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Cotswolds England

Bunburyists Unite!

Posted on March 23, 2008

I just found out I am a Bunburyist rather than a Weekender. What a relief. Weekenders are reviled throughout the English countryside. They drive up property prices so locals can’t afford to buy anything, then limit the use of their luxury barn conversions to bank holiday weekends. When they do show up, it’s in an enormous Chelsea tractor. I know all about Weekenders because the British media loves to do stories on them. Hardly a month goes by without a sarky editorial in Cotswold Life on these hedge fund men and their Cath Kidston, vintage print-bedecked wives, children, and kitchens. Channel 4 ran a whole documentary on how Weekenders ruined a small Cornish fishing village. To protect against this locust, one member of the landed gentry, Lord Vestey, reserves cottages in his hamlet for locals only. According to a tipsy and possibly dubious source down at the pub, even the government is out to get the Weekender: second homers are contributing to the country’s housing shortage and legislation or taxation or some equally unpleasant “-tion” is imminent.

You can understand why husband and I were worried. We do, after all, work in London during the week and go to the Cotswolds on, well, weekends. But that’s about where the similarities end. We don’t manage hedge funds or work in “the City.” We’re devoted to our country cottage and come every weekend without fail. If there’s a fete or a church service or a charity event, we’ll be there; we’ll even buy raffle tickets. And I’ve never set foot in a Cath Kidston shop in my life.

Frankly, I don’t understand why the countryside has been infiltrated with bankers. If you’re really wealthy, London is a wonderful place to live. If, on the other hand, like us you can only afford a scant quarter million on a flat and you desire to live in central London, you have to make some compromises. You might need to live on a street where you occasionally see a man relieving himself behind the dumpsters on the corner, or be neighbours with a house full of squatters on the premises of a former Conservative club (sign and irony still intact). You might wonder what that lady in a mini skirt and a cropped fur coat is doing talking to that gentleman when you leave the house for an unusually early morning jog, or, just once, be greeted by a large yellow sign asking if you know anything about the body dumped in the canal as you decide it’s best to upgrade your jog to a sprint along the tow path. And if you’re young enough, you can probably dismiss these kinds of things as quirky or colourful, the very fibre of your bohemian urban life. But we are old enough to realize that my husband’s recent modest inheritance — enough to give us some additional square footage in our current London neighbourhood but not to deliver us into the genteel reaches of, say, Kensington and Chelsea — was well spent on a cottage in the country, if only for the weekends.

It was Oscar Wilde by way of the Daily Telegraph that delivered me from my angst over my Weekender status. The term Bunburyist comes from the imaginary character, Bunbury, in Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”; he was invented as an excuse for Algernon to go to the country, where Algernon lives a different but equally vibrant life to his city existence. Building on this, journalist Kate Weinberg wrote a handy checklist to distinguish between Bunburyist and Weekender.

According to Weinberg, a Bunburyist buys groceries at farm shops and takes them back to the city. Tick. Other attributes include thinking of both city and country as “home,” socialising with residents of both rather than just importing friends from the city for the weekend, and “meddling” in local projects. Tick, tick, tick. That was us at the meeting to save the local post office.

A Weekender, on the other hand, will arrive in the country equipped with groceries from the city supermarket. Clearly these weekenders haven’t been to the Sainsbury’s at Ladbroke Grove, otherwise known as one of Dante’s circles of hell. If I “cheat” and forsake our local farm shop for the Sainsbury’s in Cheltenham, the nearest city to our country retreat, it’s to pick up toilet paper or laundry detergent to take back to London.

Weekenders are also identified by their limited activity, just “a couple of good walks.” Not with my husband. We’ll walk for sure, but we’ll also hurtle down hills on road bikes and jog the country lanes. We’ve joined the gym at the school in a nearby village, and there are noises about dry stone walling lessons.

Before I found out I was a Bunburyist instead of a Weekender I used to seek counsel from other weekenders in our Cotswold town. R. and R., a gay couple with whom we’ve made acquaintance, know the power of the pink pound and are unapologetic about their weekend-only tenure. They figure they inject more money into the local economy in two days than most full-timers do all week, which is true for us too if spend in pubs and restaurants is any measure. And as Bunburyists we have the advantage of being unfettered by the bitter local politics—something about the removal of a chess table—that prevent some full-time residents from enjoying a meal out in our town’s inn.

