It's practically the first thing any of our visitors mentions. We now call it the "C" word.
No, not cancer, or a naughty word that will see you next tuesday.
Worse than that.
"Country".
OK, a lot of them say things like, "oh it's so rural". Or "God the air's so clear here". Or in my more honest friends' summations "it's a bit f*cking green isn't it?". It's as though living in central London and it's suburbs has rendered anything without an "0207" dialling prefix part of some massive field with smock clad shepherds sucking straw and breeding with their relatives all day.
"It's only bloody Hertfordsire" I want to scream. It's not as though we've moved to Yorkshire, or Somerset or somewhere miles away from anywhere. Our town even has that perennial hallmark of all reasonable sized towns, marking them within some marketing department's demographic as fair game for cheap beer and crap food- a Wetherspoons. Like one of those faux tribal tattoos peeping out from the too low jeans just above every 18-23 year old woman's arse, we have that rubber stamp of mass-market approval. No Starbucks. No MacDonalds. No Pret. No Burger King. But a well disguised Wetherspoons. Christ.
Anyway. Back to the cud.
I suppose it's only fair to point out that I too was one of those amazed by chlorophyll just a short time ago. Living in North London means that while grass and fields aren't unheard off, you need to make an effort to see them. As for cows? Nah, mate, unless they're with special sauce lettuce cheese on a sesame seed bun. So, when we made the move out a few months ago it was a bit of a shock to the system. No tubes. No red buses. But also none of the things that make London so crap sometimes. Looney drunks, smackheads, moodie hoodies, random stabbings.
Not in Berkhamsted. No no no.
So while in my mind I do long for the 24 hour shops, the plethora of pubs and clubs that I can drink all night in, the casinos and poker dens I can blow my cash in until the sun comes up, and all those 5* restaurants run by temperamental chefs, secretly, after five minutes of the dirt, the tube, the queues and the general attitude of most people, I'm glad to get back to the greenery.
That's the thing with living in London. It may be the coolest City in the world, and an amazing place to live and while you're there everything else seems just so...slow and pedestrian, but after a while its nice to have a change. Its got so that now if you're planning on living there you need to be a foreign national anyway (check the Sunday Times rich list), with a bankroll fatter than a Vegas buffet queue. On top of which it's never really dark, or quiet, or calm and without those, it's hard to really chill out.
Well. It was for me anyway. Until such time as my mid-life crisis kicks in and I need to move back to London to hide, the grass, the air, the ducks and cows and the farmer's market will do me fine. At least until the wife swapping season starts.
Until then, four legs good, 2 legs bad, and pass the scones vicar.
