So Prince Charles says we’ve ‘lost any real connection’ with the countryside does he? Oh Charles, dear poor misguided Charles. We haven’t, we absolutely haven’t, because if you grew up in the countryside, that (cow) shit sticks with you for life, no matter how much time you spend being a poncey urbanite once you’ve grown up.
Here’s a few things you learn growing up in the country.
Watching stuff online is a blessing
All those city kids with their perfect internet connections didn’t know they’d been born. My house still survived on dial-up until a few short years ago. You know what that meant as a teenager? No YouTube, no illegally streaming TV shows and absolutely no downloading films (unless you were willing to wait four days for Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers only to find out that when it finally finished that it was a CAM version of Talladega Nights as happened to my poor brother once). As a result, 4OD is still kind of a novelty; The Good Wife? On my laptop? When I want? Magic, that is; proper witchcraft.
Plans are made to be kept
City kids have this fancy modern notion that they can just show up to a place, pull out their mobile phone and give their pal they’re meant to meet a quick call to find out where they are. If you grew up knowing mobile phone signal in your country was about as certain as the future of Dapper Laugh’s career, plans to meet were airtight. Something along the lines of ‘the third tree down, in the field behind Mr. Worcester’s tractor barn as the sun hits the mid-afternoon spot on the horizon’ ought to do it.
You’re basically Michael Schumacher
Or, some other famous driver. I don’t know any others. Basically, what I mean is that the day you turned 17, you started speed dialling all the driving schools in the county, anything to stop you relying on the bus that passed within three miles of your house but twice a day. Plus, once you were qualified, driving through water, getting stuck in mud and snow, and deciding whether driving drunk down a a single-track road at 3AM was safe or not (answer: almost definitely not) means you could drive circles round these city drivers who’ve never been above 20mph.
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Christmas Eve isn’t the big going out night
I mean, it could be, but living so far from everyone means that you guys can’t hit up the local club (Warehouse in Stroud FTW, once saw a girl in there who’d cut out the crotch of her pleather leggings to make them into chaps) without crashing at each others’ afterwards and nothing says awkward like waking up in another family’s house on Christmas Day. Instead, you stick to the 23rd for your Christmas boozing.
Clothes shopping isn't an activity to be taken lightly
Sorry what? Let’s just ‘pop into town’? Have you got a full day and two month’s worths of needs? Hitting up your local town was the same sort of mammoth expedition as it was for the first people to reach the summit of Everest. It required planning (‘Yes, you CAN go to Topshop, but we’ll have to take your brother to Clarks to get some new school shoes and your dad needs some new shirts from M&S’), activities for the hour or so car ride – you know, crosswords, audio books, car games and the like – and a steely nerve to deal with the most amount of people your little eyes had ever seen in one place. In short, just ‘popping into town’ still seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.