On Saturday Thumbs-up for my coming-of-age column

THIS column is celebrating its 21st birthday, which used to be a big moment, because it was the age when you were officially an adult.

Now, voting and getting married can be done at 18, when you can also legally drink yourself into oblivion should the mood take you. But old habits die hard and for some reason the 21st birthday is still regarded as something of a milestone.

So, as proud father of a newspaper column which has survived the vicissitudes the modern media industry for one-and-twenty years, I think I have every excuse to celebrate.

One reason I’m doing so is because I am getting more feedback now than I’ve ever received since the column began back in 2001.

Not everyone agrees with my views, of course – it would be a weird world if they did. Added to that, I do not think the support I get from readers has anything to do with the talents – or obvious lack thereof – that I might possess as a writer.

No… my theory concerning this column’s longevity is that it offers a voice from the countryside which is not often heard in highly urbanised, modern-day Britain.

It is written by a rather ordinary countryman who grapples with life in much the same way as a good many other ordinary countryfolk.

Very few other daily newspapers – and certainly not a single one of the nationals – employs a regular columnist whose opinions are borne solely from a rural perspective.

There are a few others based in the countryside, but they tend to concentrate on particular areas of influence, such as agriculture, or nature and the environment.

What this column attempts to do is pass a highly generalised view of just about anything and everything through a rural lens.

Whether it’s a few humble observations gleaned on a dog-walk or thoughts on the shenanigans of prime ministers, the aim here is to ask: how does this particular subject filter down to those of us who live out in the sticks?

Why bother doing such a thing, you might ask?

Well, as I say, hardly anyone else is doing it, so from day-one my motto has been: let’s give the countryside a voice.

Because there are getting on towards 15 million people in the UK who live out in those half-forgotten sticks – and whichever way you look at it, that’s a lot of people who don’t seem to have much of a voice in a world that is increasingly dominated by urbanisation, cowboy planning controls and concrete.

I believe I’m right in saying this ‘voice from the countryside’ has always mattered dearly to the people who’ve run this newspaper.

The South West is, after all, mainly rural – we do have a few cities and larger towns, but they don’t add up to a fraction of the area still dominated by countryside.

Of course, there are councillors and MPs who represent the rural zones – and there are worthy organisations like the NFU and WI that have a great role to play across the rural landscape.

But basically, what I’ve tried to do in this column over the past 21 years is to think and write along the lines of… “Okay, so here’s an issue or a big thing that everyone seems to be talking about. Or maybe it’s just something ordinary or seemingly unimportant which is lying just beneath the surface – but which somehow everyone knows and thinks about.

“Now let’s take a look at whatever it is from the perspective of an ordinary middle-aged bloke who lives ten miles from the nearest supermarket and 60 miles from the nearest city centre.

“How does this thing strike him? What, peering above his local hedgerow, does he think about it? How is it going to change or affect a person who sees more buzzards in the average day than he sees other humans?”

It is my constant hope that by thinking in such a way and by approaching subjects with that rather neutral, far-from-the-corridors-ofpower, perspective, I can write a column that will reach a little way into the hearts and minds of some of those other 15 million country-folk.

I am talking about the sort of people who don’t have to worry too much about being trendy or woke or even (dare I say it) care much what anyone else thinks.

If the feedback I get is anything to go by, the modus operandi seems to be working, especially in recent times.

Covid has made many people feel isolated and lonely – for them, it’s nice to know there’s some twit out there who thinks and reacts in much the same way they do.

A man wrote to me this week: “I don’t agree with your politics but I had to admit to my wife after reading your Saturday column that perhaps you’re not such a bad sort after all. In fact, a lot of the old nonsense you come out with is exactly the same as the nonsense I come out with at home!”

Yep, that’ll do me. It might not be the most gushing of birthday cards, but all you need as a 21-year-old is a bit of thumbs-up and you’re ready to take on the world.

This column is marking its 21st birthday... looking at the world through a rural lens