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Five reasons why growing up in the countryside is shit

NEW research has found that parents think a countryside upbringing is better than a city one, when in fact it’s rubbish. Here’s why.

There’s f**k all to do

Adults imagine that a rural childhood will involve scrumping for apples and fishing in streams, when actually all the orchards belong to multinational drinks corporations and are kept behind electric fences and the watercourses have been poisoned. Plus there’s the fact that your parents are convinced that every stranger is a paedo and they never let you out anyway.

You never see your friends outside school

Going round to a mate’s house during the evening or weekend is a big part of growing up. But it’s one that you won’t experience if you live in the countryside as you have to rope in your parents to take you, which they won’t because it’s a 45-minute round trip, and they’re in an incredibly shitty mood because they’ve just spent an hour driving home from work.

The countryside is terrifying

Cities are meant to be scary but they have nothing on the countryside. From being bitten by an adder to being crushed by an unstable haystack, death lurks everywhere. Plus you aren’t going to find a human torso floating in a flooded quarry in a city centre. In fact, the only torsos you’ll see are sculptures in art museums. Country types can forget about those. Go and look at a cow instead.

You live miles from anywhere and there’s no public transport

The nearest town is 12 miles away so if you want to get there you have to get a bus. But the bus only comes twice a week, meaning unless you spend three nights sleeping in a shop doorway, it’s f**king pointless. The upside is that as a teenager you get really good at navigating your way home pissed and in the pitch dark.

You spend all your time in the car

Going to school? Get in the car. Got a hobby? Get in the car. Going to a friend’s? Get in the car. Despite wanting you to grow up in a rural idyll, your parents actually made the weird choice of making you grow up in a Ford Mondeo. And, because you’re the first person amongst your mates to learn to drive, you spend your latter teenage years being a sober taxi service. Thanks, mum and dad.

Six things pubs think are great which are just a pain in the arse

ALL a pub needs is alcohol, toilets and, in a perfect world, seats. But your local hostelry thinks you want more. Here’s the unnecessary pub stuff that will quickly get on your tits.

Spirit promotions 

Always a new brand of vodka you’ll never drink again called ‘Ice Wolf’ or something equally wank. Your evening will be made a misery by incessant vodka propaganda on the pub’s speakers. And the women in hotpants handing out shots don’t want to shag you, they want to turn you into an alcoholic.

Historical local prints

Invariably of some dull local street in 1911. Why you’d want to see a featureless, deserted version of the road just outside is unclear. It’s like people in 2150 putting up pictures of pedestrian crossings and LED bus signs and finding them f**king fascinating.

Pie and a Pint Night

Regulars attendees become incapable of talking about anything other than Pie Night, so their conversation will be things like: ‘We both had steak and kidney’, ‘Lots of nice big bits of chicken’ or simply ‘Lovely pie’. It’s as if their horizons have shrunk. You’d have some respect for them if it was Pie and TS Eliot Night, Pie and the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky Night, and or even Pie and Heroin Night.

Board games 

Did you go out to get pissed like an adult, or did you want to relive a tedious Christmas when you were eight and your family played endless, joyless games of Game of Life? It’s probably not the latter, is it?

A local celebrity 

Not even an ex-member of S Club 7, ‘local celebrities’ plumb bathyspherical new depths. They’re likely to be called ‘Eric the Banjo Man Wilcox’ and do local charity work. Eric will intersperse his banjo tunes with ‘amusing’ anecdotes like meeting Fiona Bruce and forgetting her name. The bored audience will be too polite to tell him to f**k off, which is a shame because he desperately needs a wake-up call.

Karaoke night 

The pub is basically handed over to a hardcore of show-offs who think they can sing. It’s particular painful if the pub is small, so you’re forced to give up trying to have a conversation and listen to a squawked-out version of Up Where We Belong. In fairness, karaoke nights do pull in the punters. But so did Brexit, David Koresh and the Nazis.

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