England

Four Seasons in a Day

Posted on March 22, 2008

Driving to the country I heard on Radio 4 that this is the earliest Easter for 100 years. The weather is appropriately confused, and on Good Friday we go through four seasons in a day, ala Hugh Grant strolling down Portobello Road in the film Notting Hill. On a morning walk we move from bright sunshine into a snowstorm in the space of a mile. It even looks like a Hollywood set: nothing sticks and the wind is blowing the flakes in spirals, an out of control snowblower with an unlimited supply of styrafoam. B. calls to excuse us from our scheduled Easter visit to his Derbyshire village if the weather is too bad to drive in. “You’ll have to try harder than a little snow if you’re looking to get rid of us,” I tell him.”Earthquake?” he ventures.”Expect us for opening time at the Rose and Crown,” I say before hanging up. We love B. and R., but we also love their pub. It’s in Boylestone but attracts a crowd from neighboring villages like Cubley and Somersal Herbert (I wish I lived in Somersal Herbert just so I had a reason to say it out loud). The mix is half farmers, half well-to-do semi-retired types, and 100% straight out of the book of English central casting including fumbling, charming aristocrats, gentleman farmers, and village idiots. All this makes for stimulating conversation. Last time I was there I got a recipe for damson gin (apparently good for cold days on the links), bought bacon from a local farmer, unlocked the secret for herding sheep on a steep hillside, and learned a new joke (although failed to master the Yorkshire accent required to tell it properly). In retrospect, it was our introduction to country life long before the Cotswolds.

Cotswolds Random

Making a Connection

Posted on March 15, 2008

Today on the Writing Time blog there was a quote from Walter Mosley: “The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day. There are two reasons for this rule: getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”

That last bit is so true. Husband is generous with pointing out how disconnected I am with myself. (Sometimes I take this well, other times I tell him to fuck off.) It shows up in a variety of ways, from lost keys to a protracted series of chores where in the midst of doing one thing I remember another thing and pretty soon I am doing twenty things at once and none of them well.

It shows up in the way I check my Yahoo!Mail every morning for no particular reason. At best I have an email from my father with a collection of airplane nose art. This isn’t going to get any better now that he has discovered YouTube. Or there could be an email from a frequent flyer club, which can easily lead to an hour of flight searches for imaginary vacations.

It shows up with obsessive checking of my BlackBerry and working long hours despite my company going down the drain. Husband and I sometimes sleep in separate beds in London. One of the reasons I like it other than avoiding the farting and being yelled at for lying on my back (which may or may not result in me snoring) is because after my BlackBerry alarm goes off I can immediately check my email (Southeast Asia will have already been bombarding me with problems). Next I check my calendar to get myself mentally braced for what hell may or may not be in store for me that day. If I tried to do that while in bed with husband the BlackBerry would be promptly dispatched out the window to rants about what a complete robotic mess I am.

A month or so ago Vivienne Westwood was on Jonathan Ross saying something similarly brilliant to Mosley’s advice, about how distraction is one of the modern evils of society. Both Mosley and Westwood are right, and what they are saying is two sides of the same coin.

Writing is one answer, and I’ve just proved I have enough time to do it every day by listing out all the useless crap I do make time for. The Cotswolds also work in a forced “get in touch with yourself chamber” kind of way. There’s no Internet and the BlackBerry only works if you stand by the window in the kitchen. And trudging along the edge of ploughed field, up hills, through tall wet grass for miles on miles is as therapeutic as any couch.

England

The Gold Cup

Posted on March 14, 2008

I didn’t organise tickets to the Cheltenham festival, less well known than Royal Ascot outside the UK, but nonetheless a huge week in British horse racing. I must regain the enthusiasm I had when I first moved to London. With a little help from corporate friends and some patient queuing I managed a stellar sporting calendar in the early years —Henley Regatta, Royal Ascot, and Wimbledon. Thus far I’ve only made it to the Cheltenham racecourse for the Sunday car boot sale, a worthy but entirely different sort of sporting event.

I think I am sapped from my thankless job, but the truth is lots of tasks requiring organization—paying bills, booking travel, doing laundry— have gone out the window since buying Drovers. It took three past due letters from British Gas to motivate me. Chores used to happen on weekends, but now the pressure’s on to be “enjoying ourselves” come the weekend, especially if the weather is nice. That false pressure to have a good time that used to be the reserve of real vacations has, with the purchase of a second home, become a weekly event. Woe is me.

And so I watched the biggest race of the festival, The Gold Cup, on television. This was a much publicized battle between elegance in the form of the sleek Kauto Star, and brute force embodied in the gigantic Denman. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I immediately sided with Denman. As interesting as the race itself was the spectacle of the attendees. The place was swimming in gloriously vulgar hats that are as synonymous with English weddings and horse races as Hermes scarves are with French mademoiselles. I still treasure my own hot pink pimp hat purchased for Ascot. It may not be as versatile as a Hermes scarf but the opportunities in life to wear vision obstructing, fuchsia coloured feathers on your head are rare and must be taken.

