Afternoon:
14°c
Middle-class Londoners dream of swapping the strife of urban life for the imagined tranquillity of the countryside. They should think again.
Right now, I'm in the hinterland of Exmoor, visiting my ex-wife over New Year. She traded in her fashionista Islington lifestyle for the full rustic experience, and now lives on an isolated farm. The nearest shops are five miles away, and she rises at dawn to feed her animals and potter around doing strange and arcane, unpronounceable country chores. Yesterday, she spent all morning in the barn, "jiddling the wadget", or something like that.
The country has completely changed her. In London, she wouldn't leave home without first making herself up and choosing an appropriate Prada outfit. But out here, she's lost her metropolitan chic and clomps around in outsized wellingtons, muddy jodhpurs and a weird ensemble consisting of a pinstripe waistcoat, tweed blazer and a liberty bodice. Like the locals, she thinks looking like Worzel Gummidge proves her earthy, rural lack of pretension. She inhales great gusts of country air and tells me how unpolluted and lovely it is, but when I do the same all I smell is dung.
Country living isn't an easy, peaceful existence, but a backbreaking ordeal. Her farmhouse never heats up, so I am incessantly made to fetch logs and poke the fire. Despite wrapping up like an Eskimo and stoking for England, I haven't felt warm once.
Looking after animals is even harder work. Horses are higher maintenance than the most arriviste Chelsea blonde. I thought they were happy to be left alone to eat grass, but they have to be constantly groomed, led to and from fields, watered by the gallon and fed a complex array of supplements.
Horses are horrible, hulking, muscular creatures with enormous frightful teeth. They scare the hell out of me. My ex-wife's mare immediately recognised my terror and has bullied me from the moment I arrived. She persistently invades my space, looming over me, baring her hideous gnashers and breathing noisily down my neck. And she deliberately bars my way whenever I want to walk through a gate, making me wait for ages in the cold and rain. I hate her!
Londoners should be grateful for the comforts of the capital, where the most exciting event of the day isn't a trip to buy a newspaper or the sighting of a finch. Our city might have its stresses but I'll take them over a life in the sticks any day.
