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I once went to the Cotswolds on holiday. If you're well off, you buy a cottage there. If you're skint, you buy a weekend at the Lygon Arms. There, looked down upon by a large stuffed stag, you eat too much breakfast before setting off in your townie car to drive around the townie-hating villages, where you are easily identifiable as a townie on account of your dreadful townie clothes.
At some point, you will come across The Copper Kettle - there is one in every Cotswold village - where a lady in an apron will slap down a clotted cream tea, her face a mask of brittle pleasantry.
Burford has a Copper Kettle. The village has just been voted the sixth most idyllic place to live in Europe. I've just googled Burford, and without a word of a lie it also has a pub called The Lamb, a clothes shop called Belinda's and a bakery called Huffkins, run by a Mrs Topsy Tae. Well, she wouldn't be called Sanjita Patel, would she?
And herein lies my problem with the Cotswolds. As a reflection of modern Britain, Burford is about as representative as the Night Garden, with its Tombliboos, trubliphones and tiddles. Burford might be a lovely place to live if you're the sort of person who never farts but give me London any day, in all its stinking, ugly glory.
Perfect places set my teeth on edge. Not that Burford will be perfect for much longer: the coachloads of tourists will see to that. Forget motorways or Tesco: if ever there were a death knell for a pretty English village, it is to be featured in a Forbes Top Ten idyllic places.
* I'm as pleased as the next skint person that Natalie Massenet, owner of the brilliant website net-a-porter.com, has finally launched The Outnet, a virtual "outlet shop" selling past-season designer bargains. But I feel a bit cross that she has gone and trademarked the phrase "It's Chic-onomics". The first recorded usage of "chiconomics" I can find was back in August 2007 but since the credit crunch, its popularity has soared. Words, especially silly, made-up ones, should belong to everyone.
* Every era has its defining moments. 1969: man walks on the moon. 2009: Ashton Kutcher becomes the first person to attract a million followers on Twitter, beating CNN by half an hour. I'm pleased for the guy, but then, the playing field is hardly level. CNN might have, like, world news at its disposal, but Ashton Kutcher posts photos of his wife's bottom - and his wife is Demi Moore.
Anyone interested in seeing what she looks like bent over in a pair of white knickers need only go to http://twitter.com/aplusk and swell Kutcher's ego - sorry, popularity - further still. Or you could go and watch some paint dry, instead.
Reader views (3)
Topsy Taee here, Huffkins tearoom owner! and yes they are both my real names and no my husband is not called Tim!
Sadly Burford is all too real!Real businesses employing real people, paying real taxes, trying to stay alive during the recession. Its trendy to knock the cotswolds as a twee tourist trap, so dont let the facts get in the way of trendy townies opinions who don't know what they are talking about. Any businesses or communities that are able to stay vibrant and healthy in these economic times should be celebrated, especially by the media who rely on business advertising to survive. Find something original to bash and somewhere that contributes less to the real economy.
- Topsy Taee, burford, 24/04/2009 16:44
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Hilareous article much enjoyed but would have been even funnier if reference to the 'mountains' surrounding Burford had been mentioned!! - as per Forbes.
Look forward to reading more from Laura.
- Richard Pinder, Cotswolds, 20/04/2009 14:50
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Why ought a village (in the Cotswolds or anywhere else) be "representative" of an entire nation and (an even bigger "why") does the fact that it's not mean that it's a bad place? A city will always have a more diverse population than almost any village for obvious reasons, and whether that is a good thing of itself is surely a very moot point.
- H, London, UK, 20/04/2009 13:20
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