Country life
Magnificent Midlands
Leanda de Lisle
ome friends of ours are spending £800,000 on a cottage in Hampshire. That's seems crazy, when you could buy a manor house with stables and swimming- pool for less up here in Leicestershire, Warwickshire or Derbyshire. What is it that is so marvellous about Hampshire, or perhaps I should be asking, what is it that people think is so terrible about the heart of England?
We have manufacturing industry and the Royal Shakespeare Company. We have racial diversity and proper hunting. This is a much richer area than banker-land down in the South. Every week I find something new and marvellous within a few miles of home. An excellent restaurant recently opened in Leicester (it's called Watson's for those who are interested). There may be plenty of such places in Basingstoke, but in Leicester, as on the Continent, good food is not made indigestible by the size of the bill. Furthermore, while Basingstoke is every bit as frightful as it sounds, up here the places with the least charming names often have the most charming features.
Nuneaton, for example, has one of the most delightful railway stations I have ever seen. You can enjoy tea and toasted scones m a wood-panelled room before zooming down to Euston in an hour and ten minutes — should you wish to visit London. There is no reason why you can't work, as well as play, in the Midlands. We have the technol- ogy. Our dailies, like our dentists, are both excellent and affordable. Schools like the co-ed that takes children from four to 18 in nearby Twycross are bumping their South- ern sisters down the league tables. We have the rustic advantages of local markets sell- ing fresh local food and the less-than-rustic advantage of a hideous, but wonderfully comfortable, Warner Brothers cinema.
In short, this is paradise on a budget. Now I expect you think I am trying to sell you my house. But I can assure you that I intend to stay put until my hair turns grey — and I'm not some chippy Northerner either. I was born in the South and the rest of my family still live there. I just hate to see my new home discounted as Third World Britain — a place where you have to live off Happy Shopper preserves and watch factories close by way of daily enter- tainment. I am also horrified to see my old home becoming as deadly dull as Eaton Square or Beverly Hills. There is some- thing about money that can really kill a place. Politicians and journalists frequently describe the South as if it were the Promised Land, but from my perspective it appears to offer less of a promise than a warning.
People have paid their £800,000 in the expectation of getting exactly what they want. There is no room for surprises. If it's not in the brochure, the June edition of House & Garden or exactly like a friend's house, they won't be happy. Since anyone who is not their friend is priced out of the area, a terrible sameness is born. Worse, living there is like living entirely on Marks & Spencer food. At first you think it seems so wonderfully convenient, but after a while the pre-packaged lifestyle seems as exciting as fish fingers — and there is no escape from it. Did you know that the butchers in Marks & Spencer are fakes? They can't even cut you a steak. If you want to cook, go elsewhere. If you want to make your own life, move north.
In the Midlands you don't face clones of yourself at every turn. This is not Stepford country. It's got some Northern grit and that makes this world my oyster.
Petronella Wyatt returns next week.
You obviously require surgery. I'll check which hospital offers a decent chance of survival.'
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