to hate living in the country?

[Hullygully]

IT'S SO BORING I HATE IT I HATE IT

susitwoshoes, ds2 went on a school trip to the Gala Bingo Hall in Tooting. He loved it. Now that's a good urban school outing. Nice and cheap too.

roffle at bingo!

I used to fantasise about living in the country when I was a kid, after lots of fun with dad and bro walking the dog, building dams in streams etc.

I eventually did move to a country hamlet as an adult with DS.

HATED IT.

Only one shop - post office/grocers (= cupasoups and a few skanky potatoes).

97% of local population aged over 50.

Petrol costs almost killed me - twenty mile round trip to get to Tescos.

Unfriendly - the only person who ever spoke to me in the multiple baby groups I went to was another incomer/non local like me, and nobody had ever spoken to her either.

No pavements. Lunatic drivers.

No buses.

People used to come and visit and look out of my back window and say "oh my GOD what an amazing view, you must love it here!!" Er, no. What use is a view, really, after the third or fourth time you've seen it?

We lasted 2yrs and then moved back to the city. Only disadvantages are i) it's expensive, and ii)when we do go out of town urbanite DS sometimes gets confused between sheep and cats.

All this talk of there being stuff to do in towns and cities misses the point that most of the stuff to do is in fact insanely boring and/or overpriced. We went to the Turner Gallery yesterday (Margate seafront, ten mins drive). Free to get in, last day of the Tracy Emin exhibition. It was SHIT: loads of piss poor paintings that DS could do (and do better) of women flolloping about thudding themselves off with things like 'Confussed love' or 'But I miss you' scrawled above them (misspelling artist's own). Then we went and had breakfast in a swanky cafe in the Old Town where two fry ups, a piece of toast for the babe, 2 coffees and an apple juice came to £19.80. Parking for 2 hours was nearly £3.

If we'd been in the country we could have gone strolling along a field and fed some goats. Then come home for home-baked bread and home-made jam. Much nicer.

This thread has really made me laugh and I feel completely justified in keeping my children in London. Even though ds2 spends his time planning which chickens he would keep if he had space and reading poultry management magazines.

mintyy, my post was a bit misleading. They didn't go to the bingo hall to play bingo, just to have a look at it. Not sure why but apparently it is pretty splendid inside.

See Hully, the idea of the cuntyside is nice to me, but I would also quickly get myself a reputation within a small population. It would be "Oh she's the one who.." and I am not even that exciting. DH is embarrassed of me in the summer in case the neighbour hear what I am saying when we are in the garden, but he is ridiculous anyway. We live near a large town but near pretend nature reserve country side so that is good enough for me at the moment. Until I improve on my social skills.

iris: oh its a shame they didn't get to have a little game. Such fun with the dabbers and the whole legs 11 thing!

When we were house hunting, SMiL tried to lure us to their rural hellhole market town from the city we love by boasting of the Spar, Co-op AND Tesco (which was open past ten!).

Get away from us, you temptress, with your overpriced mouldy veg, we said. Leave us to our takeaways that actually deliver, our taxis and our pubs that you can walk into even if your grandad didn't drink there when he were a lad.

If we'd been in the country we could have gone strolling along a field and fed some goats. Then come home for home-baked bread and home-made jam. Much nicer.

Yeah but Ivor in the city you have a choice: you can go to a gallery or not, you have a choice of exhibitions (we go fairly often and there are a lot of free ones near us), you have a choice of where to eat (swanky cafe or greasy spoon). In the country you have no galleries :( or front room local artist 'galleries' with three paintings of fields, or you have to drive an hour or two each way to go to a gallery.

And you must have known Tracy Emin's work before you went so no sympathy on that count

I don't.

You could move?

GetOrfAKAMrsUsainBolt I agree with you totally about where you live - have you tried the African restaurant? The only non-chain place in the city that's not Indian or Chinese, but lovely people and interesting food.