Denman crushed Kauto Star, a victory for brashness of every kind, including big hats.

Cotswolds England

A Word about Fox Hunting

Posted on March 9, 2008

Since I brought up the subject of fox hunting in my recent blog about the Cotswold Hunt auction, I thought I ought to explain my take on this controversial topic.

First let me attempt to establish some liberal street cred. I’m a Democrat and pro-choice. I attempt to buy local and organic. I take public transport while in the city. You get the picture.

And yet I’ll never forget the look of horror on my London co-worker and fellow yoga class attendee’s face when I told her I’d spent an evening at a hunt auction. “You don’t support that kind of thing, do you?” she asked, bewildered.

I reminded her the nasty part of hunting had been banned for awhile now and explained my interest was more Margaret Mead-esque, an observer of the charming local wildlife (by which I mean the toffs of course, not the foxes). She still look confused, but downward dog put an end to the conversation.

My pub survey of country gentlemen and women consistently yields a “foxes are vermin” defense of the hunt. There are many stories of a fox in the hen house or amongst the flock. There is also the whole economy built up around the hunt—local caterers and pubs provide breakfast and lunch, not to mention the tourists. And there is no denying the social aspect. It is rather like a big all day party both for the riders and the observers, who move from post to post along the country lanes to get a good view.

Being American gives me a bit of an outsider status that parlays well into nosy, politically charged questions like this in the pub. I can, if you will, play dumb. But my nationality does not preclude me from participating in the hunt—it is in fact an American pursuit as well I’ve recently learned. An unpleasant experience mucking out stalls at summer camp that put me off horses for a lifetime is what dictates that I’ll never be part of the hunting culture. Still I am happy on the sidelines, indulging my closet gambling instinct at a fund raising auction or watching from the country lanes.

Last weekend husband and I found ourselves in the midst of a hunt while out on a morning ramble. We first came across a horse-mounted and hunt-attired father and his two sons, say around ages 8 and 12, separated from the larger group. We encountered them at a gate and they were disarmingly polite, well-spoken and self-possessed children as they gave way and let us pass. It was all very “no, you,” “no, you,” “jolly good,” and “tally ho.”

This stirred an epiphany in husband. He’s from Liverpool which is pretty much the flag-bearer city for the working man and socialism in the Western world (where Michael Moore goes to premiere his movies in the UK). There is much to be said in defence of Liverpool — The Beatles and European City of Culture 2008 to name two — but the city still has a reputation for being working class and tough. Many a punchline about Liverpudlians involve a propensity for stealing and wearing tracksuits. Although husband has traversed his difficult Liverpool upbringing, replete with parental alcoholism and mental illness, the class mythos ingrained in him as a child lives on. He expected these hunt children to snort with derision while instructing their horses to kick mud on us as they passed by. In short, his own class pre-conceptions, long dormant but still alive, were exposed.

Not longer after the hunting family encounter, the entire hunt party emerged from a deep gully. They charged up a hill, all blue coats and shaved horses, accompanied by a pack of hounds. We watched, a few meters away, as the handsome spectacle unfurled itself across the countryside.

Random

Consultation

Posted on March 8, 2008

The official email went out today. I and all my other colleagues in the UK are now under consultation, which is the British legalese word for “you might get laid-off.” It wasn’t a surprise. Job cuts were announced earlier in the year by the CEO in a dreary speech from the incongruous location of a stage in the Odeon Cinema. It was one of those speeches were reorganization masquerades as strategy.

The fact that everyone is in the same boat is not helping me take it less personally. I am trying to find solace in the fact that it’s a darn sight nicer than the same process in the US. I remember when my project team was “restructured” at my last job in L.A. Everyone was sequestered in a giant conference room then sent out one at a time to meet with the boss. I made the cut but my colleague, H., wasn’t so lucky. Upon being told to leave the building, she asked to go retrieve her purse from her desk. There was no need. While she was being told her fate, a security guard had collected her personal belongings and would you reunite her with them in the lobby.

One thought that has come to mind a little too readily is that pregnancy seems a daft option in light of all this. After all, employers in this country are not known for taking on waddling types of my age group and gender.

Books Random

Poor Precedents

Posted on March 8, 2008

Today I read an interview with author Peter Mayle in a FT Weekend column where famous people talk about their favourite house. “I go away less and less and each time I can’t wait to come home. That’s the true test of having found a place where you’re really happy.”

