In a new column, is our urban writer about to achieve her rural dream?
To borrow a line from the Clash, a band who I’m fairly certain were not singing about my current, quintessentially middle-class and middleaged dilemma: “should I stay or should I go now?”
My husband and I stand, wobbling, on the (wholly predictable) precipice of leaving London for the countryside with our nine-year-old, six-yearold, dog, cat, and a lifetime of clutter. And oh, how I wish I were writing with smug certainty about bolting from the grim and grimy city without a backward glance, to skip into a bucolic realm accessorised by Cath Kidston, populated by blow-dried lambs and scented with homemade jam.
Lying awake at 2am, I silently run through London’s faults for the thousandth time. One: ruinous expense. The children share a small bedroom and my husband, a designer, builds entire kitchens at home, the materials rising around us like battlements. Two: pollution. A friend took her tiny baby to the GP with a rattling chest, only to receive a diagnosis of pollution. Three: crime. A 14-year-old was fatally stabbed outside Tesco. A child.
A place has to be pretty magical, or a person pretty stupid, to stay on despite all this. And somehow the city has held us in thrall for decades, long after babies and bills meant that our visits to its blockbuster exhibitions, West End shows or world-class restaurants had faded to misty memories. Because, as my
The house is four times bigger and the same price as our current home
Hattie Garlick and husband Tom insomniac mind counters, there’s still…
One: the excitement. That elusive but palpable energy created by people living on the edge of their nerves, be it steering global corporations or crossing continents to start a corner shop. Two: the anonymity. I could canter to that shop on an invisible horse, kitted out as Marie Antoinette and the man at the till wouldn’t raise his eyes from his Turkish soap opera. Three: the diversity. On the same
trip to get milk, I’d pass 50 strangers from almost as many spots on the map, with as wide a spectrum of life stories and values, squished into one sooty street.
So for years we stalked Rightmove, bored ourselves and everyone else with talk of moving, and did… nothing. Then came lockdown. And with it… no eureka moment, just an intensification of the dilemma…
Against cities: Confined to the four walls of our tightly packed terrace, the pull of space and fresh air grew more painful. We, like everyone else, realised that far more work could be done remotely that we’d ever imagined and, perhaps most importantly, that we actually liked each other’s company and made a pretty good team in times of change.
For cities: the densely packed nature of our neighbourhood, formerly resented as the creator of noise pollution and destroyer of parking spaces, suddenly turned lifeline instead. Socially distanced water fights sprang up on the street. On WhatsApp groups, neighbours who had been strangers for years were now sharing scarce supermarket delivery slots, distributing wine and loo roll like Father Christmas.
The tipping point was time. Our diaries, overcrammed for years, were abruptly emptied. So to fill them, we booked house viewings, pulling on masks and gloves outside houses that promised much on paper, but left us cold as soon as we tried to project our lives into their responsibly sanitised rooms. Until, one Saturday, we walked into yet another foreign space and it felt oddly familiar. A few steps further, and we’d fallen in love with some bricks and mortar.
Yes, this new house is four times bigger and roughly the same price as our current home. Yes, the stamp duty holiday helps. Yes, it has a workshop for Tom, bedrooms for everyone and a garden bigger than our local playground. Yes, it has great schools and, we’re told, lovely neighbours. But it also has magic.
What seemed the sensible next step, suddenly feels like an adventure. And now we have a new problem. We can’t imagine not living in this house.