How to live in the countryside

😀
http://themakingprogressblues.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/moving-to-the-country-ten-top-tips-for-a-happy-life/%5B/url%5D

So very true

🙂

like it!

Spot on 😀

Loved that! Here’s Stewart Lee’s take on it:

That is so TRUE on so many levels. Love it

brilliantly accurate.

I agree that you now have to go as far west as the edge of the vale of evesham escarpment (plus a bit to get beyond broadway) now to escape the “london influence”.

I used to work on a farm between Stow on the Wold and Bourton on the water and now most of the villages there are dead in the week and beredtrousered in the weekend. 🙁

Plus, if you ARE pissed off by being woken up on a Sunday morning by the stupid church bell noise, a complaint to the local council will get it stopped. Hurrah!

Nice one….. so very true.

Plus a complete absence of Stewart Lee. It just gets better and better…

Scarily true! 🙂

Going the other way, though –
No, you do not need to wear wellies in London. EVER. Stop it.
No, you can’t just park there.
etc.

Am now worried what the village will give me as a nickname! (Having recently moved back to the rural folds….!)

Pretty accurate.

On the cockerel subject, an incomer to my Grandad’s village who got on the parish council once tried to get cockerels banned from the village, and enforce a curfew on mowing in the evening.

It’s fair to say they didn’t succeed on either count.

And, I call it ‘my Grandad’s village’ because he has more right to it than anyone else, probably, having spent approx. 90 of his 95 years there (and those before in the village next door), on his small farm, keeeping chickens, mowing til all hours, was a founding member of the cricket club and is the only living parishioner with grazing rights to the village common, though he doesn’t exercise them, only occasionally threatening to in order to piss off a ‘townie’……

That’s how it works ’round yer ya see……….

CaptainFlashheart

Depends where you moved back from, what you did and whether you have family in the village.

A guy who moved into our village from Wembley I believe some 10 years ago or more is still referred to as ‘London Bob’ although rather more affectionately now as his kids have grown up there and his wife runs the local nursery, but, you get a name & it’ll stick!

Thanks OP,
Having been small village dweller this is scarily accurate.
It made me laugh.
I remember some lovely people from across the border complaining about the farmer spreading manure in the field next their holiday cottage while they were there (one of the 4 times of the year they were there).

Wonderfully observational and completely true! I aught to send this to my parents down south, who’s patience of the ‘new’ locals is severely tested every time we get complaints about the farm machinery being too noisy, smelly, muddy, dusty or big. It’s fair to say that harvest is always entertaining…

TTP reached and breached some time ago capn.

Happens up here too, head for the East Neuk of Fife and lovely wee fishing villages like Elie are on populated at the weekend by RR touting, red trouser bedecked K-nobs from Edinburgh.

The weegies are all too coked up of a weekend to get out of town as well as out of it! 😀

Very true, Soob! 🙂

*Must remember not to take the Evans guns on a family shoot day if/when i get invited!*

A copy of that should be included with the details of any house being sold by city estate agents that’s outside of city limits.
That’s any city, not just London, but it should be given greater exposure in London.
Brilliantly perceptive.
And horribly true.

I grew up between Banbury and Chipping Norton. We did have a Prussian Baron in the village. But Chipping Norton, while undeniably the posher of the two, was generally OK. The moneyed land owners were old school and part of the furniture. Now it’s TTP central!

I spent a decade living in Manchester, and it became my adopted home. It’s a wonderful city.

And now I too am the comer-in to a small Lancashire village. And there’s plenty of dosh round here (mainly farming), but this is a mixed rural environment (we’re the never-here-in-daylight daily commuters) with most people working near where they live.

I’ve never met a poor farmer

I’ve never met a poor farmer

Chap next door pretty much has string holding up his trousers. Except, he also owns two farms (each son runs one) and manages to scrimp by enough to own a racehorse. Must be such a hardship.

Blimey that could be this village.
Day 2 of our residency I was advised by a top old fella that we’d “not be local until there’s 3 generations underground in the churchyard!” Friendly little place. 😀

Shortly after we moved to the Peak District, we were asked in the local shop “Are you local?” Because I wore a suit the locals were convinced that I was a “Taxman” (I’m not ) – I did find it odd that people didn’t speak to me

I remember a great exchange in the old Outside café at Calver….

Townie: Do you do lattes?

Girl behind counter: Sorry, you can have it black or white….

(Sadly, it has now been revamped, but does do a great latte..ahem! 😳 )

Day 2 of our residency I was advised by a top old fella that we’d “not be local until there’s 3 generations underground in the churchyard!” Friendly little place.

Although I live in Chippenham, there are two small villages several miles away, where I’m probably more ‘local’ than anyone now living in them.
Ford, on the A420 Bristol Road, is where my Grandparents lived, and my cousin has traced my family back to 1763 in the village, and Slaughterford, a couple of miles from Ford, is where my Great-grandparents are buried, and where my Granddad and Great-granddad both worked in the old papermill.
Nice to know where your roots lie.

All pretty true except the parish counsel thing, who are generally a lot of busy bodies.

Is that Jason donavon in ‘ that there picture ‘ get off my land kind off thing 😯

rogerthecat – Member
Blimey that could be this village.
Day 2 of our residency I was advised by a top old fella that we’d “not be local until there’s 3 generations underground in the churchyard!” Friendly little place.

Friendly and Generous!!

I agree that you now have to go as far west as the edge of the vale of evesham escarpment (plus a bit to get beyond broadway) now to escape the “london influence”.

Is that why I don’t recognise a lot of that? Though to be fair I also live in quite a strange village, the majority of the houses in which have been built since the 60s, so the incomers outnumber the real locals – but we’re mostly normal people who actually like living in the country, not retired city bankers.

Possibly, aracer, but to be honest nobody wants to live in your swamp, even the red-trousered.
🙂

It probably needs a couple of extra points about buying a log burner and a toy 4×4 because it once snowed and you live in the country now 😉

And the problem with red trousers is what, exactly?

Our village is pretty good about in comers – never had a problem, but then we did get straight into the social scene, which helped (pub, pool team, quiz team, biodiversity society).

Never criticise until you know who you’re talking to, never shoot your mouth off on a subject unless you’re sure of your audience (yes, I’m a fine one to say that, before anyone mentions one of my previous efforts) and get involved and things will be fine. Village life is great!

Needs one about fighting viciously the building of new houses in the village.

A longer version, a very funny book if you were from the country side

Needs one about fighting viciously the building of new houses in the village.

No way, that’s clearly not on! New houses? That would spoil the place awfully. Not on, dear boy.

Meh.

I live outside the village ( which if im honest is more of a suburb now anyway) . I know my 8 neighbours 3 down the road and the 2 farmers near by + rustymac in the village. Thats plenty but the villagers comunity council will fight you to the death if you dare submit planning for more than 1 house.

Bovis appear to think otherwise, which is where trail-rat’s post comes in 😉

And the problem with red trousers is what, exactly?

Apart from looking like a tit? They seem to be the most glaringly obvious sign of a townie wearing what he’s been told by posh magazines is the approved form of dress for blending in with the locals in the country.
Trouble is the locals wear whatever is cheap and dark coloured so’s not to show the mud, grease, cow/sheep/pig/horse/chicken shit, likely ten quid jeans, corduroys or boiler suits. Or mil.surplus camo gear, which fulfils all the listed requirements.
At any rate, that’s how most of the locals dress in the villages around here, at any rate, those that live and work there all year round…

Love this thread.