We love in a smallish village, have been there for 18 years now. We've done all the country things like keeping sheep/pigs/cows/chickens. I really feel like moving into Bristol, just for a change, especially as I love the idea of gardening, but so much stuff gets eaten by deer or rabbits. The only thing I would truly miss is not having neighbours. How do you know that you're not moving next door to the kind of person who loves to open their patio doors and play music, loud, on a sunny day?

I quite liked her dirty bed. I hadn't seen any of her paintings. I was happier, I think, before I had... [dramatic]

Actually we went to an art exhibition at our village hall the weekend before last - there were six paintings and a candle that had exploded called 'Candle From The Conservatory' I think I enjoyed that more!

I like sheep, I like wellies, and I'm sure, if I lived in rural England, that my bread would be all lovely and gooey rather than the rock hard lump I once achieved using an Asda Ciabatta mix. Also a local landowner in a wax jacket with a manly moustache would fall in love with me and send me his elderly mother's Elderflower wine at Chrsitmas and help me when my Land Rover got stuck in mud. And it wouldn't matter that I am fat plump because country ladies should be.

I've only ever lived in the country, apart from uni. My Dad's a farmer, and my husband's a farmer, so no choice really.

I don't find it boring. How far are you from town? I've always worked and socialised in town.

Ah I see. You are comparing the Tracy Emin experience to an imaginary countryside :)

If we'd been in the country we could have gone strolling along a field and fed some goats. Then come home for home-baked bread and home-made jam. Much nicer.

Just the thing in a howling gale. Plus, the farmers don't like you walking in their fields, and wouldn't be above peppering your arse.

No goats either. Never seen one. And it's a bit pointless trying to feed a field of rape.

It's not imaginary. I have read heducational books about it like by Jilly Cooper and Jane Austen and that other one who has her name on the front in really loopy writing, writes about people called Polly and Marigold... Catherine Alliot.

I have never had my arse peppered, sounds quite exciting.

The problem is hully you moved to the wrong bit of the countryside. We live in the pennines. You know the bleak bits that get shown on tv sometimes, all dark satanic mill type things? Thats what I can see outside my window. BUT in half an hour I can be in the centre of a city (manchester) and in 2 and a halfish I can be in London. DH has family up in the wilds where you can only get a phone signal standing on one leg on top of the nearest mountain on a lue moon and as lovely as it is I could never live there. Here just on the edge of civilisation is fab :)

blue moon.

Ha, my husband's a farmer. Walking in fields is fine, as long as stick to the footpaths, and shut gates etc.

I don't make jam, but we do have a veggie garden, and make damson gin.

I enjoy walking in the countryside, having a beautiful view, space, quiet, subathing topless without being spotted, privacy etc. I've never got the hunting and shooting hobbies (not for me), or even young farmers. I tried young farmers, when I was younger, but couldn't get into it. My cousins loved it.

I met my DH through mutual friends, and I never ever wanted to marry a farmer.

We do have to drive to see our friends, but never known any different. Our closest friends all live within half an hour of us.

I've never felt isolated, but it's an areas I've grown up in, and always had friends and family nearby. We do often go to the theatre, whether it's Manchester, Liverpool, Shrewsbury, or Llandudno. We don't mind driving.

We both have friends and family in London, and probably visit them about once a year. It's having the money to do these things, rather than isolation, that's the issue.

minty and iris - the bingo hall was an amazing 1930s (I think) cinema and is in pretty fantastic condition, it is HUGE ( could hold over 3000 people) and a riot of neo-gothic bonkersness. Have a look at it

Depends where you are. Here, you'd either get chased by the farmer , chased by a herd of bullocks, or shot in shooting season.

There's a lot of shoots up here. Possibly something to do with their being nothing else to do. That, or the farmers wanting to keep their hand in.

'most of the stuff to do is in fact insanely boring and/or overpriced.'

Massive overgenerisation. And, as wiser people than I have pointed out, you can choose where you do culture/eat/drink in cities. You could actually completely avoid Tracy Emin, if you wished.

Oh, and you've probably got a better chance of finding charming animals to feed in a city farm than in the country.