here?’ They wear the same, half-bemused, half-pitying look that translates as ‘What on earth were you thinking?’

Then come the jokes at Surrey’s expense: ‘Where’s your golf club blazer? Are we having prawn cocktail?’ etc. To show I also have a sense of humour about it, I launch into Abigail’s Party voices: ‘Fancy a cheesy pineapple one, Tone?’; ‘I’ve got very beautiful lips.’

All the while, I feel snobbish and disloyal, as though doing down a loyal companion I have secretly grown fond of.

‘We are near very beautiful countryside, though.’ I then blurt out a defence in Bookham’s name, reverting to my own voice. There is a tumble of disappointment, like the moment Mike Yarwood would say, ‘And this is me’, after doing Harold Wilson and Frank Spencer.

Tom and Caroline stop laughing and politely agree that the nearby North Downs are indeed very lovely. Mr Home Front then mutters something about the schools being good, too; which they’re not especially – just ask Fred and Betty. Also, I say, it was wonderful for the children when young to have a large garden to play in (though they only went in it after I bought a trampoline the size of an aircraft hangar).

In the past decade, the only family member to use our 100ft garden on a regular basis is Lupin, and even he gets bored after two minutes; while Mr H F has forgotten we even have a garden. Nowadays, the lawn is mowed by the next-door neighbour, who kindly offered to do the job for a small fee as she could no longer tolerate the sound of Mr H F and me trying to start our old petrol mower.