to hate living in the country?

[Hullygully]

IT'S SO BORING I HATE IT I HATE IT

What is so wonderful about all these country schools?

sadly, proven academic track record, not being single sex, or faith-schools, and a good chance of an in-catchment admission.

and just Not Being Shite.

I hate it too. It's really weird when you go to proper places and there are buses at night and people! I feel like I've come home.

Went to Manchester not long back and could not believe the number of people out and about at 11pm. It was like a busy shopping day in the nearest town to me here.

YANBU!

I quite liked the winos, too, motherinferior

Country file has just started on BBC

It's great in the country, free food on the doorstep, no cinema's or shops or noise. Living outside in summer and a big log fire in winter. What's not to like?

I have to be in a city too. Grew up in a very small town (one main street) and gradually moved countries and towns until in London. Resisting the suburbs too.

YANBU I LOVE to visit the countryside but I couldn;t live there - right now I am stuck in suburbia (but 20 mins from a proper big town or 3 ) but once the smalls have buggered off I am buying a city centre flat

Do you know how long it takes for an ambulance/fire/police to get to you in the middle of the countryside?

NellyJob

About 50k south of Milan, that damn fog gets the whole plain

I'm about 15min in the car from Pavia.

I live outside in the summer and have a big log fire in the winter.

You can console yourself though with these wondrous advantages of rural life:-

1. Although the local Tesco's is so small it only stocks crap food and no tuna, you will not need a quid for the trolley because they don't have coin slots
2. Because there is nothing to do but walk in fields, life is very cheap but only once you've paid back the mortgage you took out to buy a decent pair of Joules wellies
3. There will be no local drugs dealers, so your children will have only innocent people on their speed-dial not that they'll need dealers because the fields are full of magic mushrooms anyway
4. When your neighbours' cockerel wakes you 4 hours early in the summer you will be able to spend the extra time usefully, waiting for a bus back to civilisation.

The best advantage of course is that in time you will slowly go insane and so fit effortlessly into the psyche of your neighbours.

I've moved from country to city.

I miss my friends, I miss the space, I miss the humongous house because you can buy a matchbox shared with 5 others for the same price here, I miss horse riding, bale tossing and the local pub.

I do not miss fuck all to do of a weekend, always having to drive anywhere for entertainment, everyone knowing your business, being the designated driver as cabs can't find you.

Oh yes and having to marry someone Asian and Welsh just to be really really sure they weren't related.

There will be no local drugs dealers
you are joking right?

I always assumed the countryside was riddled with drug dealers. Can countryside be riddled? And bad drugs too. Pig dope and stuff like that. What am I talking about? I'd better go and do the ironing.

And don't talk about getting snowed in.

Hell on earth.

See, what you all need is "pretend countryside" where I live.

Opposite my house is a wood, with a large Common behind it that goes on for miles, and backs onto lots of lovely fields with ponies and horses in then.

No slurry, no sheep, lots of mums doing school run in riding stuff (no idea what it's all called), little girls at pony club.

BUT, in the middle of the wood are the M25 and the Met Line. Central London in 20 mins (on the fast train). Waitrose down the road, tennis clubs, swimming pools, playgrounds five mins away, John Lewis twenty mins away...

trust me you are right the countryside is riddled with drug dealers

extraordinarily young ones

Oh no. No. We've always lived in cities because we like being able to walk everywhere and go to cafes and museums and see people going around being human and now we're planning to move to the country where there's a lovely school for DS who has SEN. I've been trying to convince myself that if he's happy we'll all be happy and ignoring the little voice in my head that says no, we'll all be bored and isolated and counting the hours until he grows up and we can return to real life and actually, on balance, I'd probably rather he was less well educated and I had a life for the next ten years. Tell me it isn't so.

I would also suggest your children are more at risk from drink driving - since that's what lots of teens do when the have to drive 30 miles to any form of nightlife and there are no taxis

don't do it stephanie

I know quite a few people who've moved to the country and they are drug fiends! An have met like minded people to get off their heads with

Really? Better the guilt of knowing there was a good place for ds and we didn't choose it than the resentment of living in the middle of sodding nowhere? Only I loathe animals and Tories and 4x4s and I've never seen why people want to look at fields which are really just factories and the most exciting thing that happens is very slow changes of colour, a bit like paint drying. But the school is lovely.

Is your DS already at school, Stephanie?

oh that thing about the schools...
it's not worth it trust me