Things I've Learned about Living in the Country (After 61 Hours)

Mostly about deliveries

1. There’s literally one guy doing deliveries.

   He drove like fury the first day, but the second the Evri man came across me with hands literally caked in clay, red faced and sweating being half way through digging a hole (flowerbed). He asked cheerily whether I had just moved in, and I said ‘yes’. He’d never once made a delivery to this property before, he said, and, (smiling) should he expect to be back? HA! I like him, already.

   The thing is, it’s just one guy. So in the 60ish hours I’ve been here I have had about 8 emails saying parcels are delayed or not coming as planned. This does not happen in London. I assume, because there’s more than one guy.

2. The Merlin app is a must.

   Part of the reason I was so excited to be in the countryside was for the birdsong.

   Two books I read in the last year taught me about the massacre of British birdlife - ‘Wilding’ by Isabella Tree and ‘The Nightingale’ by Sam Lee. It is impossible to read these works and not feel compelled to do something - anything - to try to reverse their plight (I adore cats and would love to have one, but they really are a huge part of the problem).

   When we arrived at the Barn on Wednesday night, I thought I heard an owl hooting in the distance. When my aunt and uncle came for lunch, the chorus was all around up and they told me about Merlin.

   Merlin Bird ID is an app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, part of Cornell University, the Ivy League college in Ithica, New York. It is Shazam for bird song. You hit ‘record’ and the app tells you which bird is singing to you. Within a chorus it can pick out individual birds. In one ten minute period yesterday, while I was lolling on the grass, it picked up:

   • Eurasian Jackdaw

   • Long-tailed Tit

   • Carrion Crow

   • Common Chiffchaff

   • Great Tit

   • Common Wood-Pigeon

   • European Robin

   • Eurasian Blue Tit

   • Dunnock

   • European Goldfinch

   Birding seems like one of those things that, like gardening, catches you unawares as you reach middle age, but while I will not yet be listing it under ‘hobbies’ on my CV I do see only great benefits to being aware of what the birdlife is around me as I start to plant a garden. I like the idea of starting a podcast about being a rural novice, and would love to interview John Nicholson whose new book, ‘Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood’ comes out in a few days. What do you think?

3. Everything is 25 minutes away.

   In my London years (which ended, really, when my peers and I reached about 32 and going to the new, hot restaurant was no longer the Saturday night activity of choice, oh and also COVID) I used to say that everywhere was 45 mins away. It didn’t matter how near or far the location was, nor whether the mode of transport was bus, tube, or legs, everything took 45 minutes to get to.

   Here, it seems, everything is 25 minutes away by car. All of my nearest, larger towns, seem to be about 25 minutes away, which means Waitrose is 25 minutes away (imagine a trip to and from the supermarket taking almost an hour in total! This is new!)

   This at once makes it seem like everything is very far away, but also somehow that I can get to things faster than in London.

4. MOP Fairs are a thing.

   Everywhere I go I keep seeing signs for a MOP FAIR. I googled it, it has something to do with a historical labour market or something. I don’t know, I got bored reading the wiki page. What I really wanted to know is what goes on at a modern day MOP FAIR.

   It is still something of a mystery but there are several on today so perhaps I will go and find out. I think it is less of the artisanal-cheese-and-willow-baskets kind of market and more of a funfair situation. I shall report back. It feels like the right thing to do to go. One must start learning the traditions and customs of one’s new habitat.

5. There’s good coffee.

   Thank god, honestly. Ok, it takes 25 minutes to get to it (see above) but there is good and proper coffee available.

6. You don’t only find eggs at the supermarket.

   Eggs are available for sale every few feet it seems, from outside people’s homes at the side of the road, to the counter of the local animal feed shop (you can’t imagine how ridiculous I felt walking into a place that sells equine equipment with my two stupid, small dogs, but the staff were entirely friendly and undiscriminatory and they had the dog bowls I needed).

7. Living outside the Deliveroo zone is wholly positive. So far.

   So far I have not starved to death, and I am eating properly. I’m sure this will become tedious, after all I have formed a decade-long habit of getting men on bikes to bring me what I want within 10mins of when I want it and as such have allowed my already-underdeveloped skills of self-sufficiency atrophy to the point of no return.

8. Trump tariffs? What Trump tariffs?

   Aside from an email from my portfolio manager endeavouring to reassure me about the state of global markets which did penetrate my rural bubble because I adore him and have a crush on him and he is my dream man so I open every email he sends (and also because he holds the fate of my finances in his gorgeous, wonderful, very clever hands) I have successfully avoided basically all news.

   It is very nice but, of course, just being in the countryside does not make me immune from the reach of Trump’s tariffs. Not in the least. In fact, now that I am so reliant on my car, so vulnerable to the price of fuel, surrounded by the agricultural industry and those who rely on it, and with more limited places to shop for goods, I imagine I will be living with its consequences just as much here as anywhere.

9. Dog walks are no longer really necessary.

   In my former life (to which I will return this evening, at least for the weekend) my day was structured around dog walks.

   Morning, noon and night (literally) I took the dogs out for a walk, at least around the block, to get their business done.

   Now, I just… open the door. And out they go. I am concerned as to the implications for my physical health, honestly. Obviously I can walk them. But, now my day has no structure and I am at sea.

10. Bin collection is a whole thing.

    There are like five different bins and they are collected on a kind of rolling schedule. Like, some bins are only collected every other week. This is a disaster for the ADHD sufferers among us. I could barely cope with the admin of having three bins, all of which were collected on the same day each week. God help me.

11. I am just as unlikely to use the bread maker.

    Yes, one of the first things I brought down with me on my first ever trip was my bread maker. I’ll bake bread every day, I thought. Hunks of fresh baked bread with local jams for breakfast, I thought. But then I keep forgetting to buy the requisite flour and yeast. And anyway the local bakery had a beautiful pain de campagne right there already made so.

12. It really is quieter.

    Ok, so the barn is right by a busy road. But ‘busy’ is relative. Besides which it is apparently only this busy because of some road works miles away that have upset the functioning of the whole county, if my neighbour is to be believed. But aside from almost everywhere in the world being quieter than London, life surrounded by fields with only a couple of near neighbours, no sirens, no trains, no buses, no drunks (yet), no youths (aside from my neighbour’s two children), no planes coming into land practically on my roof, and just the twitter of the chiffchaff and the occasional car for sound pollution is surely why I feel so serene. Oh, and of course Bella’s ear-splitting barks that echo off the walls of this empty barn every few minutes. But that sweet little sound pollutant is one I invited in.

13. I love it.

    It is early days - literally, like, two days - but oh it is wonderful. The birdsong, the Cotswold stone, the lack of people, the garden, the smell of the evening air, the green-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see, the feeling that there is more time in an hour here than there, the fact it feels entirely appropriate to go to bed before 9:30, the fact that every town has an antique shop and a plant nursery, the lack of anxiety, the space. I feel as a battery hen must feel who has been rescued and allowed to roam free. I can stretch out. I can breathe.

    This morning I met my neighbours. They gave me a ‘welcome’ portrait drawn by their little girl, and a box of eggs fresh from the chicken’s arse and they are absolutely charming and between their warmth and the sunshine I think we’ll be very happy here.