THE country way of life is more relaxed than the big city. But let’s be brutally honest, some of their simple peasant traditions are weird. Like these:
Roadside eggs
If you find yourself driving along a country lane, you’re guaranteed to see a sign by a gate saying ‘Fresh eggs. £1 for half a dozen’. But do they really think you’re going to pull your car into their drive, knock on the door, start a conversation and buy eggs from a house? No way. You’re from the city. It would be less socially awkward to shit on their doorstep. And it’s unlikely they’ll take Monzo anyway.
Lanes with grass down the middle
Obviously not every road can be like the M1, with a smoothly paved surface and frequent, handy places to stop for a KFC. But a road that doesn’t look like it’s only used by a pretty young teacher cycling to her class of four kids in a quaint primary school would be nice. It’d be great if they could get someone in to clean up all that horse manure too.
Scarecrow festivals
Due to their distance from any type of cultural hub, the must-visit event in a rural village is the annual scarecrow festival. Families are invited to wander the streets looking for monstrous straw humanoids dressed in clothes that have been rejected by the village hall jumble sale. Often used by locals as the latest skirmish in long-simmering wars with neighbours, the identities of the scarecrows are unrecognisable to outsiders and the whole event best avoided.
Pagan traditions
Do you know what ‘well dressing’ is? Ever been to a traditional wap? Fancy seeing some ceremonial cheese rolling? All of this bizarre shit and more is on offer in the countryside. Or you could go to a state-of-the-art cinema in the modern city you live in, and then go out for sushi, because all that pagan stuff is bloody boring and a bit creepy.
Cow tipping
The kind of activity that can only occur in a place where the only sources of entertainment are a mobile library and a twice monthly yoga session at the village hall. This forces kids to create their own fun, be that graffiti, hanging out at the bus stop or pushing over livestock in a local field. A sad indictment of what happens when people aren’t given access to superfast broadband.