Our trip to Paris is the only one we’ve planned for the year, apart from a family wedding I have to attend back in the states. Our Cotswold cottage is passing his test.

I’ve also been thinking about how much more to blog about depressed husband and his adventures in pharmaceuticals. I read Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence when it first came out, but I don’t remember if his wife featured much in it. The FT article mentions he was on his second marriage when he wrote it. It doesn’t mention if his first wife divorced him for being mentioned in a book.

Years ago I read Frances Mayes’ Tuscany books, and I vaguely remember her mentioning her husband. My recollection was that he was wonderful and her second one. I am getting worried I may need to divorce husband and get married again before I can write anything useful on the subject of him and depression.

The only memoir of recent years I can think of where the husband features prominently is one of my favourites, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. That starts with her husband dropping dead.

This isn’t helping.

Europe

Adieu Paris

Posted on March 3, 2008

The email came today, the news I had been dreading. Our friend D. is letting his apartment in Paris go. The one on the Île Saint-Louis. The one on the top floor of the 17th century building with the vast interior courtyard and dramatic marble staircase and plaster rosettes on the ceiling and views of the Seine. The one he doesn’t even live in, so husband and I could visit whenever we wanted.

That one.

I wrote back to ask why, trying not to act too upset. Apparently he is buying land in Australia to build a house. Australia for God sake. I wanted to reach out through Yahoo! mail and shake him. What’s Australia got that Paris doesn’t?

There’s time for one last visit. A final chance to catch the faint whiff of vinegar when you first open the wedgewood blue door, followed by the uber detergent smell of ultra hygiené French dish washing soap; to walk on the creaky parquet floorboards past the gloss royal blue dining room wall hung with the mounted jackelope; to hear the sound the hot water heater makes as it chugs into action when you turn on the shower in the bathroom with the broken skylight and the mirrored wall; to lay in bed and watch the ceiling rosette turn pink with the lights from the tourist boats gliding by on the Seine below; to unwrap a paper package of fresh croissants on the coffee table with the tall windows thrown open.

It will be April in Paris for our last visit, perfect weather for the simple luxury of an evening out in the Marais where visit after visit we repeat the same routine. First to Au Fer au Cheval where we will hope they will offer with our drinks a plate of tortilla or little pieces of bread with ham or cheese or gherkins, not the peanuts! Then across the street to La Belle Hortense where the middle-aged and vaguely Goth barmaid (forever in my mind wearing an electric blue dress and black boots) pours wine and makes coffee and smokes. Then back across the street to Les Philosophes for a dinner of tomato tatin and carnard confit in miele with Cote du Rhone blanc.

The first time we went to Paris after moving to London, D. suggested we make ourselves a copy of the key at the BHV, that marvel of a Parisian department store. I’ve carried that key around with me ever since, a symbol of our new European life. The truth is that since we got our Cotswold cottage, we’ve been neglecting Paris. Its existence will soften the blow of our lost Paris hideaway. Still, I think I’ll keep the key.

Random

Ritalin Vacation

Posted on February 23, 2008

Husband started taking Ritalin in December. This isn’t the first medication related to depression that he’s been on. That honour goes to a medication used to treat incontinence in old ladies that happens to have some kind of anti-depressant side effect. At least that’s what the shrink told husband, which made both husband and me wonder about the wisdom of venturing onto the anti-depressant meds frontier in the, shall we say, less progressive world of British mental health care. (Never mind the bedside manner issues associated with telling a depressed, middle-aged, adult male that he’s going onto pills that help grannies with wee problems.)

Husband and I are both veterans of therapy from our years in L.A. In the great nature vs. nurture debate, his southern California mental health professional favoured nurture, which in turn led her to an anti-medication bias. Her logic was that you need to deal with the underlying issues, not just rely on medication. And so husband dutifully dealt with those issues, putting in hard time on the couch and in group therapy with me. This gave us both awareness and fluency and comprehension of root causes, all of which were helpful and necessary, but only go so far towards managing the damn thing if you’re the person in the thick of it. The problem seems to be that if you are in a very dark place, you can’t muster the will to use skills you may have acquired when you weren’t in the dark place. You may not even be able to get up off the couch.

