Rural Britain? It’s wine from a tap and a stalker next door
IT WAS the friendly, rustic sign that made me pop into a country pub in Brompton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire, the other day. ‘A warm welcome!’ it shouted. The first words uttered, as I traversed the sticky, nylon carpet were: ‘Don’t let your dogs on the furniture.’
‘I’ll try. Do you have prosecco by the glass?’ ‘Only what’s on the board,’ the woman said, having reluctantly left her friends and crawled, Mrs Overall fashion, behind the bar.
‘No mention there. Can I have a glass of sauvignon blanc?’
‘We only have red or white, on draught,’ she said, leaning heavily on a tap.
‘Oh-kay. Can I run a tab and order some food?’
‘The food’s a separate business, and we only take cash.’
Not quite what you are picturing, is it, as you pack your Volvo for an August mini-break in England’s green and pleasant land, dreaming of pub lunches and picnics by the river? Don’t make my mistake, and be seduced by signage. ‘Rustic kitchen’ means it’s not been cleaned since 1982 and the Aga is only capable of drying out meringue. ‘Opposite a wildflower meadow’ means a tangle of docks, ragwort and nettles. ‘Part of working farm’ means a £60,000 tractor bought with EU subsidies roaring past at speed at midnight, lights blazing, while the five previous tractors rust round the back.
Websites like Gorgeous Cottages.com (and TV programmes like Nadiya’s British Food Adventure, where everyone is smiley and artisan) rarely give a true picture. They don’t tell you a house that is ‘paradise, you can wild swim in the Swale’ has a convicted stalker next door.
I suppose it’s not that bad to have a drunk place a sex aid on your doorstep at 3am if you are only here on holiday: you can always zoom back down the M1 and demand a refund. But to live in the country full-time – especially if you’re single, female and have cats – is another matter entirely.
Samantha Cameron might swoon in the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar over her Cotswold ‘cottage’, but she’s a posh woman with money married to a posh man: the equivalent of a 6ft wall, electric gates and a helicopter. The real countryside never touches her and, after all, she can always hightail it back to Notting Hill to enjoy Farmacy, a restaurant where you can buy fresh, organic vegan food and enjoy crisp, white, vegan, Tuscan wine, while in the real countryside you are served lasagne with grated orange cheese semi-melted on top in a nest of Styrofoam.
It’s no wonder, then, that a report published on Friday found one in five of those who ‘escape’ to the country return, ashen, within three years. Which means I’m seven years overdue.
Call me a spoilt urban prima donna (I’m deaf, remember) but a decade sans black cabs! The Curzon Mayfair. Selfridges. Vanilla cupcakes at Ottolenghi. Rasa vegan curry. The Hammam at the Urban Retreat atop Harrods. Petersham Nurseries (there aren’t even any decent garden centres in the country: my local, when asked if they had anything with white flowers, replied: ‘What’s wrong with orange?’). Fresh spinach ravioli at Lina Stores in Soho. Anything from the Conran Shop. Euphorium Bakery. The RA, with its Matisse installation, which opens this weekend: all you get in the country is childish daubings of sheep and Warburtons sliced. And bars where wine isn’t merely white, from a tap.