Two years, ten months, six days
I wrote this as an undergraduate who had left the city for university in Penryn. It is very silly, very romantic, and mentions very few of the things that actually matter in Cornwall, which is a beautiful county ill-treated and underestimated by both London and its second-home, fair-weather guests. Nevertheless, ten years later, I thought it might be fun to post it—if only for anyone else who is about to head from the town to the country for a while (student or otherwise). I still have the wellies.
1.Learn to love your wellies
After your first season in rural England, you will be forced to purchase a pair of rubber wellingtons. The purchase of these will become, in retrospect, symbolic: the moment at which you selected practicality over style. Over time, you will begin to wear your wellies on dry days, and on concrete pavements, rather than simply in the rain and mud. You will wear them with layers of green clothing, thick wool jumpers and windswept hair, making an attempt on your deluded fantasy of a ruddy-cheeked rural beauty. One day, you will go to a city, and deposited in this environment you will realise how unfashionable you have become. Self-consciously, you will tie back your wild hair. You will wonder when fashion moved on so much, and why everyone is wearing so much black. You will remember when the things in shop windows looked normal, once. But inevitably, this being England still, it will start to rain, and then you will enjoy the unique brand of smugness that is the privilege of the lone person in wellies.
2. Make an uneasy truce with the weather
Those who live in rural environs fall in to two camps: those who choose to use an umbrella, and those who transcend such earthly objects to reach the enlightened state of having both hands free. Cease to use one, and you may walk uphill against wind, but must also become used to drying clothes constantly over a rack in your room. After enough time in the country, you will begin to purchase folders, files, clothing, based on how water-poof they are. You will find yourself in seemingly constant conversation with shop keepers about how nice it was ‘just the other day’. You may begin to ponder the suggestion that the frequency of this conversation suggests the bad turns outweigh the sunny days; don’t. Await a clear morning, and give silent thanks for the certain hue of gold light flooding your bedroom which is the sole preserve of the countryside. Talk about it all day with everyone you meet.
3. Close your curtains
Eventually it will dawn on you that the woman you always see on the high-street, stood in her front door with the old wallpaper behind her, is looking out just as much as you are looking in. Your neighbours will demonstrate a startling knowledge of your life: they will ask who was smoking the pipe in your garden, who the girl is who frequently comes over to study with your house-mate. A casual comment about the state of your washing machine will lead to kitchen appliances being fixed by committee: the woman at number eight believes the man at number nine will know what to do, and shortly after your conversation with the former the latter will knock on your door. You will begin to wonder how many of your neighbours have seen you naked, whether they can see through your blind and curtains when your light is on and it is dark outside. This level of intimacy is non-optional at such close quarters. Sharing a punnet of strawberries in the sun with your neighbours’ two-year-old daughter will be enough to make it worthwhile.
4. Re-define communication.
Travelling by train from London to your rural locale allows you to recreate the montage scene from Hot Fuzz where Simon Pegg and his peace lily watch the phone signal decrease in bars. Living in the country, you will start holding your phone to your head, after someone tells you that this increases signal. You will wonder whether this is a myth, and whether the risk of brain disease you are sure this will cause is worth the ability to communicate like an urbanite. You will soon build up a mental map of where network coverage is available, and it will become routine to walk a few hundred yards so you can make a call. Occasionally, taking a bus, your text message tone will go off several times in a row, as messages queued in the clouds all push through at once.
5. Embrace local slang
The frequency with which you will be addressed as ‘m’lover’ by people who don’t know your first name will cease to be noteworthy after a few weeks.
6. Your Life Is Not A Movie (Or Maybe)
It is unclear whether British comedies depicting rural living are a case of humorous exaggeration, or simply art imitating life. Walking past the cottage-pub on your way home, you will detect the sweet, musky smell of marijuana catching on the late afternoon air. You will see your local police force sending each other messages on Twitter, asking if the kettle is on at the station and who will be making the tea. Your local WI chapter will hold dances, bake sales, sing Jerusalem on Wednesday evenings. Learn to expect this, but be on your guard for the shift to a more unsavoury scene: no village lacks its Uncle Monty.
7. Mind your heart
If you stay too long, you may fall in love. Embrace this: let the sea wind and shingles and fog and fields weather the surface of your heart. Tread your affection into the country paths, the beaches, into the corners of small, damp houses. Don’t waste your time denying the inevitable. Leave, and you will realise how much of your love has been put down and accidentally left behind.
8. Let this happen
One night, you may lie down with two friends on a pathway near your house and stare up at the sky. You will become too used to these stars: their brightness, the way the span across the heavens is too great to see without moving your head in a slow arc. After you return to the city, look upwards one night. Search for familiar constellations; feel the city carry on around you as you try to look past the layers of street-lamps and office lights and billboards, like a plant vying for light from the rainforest floor. See nothing. Ache, just a little. Walk on.
