Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson

‘I love weekends away. But let someone else do the work – a richer friend or a hotel’

There’s a mass exodus from the city to the countryside going on.

Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been steadily migrating from country to city – but now the trend is reversing as a result of lockdown. June and July this year saw a 126 per cent rise in rural property searches.

Town mice are fleeing their cat-filled tenements with dreams of large stores of nuts, home-made cider and bracing air.

They will work from home or their ‘architect-designed garden spaces’, formerly known as sheds.

Well, Mrs Mouse has been fantasising about a country cottage, somewhere we can retreat to and work in, away from the city. It’s a pleasant diversion to get on the computer and peer at properties in Pembrokeshire and Devon and dream about a rural bolthole with log-burner, blackberries in the hedgerows, clean air and fewer predators.

But I am resolutely opposed to the idea. Country cottages create an enormous burden of time, cost and worry. For starters, to ensure you’re making the most of the investment, you really ought to spend most weekends there.

That means a lot of driving. So you get into the car on Friday evening, only to find horrific traffic on the A303. Arrive in a freezing cold house at midnight. Drink a bottle of wine. Sleep late. Get back in the car and drive half an hour to the supermarket. Buy food. Get the house warmed up and have a nap. Go for a walk in the driving wind and rain. Attend to a broken boiler. Drink more wine.

On Sunday, dash round the garden, weeding and clearing up leaves. Pack the car and drive back to London. Arrive, depressed, at 9pm and sort out school clothes and homework for the children.

When you’re not there, you fret about the pipes freezing, the overgrowing garden, damp in the downstairs loo and – the Town Mouse’s arch-enemy – rats in the attic.

I don’t want to be incarcerated in town permanently. I love going away for the weekend. But let someone else do the work – a richer friend or a hotel or country-cottage provider.

Oldie contributor Rachel Johnson says Notting Hill-based novelist Sebastian Faulks spends practically every weekend in a grand house as the guest of wealthy bankers who are keen to show that they have a literary side.

If Mr Faulks had made the mistake of buying his own country cottage, he would not be free to accept these invitations. He would feel bound to visit his own place and light its fire, carry its logs, clean it and do the garden. Not having a place in the country gives you freedom.

There are thousands of places to rent in the UK. Better to spend the absurd fortunes you would squander on a country cottage on fine wines, and you can explore new places rather than being bound to the same place.

I was just looking yesterday at retreats on Lundy Island, run by the everexcellent Landmark Trust. There is a very nice one-person bolthole called the Radio Room which costs only £30 a night. That looks like a nice spot for a town mouse who wants to do a bit of writing and walking. I’m also looking at a rental caravan on the Isle of Eigg. That would be nice in May.

In my own case, I also love weekends in London, cycling, walking through parks, not driving, playing tennis, sitting in my chair and doing nothing.

London is fun. One weekend in autumn, Mrs Mouse and I took advantage of a cheap deal to spend a night drinking cocktails in a smart hotel in Marylebone.

We cycled to the hotel on Saturday, cycled home on Sunday and felt as if we’d had a real break. On other weekends, we are free to take minibreaks in Rome or get the train to Paris. So much easier.

What back-breaking toil there is in looking after land – I know from the 12 years my family lived in Devon. Some wag has estimated that each half-acre of land means another half an hour’s work a day.

Some employ people to do this work – but then you have all the hassle of being a manager of people. ‘It is just as irksome to have a servant as to be a servant,’ as D H Lawrence wisely put it.

To be happy, the sages tell us, you should be free of desire. It is wanting stuff you don’t have that causes misery. Yes, I am aware that desire is also a spur to industry, but Town Mouse is a lazy mouse. Renting or simply doing nothing is far superior to owning.

Be happy – keep it simple.