This Country Life

Am returned from a couple of days at the olds. Quite pleasant if you don't count the continual needling of me old pa by me old ma. How he doesn't rise to the bait I'll never know. Gave me slightly frightening visions of how much I'm like my mother. It's been pointed out more than once that I take a deal too much pleasure finding faults in others. Uck. Not proud of it, but seems hard to curb.

Resolve was strongly tested today as I took a daytrip with Ma and my little cousins to a point-to-point meeting at a big country estate near Bassers. The bigger cousin is quite well behaved, but the littler one is a whinger of absolutely huge proportions. She's been through a great deal in her life, so it's no surprise, but she was driving me round the bend, whinging if she had to walk ten yards, whinging if she had to eat the sandwiches she chose for herself (!!), generally moaning at every given opportunity. Must never have children. They drive me crazy.

Also found myself surrounded by masses of Countryside Alliance types. Sent me into a kind of moral quandary. To detest rich people is just as pathetic as detesting poor people, and yet I couldn't help feeling nauseous at the sight of so many rugby shirts, tweed jackets, and pastel jumpers slung across shoulders. And don't even start me on the women. All wonderfully thin. All wonderfully blond. And all wonderfully horsey. Uck. I realise that the future of much of the English countryside is in their hands, and that these people do genuinely care about, and understand, the land, but there is also something really objectionable about the Countryside Alliance. Being (for the most part) extremely right-wing doesn't help. Not least because it alienates many many more left-thinking urbanites who might otherwise be on their side. Also the basic failure to understand that the causing of unneccessary suffering to a living being is a moral problem that many people will never overcome. I am just as aware as anyone that the preservation of big swathes of wildlife-rich countryside rides on the hunts that look after them, and that logically this does outweigh the wrongs of hunting. But this does not mean I will ever find it okay. The rural community must evolve, should have evolved, and their failure to do so is as inexcusable as any ignorance of the part of townies. Most of these richies are inheritors of this land. They are priviledged. If they feel that us ignorant plebs are ripping apart their country traditions, they should perhaps try to be a little more inclusive.

That is all.