The depression kept coming back, as is its habit, until finally it got so bad that husband broke with principles and got a prescription. This was not without angst. The abstinence from meds to date had been something of a badge of honour. Husband was dealing with his demons the hard way, rather like I imagine John Wayne would have done it. There were a few things that helped to rationalize the decision, two of which came from our time in LA as zen practitioners. One was the lesson that as soon as you recognize you are standing on a position, it’s probably worth considering get off of it. The second was the memory of a woman priest who practiced with us and was dying of cancer. The pain had become unbearable, but she was wary of going onto pain killers knowing they might make her out of it. The sensai would hear nothing of it, insisting she take the morphine — he called it “dharma-cology” to make her feel better about it. And finally, I realized in a very real, living up close with the demons kind of way that whatever caused what was happening, be it nature or nurture, it was a physiological thing and it made sense that something that has a physiological effect might help.

The incontinence medicine didn’t work out so well. You might not wet your pants anymore but you’ll feel pretty speedy. That’s when Ritalin came on the scene, which is better known for treating hyperactive nine-year old boys than depression. Husband’s inability to focus wasn’t in the pre-adolescent, pogo-sticking around in circles sense. It was more a ‘what’s the point of anything when humans are all shit yet I still need to get this PowerPoint done by noon’ kind of thing. Since it is one of husband’s most life affecting symptoms of the depression, it’s what got treated. And it seems to work.

Which is why it was a surprise when husband informed me he’s decided to take a Ritalin vacation. Specifically he’s decided to forego the meds for the three days per week we’re in the Cotswolds. He says he feels better when we’re out here. There’s something about the fresh air, the peace and quiet, the wide open spaces. I buy this, but I also suspect this experiment is borne out of a lingering feeling that the meds are somehow wrong, and now that he’s found an escape valve from the stress of London he doesn’t or shouldn’t really need them. As Jessica Apple wrote in the FT on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Prozac: “We may indeed be a Prozac Nation, but one thing remains clear: we’ve yet to come to terms with our diagnosis.”

Earlier in my married life this news would have caused me great distress. I would have been on WebMD scouring the implications and freaking out that husband was making changes to his meds without consulting a physician. But not now. I’m married enough to know any protest would be a waste of energy. He is going to do this experiment whether I like it or not. On the one hand, it’s his body, and he has the right to determine what he puts into it. On the other hand, it is asking rather a lot of me. This means only his colleagues, many of whom he loathes, will be the beneficiaries of the drugs. Surely as the wife I should get something out of this too. He might be the lab rat, but I’m the hamster’s wheel, having to spin like crazy or not depending on the day’s experiment.

Cotswolds

Money Pit

Posted on February 16, 2008

After weeks of trying to pretend an Egyptian rug on a concrete floor and an Ikea table and chairs left by the last owners were comfortable and/or cozy, today I made some progress in the cottage-ification of the interior of Drovers. Naturally I went to Laura Ashley, my first visit since the mid-eighties when my mother took advantage of the favourable exchange rate to festoon my sister and me in drop-waist florals from Sloane Square. (Another artifact from that era, a navy blue Burberry wax coat, is totally apropos of my new Gloucestershire life. That it is moth bitten just makes it more so). I left with orders placed for one antiqued brass-effect reading lamp, a saddle brown leather couch and footstool, and a pair of red and beige gingham checked curtains. The floral drop-waists with lace collars have been retired, but my cottage will soon be clad in the interior design equivalent.

Next was a visit to the antiques arcade. This Aladdin’s cave of fox hunting prints and horse brasses is far more ‘curated garage sale’ than Christie’s, which is just as well given the damage from my Laura Ashley haul. I left with a hammered brass coal scuttle and some Vanity Fair prints for under £70. I am slightly worried the print depicting a turbaned Punjabi polo player might be construed as racist, but the companion print of a mustachioed, barrel-torsoed Englishman captioned “I Say” looks equally ridiculous. I should be more worried our cottage is going to look like a pub.

Near the Risdales we discovered a gigantic reclamation yard, a paradise for newbies like us striving for the Cotswold look. Outside is a vast graveyard for stone ornaments – toadstools, orbs, troughs, and bird baths – that are the garden gnomes of the Cotswolds. I had been warned that you can tell weekenders by the reproduction coach lights hanging on their barn conversions. I suspect a disused wagon wheel in the garden sends the same message, but I got one anyway (the garden is fenced in, protecting my cliché from public scorn).

Inside the proprietor produced a pock marked length of elm we’ll turn into a mantle piece, and a ledge and brace pine door for the kitchen. I noticed the 1930s suitcase, the one I’ll decorate with replica vintage luggage labels from The Pompidou Centre and plop in that empty spot underneath the stairs, as I was paying for the other stuff. Better throw in the ink jars to decorate the chest of drawers and a handful of dusty hardbacks for good measure.