On Saturday A country mouse view of life in the city

THIS week I visited another country, or that was how it felt. There were parakeets in the trees and at every meal we exalted in different exotic cuisines. However, we did not take a passport, nor were we expected to have a lateral flow test or undergo any other kind of Covid requirement on our return.

That is because the foreign country was London – a city I’ve been visiting all my life, but which has never felt so entirely alien to me before.

Not because of the parakeets, I hasten to add, although those exotic birds were squawking from every other tree. Nor the exotic food, although I have to admit the diversity of what’s on offer is one of the great marvels of our capital city today.

No, part of our reasoning for going to town was that there are so many of the blighters down here, we thought we’d help redress the balance and go up there.

And what created the sense of foreign-ness was the vast wealth on display in so many parts of the city. I am not talking about those parts of the West End which have always been occupied by the world’s mega-rich – and also, before anyone mentions it, I do know there are poor people living in sink estates right across London.

It was the shock at finding once mundane and ordinary quarters so awash with wealth that made a country bumpkin like me feel dizzy. I refer to corners of south west London which, back when I lived in town, were the dreary stomping grounds of what used to be called ‘the great unwashed’. Places, the mere mention of which 40 years ago, would have made a country-lover shudder with visions of suburban drabness. Clapham, Wandsworth, Streatham, Tooting…

My son Harry lives there, and here’s a weird thing… there are more four-wheel drive vehicles in his road than in the whole of Exmoor. Who needs a 4x4 to drive on all that welltamed tarmac?

It would probably be more accurate to say there was a greater value of four-wheel drives in the street. Vast, new, gleaming three or four litre machines, with a scattering of electric hybrids plugged into kerbside chargers. Posh Mercedes and BMW SUVs the size of lorries with starting prices way over £60,000. I counted half a dozen Porsche Cayenne 4x4s within one 100-metre section of the street, each costing north of £100k. The vehicular real estate on that one thoroughfare would have amounted to the cost of a new hospital.

Harry would say things like: “See that house where the builders are working? It just went for £3.5 million. A three bedroomed house, which they are now gutting and rebuilding at a cost of another £1.5 million…”

This paper’s property pages often feature large and beautiful mansions, complete with stable blocks, cottages, lawns, lakes, woods and hundreds of acres, for that sort of money.

Crazy! No wonder I felt like a foreigner in a strange land. And if that’s me feeling that way – owner of a nice cottage and garden inside a national park – I wonder what penniless immigrants or refugees must think when they walk the streets of London?

I do not want, in any way, to push thoughts of such people aside, especially not at the moment, but this is the country where I was born and bred and London is my capital city – yet I now feel like some sort of disenfranchised alien walking its streets. If I sold everything I own, I could not afford a one-bedroom hovel with an SW postcode.

Like many ordinary working people, I’ve always regarded our metropolis as being a place to which I could have moved, had the desire ever overtaken me. I could have found somewhere cheap and talked my way into some sort of job – indeed, I did just that many years ago.

Now I could not dream of doing such a thing nor, I wager, could 99% of the Westcountry. For a long time people have talked about a NorthSouth divide – a geographic equation in which the Westcountry is never mentioned. This has always puzzled me. We have as much chance of equalling the wealth of south east England as Yorkshire or Lancashire.

If Boris is really serious about ‘levelling up’ then he ought to look at his own native Exmoor, where wealthy Clapham-ites are buying up holiday homes with spare cash while the local working youth are being consigned to…

To where? That is the question. Someone I know locally has been trying to buy a basic two-bedroom terraced house in a rather unlovely town not far from Exmoor for over a year. Such is the property frenzy, they’ve seen their highest offers beaten time and time again. After 12 months in Mum’s spare bedroom, they are feeling homeless and desperate.

It’s always been this way – the ancient Aesop’s Fables included a famous tale about the rich-poor divide called The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.

Today, my fear is that the new levelling up agenda could turn out to be just another Aesop’s fable.

London is my capital city, yet I couldn’t afford a one-bedroom hovel with a SW postcode