Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Deconstructing an unreconstructed townie

Apparently I am an unreconstructed townie. This grieves me greatly. Am I not the woman who knows that yellow hammers say 'a little bit of butter and a little bit of cheese'? Can I not identify rosebay willowherb at twenty paces (and not just because it grows on industrial wasteland by the way) and explain the difference between blackberries and deadly nightshade? Do I not listen to 'The Archers'? Surely this makes me a veritable woods woman, the female Ray Mears but less fat and smug?

My townie-ness is evidenced in part by my taste for glittery berets, lack of ability to reverse down country lanes without hitting the hedge, sniffiness about and total lack of understanding of the significance and use of sticks and a general, nebulous townie demeanour.

Fortunately, help is at hand via the fashion pages of Easy Living magazine, which has a big feature on country living, showing me how to disport myself in the rustic environment. According to this I should be wearing six inch heel Dolce e Gabanna shoes as I pick blackberries and even when tiptoeing through the sheep droppings. The country lady wearing these heels has sensibly brought a nobbly stick with her, proof of her country credentials along with her £136 silk scarf. If all else fails, I can jump on my rickety, 1950s bike in aforesaid heels and some wool trousers which flap dangerously but charmingly in the bike chain. Again rusticity is pointed up, this time by a big lettuce in her basket and the tweedy but handsome chap at her side.

I am now prepared. Armed with Easy Living, I can make a real stab at being less townie. All I have to do now is master reversing.





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