Diary – 12 August 2005

I have always thought I was allergic to the English countryside: too melancholic, too dark, too many Daily Mail readers. So it was with some misgivings that I received the news from my wife that we had taken a lease on a cottage in Oxfordshire. I should say that the property is in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, so it’s not exactly the untamed wilds of the countryside: we have 2,000 acres of beautifully tended Capability Brown parkland to enjoy, we are only an hour and a half from the Ivy, and our fellow tenants on the estate are public relations chiefs, television presenters and TV production executives. In fact, a residents’ committee meeting here would be like a night at the Groucho club. Nevertheless, it has brought me into contact with the sort of people I would not normally encounter. Like Mr Margadale, the piano-tuner, who delivered a treatise on political correctness that climaxed with the assertion that ‘you can be prosecuted for referring to black ice these days’. Or Mr Benson, the gardener, who, when I told him what I did for a living, replied, ‘Ah well, keeps you busy, I expect.’

I have been inspired by the way other unreconstructed townies of my acquaintance have fallen for the country life. My friend Alex James, who plays bass in the rock band Blur, exchanged his fabulous Covent Garden flat for a rambling pile, with working farm attached, in Gloucestershire. He used to fly his own plane and now he drives a tractor. He was once a famous London roustabout but now he has a wife, a child and a suit from Holland and Holland. So assimilated is he into his new environment that not only does he look at the property ads in Country Life, but he reads the articles as well.