Country bling

I’m sick of moaning about myself so, for a change, I’ll have a moan about other people. You know what’s really getting my goat at the moment? Conspicuous consumption. Greed. Bling. Oh, the hell with it, sheer vulgarity. It started off with this house not that far off. Lovely Georgian job, small pile set in the nearest thing to parkland round here. Not too big, not too pretentious, just a drop-dead gorgeous peach of a country house. Two lodges guarded the approach, one to the north, one to the south. Nothing swanky, just honest pretty little cottages, presumably for the gamekeeper/gardener/whatever. The main entrance was low-key too – stone worn soft by the years and the weather.
A few years back it was bought by people from the South-East. Now I can’t talk – I’m a Surrey girl myself – but you just know what’s coming, don’t you? Over the years, it’s been Surreyfied. Gone is the bushy, scrubby, bit of everything native hedge and in comes neat uniform conifers and plastic thingummybobs with reflective strips on them so we don’t (heaven forfend) squeeze up on the verge if a tractor or bus comes by. Down came many trees – maybe necessary, who knows? Up came the wild patches of bramble – and is it just my imagination or is there less birdsong along that lane now? Just before Christmas there was a flurry of activity and huge monumental plinths were installed with the house name carved self-importantly either side. Smaller plinths to either side of those.
‘You watch,’ I said, as we drove (slowly, mouths open) past. ‘There will be huge wrought-iron gates with gold bits up there next.’
‘Noo,’ said Adrian. ‘Nobody could be that vulgar. Not round here.’
Really? He ate his hat a few weeks later as, verily, up went the gates, worthy of Buckingham Palace.
‘YUK,’ we chorused.
Maybe the owners thought, ‘yuk’ too because the next day they had vanished and a few weeks later were replaced by something marginally less bling. But still so pompous, so self-important, so loud. It reminds me of those suburban houses with vast eagles or overbearing pineapples tottering either side of the garage gates. Out of place. Plain wrong.

Poor house. I could imagine it wincing, all its years of quiet well-mannered breeding torn asunder in a flurry of monumental egotism. I lament that old entrance, I really do. It hinted at the gorgeousness beyond, rather than bragging loud and clear: ‘We’re stinking rich and look we live in a girt big house.’ They’ll have a tradesman’s entrance next. In fact, to my total horror, one of the gatehouses has now been demolished. If I’m kind, I’ll conjecture that it was unsound – though it looked right as rain to me. Now we wait, with all the horrified slack-jawed wide-eyed fascination of a car-crash to see what will rise in its place. ‘A folly,’ opined Adrian. ‘A Grecian temple maybe.’
Or maybe they just didn’t want neighbours and plan to leave it open-plan. A couple of Leylandii maybe?

Talking about vulgar and conspicuous consumption, I have bitten my lip over Liz Jones, I really have. I haven’t said a word about how she goes on about living in the middle of Exmoor when really she lives outside the park. Not a peep about how she would need a tower like the Chrysler building in order to be able to see the sea. Not a whisper about how it would be impossible to ride out ‘onto the moor’ from her house. But it does really hurt to hear her bang on about her ‘dilapidated’ farmhouse. I know that house – I’ve collapsed in front of the gorgeous old fireplace and chatted in the cavernous country kitchen. It is stunning, another fabulous old country house that is comfortable in its skin, doing what it has done for centuries, keeping farm folk dry and warm(ish). I just can’t help wincing at the idea of it being turned into a kind of London lookalike, having its heart ripped out for the latest fashion. But that’s it. I won’t say anymore. Not another word.

I suppose, at heart, this is a lament for Somerset as it was when I was a child. A bit down-at-heel, a bit dilapidated, a bit the worse for wear but all the better for it. As a child I loved the wild places, the falling-down barns, the empty houses with boarded-up windows that were surely the homes of mad witches or warlocks. The wildlife loved them too. The countryside was a working place, a ‘real’ place with integrity and purpose. Now it seems to be becoming a playground for the rich. The old barns are all brand-new gleaming homes now. The barn owls have been chucked out. The woodland is torn down for a new development, a new suburbia.
Having grown up in suburbia it hurts.

Am I being selfish? Am I wanting the countryside held in aspic, a romantic ruin for my own delectation? I don’t think so. I love a working countryside. I don’t mind smells and mud and cows meandering across the road or sheep holding me up for half an hour. I can cope with the ugliness of modern farm buildings (while lamenting the old ones that had to be sold off for housing). I totally see the need for new housing (affordable housing) so that as the local teenagers grow up they aren’t forced away. But the housing isn’t affordable, and instead of filling in the gaps, using the brownfield sites (of which they are plenty) it’s always swathes of farmland that are eaten up for the new projects.

It makes me laugh (bitterly). There is a new housing development in the small town not far from the Bling House, not that far from Liz Jones. We couldn’t believe how many houses they squashed into the site. I couldn’t help thinking of the song, ‘Little boxes on the hillside….and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky…and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
They were all snapped up in a second – not by first-time buyers or locals, but by the people who love neat, perky conservatories and plastic gothic arches. I’m sure a fair few are South-Eastern refugees, running away from the suburban sprawl. How ironic.