UPVC and Big Macs

There's more to the Cotswolds than twee furniture

'Since living in the country, nothing thrills me more than a weekend in the city... I get very over-excited by a trip to London and outings to galleries and theatres - I swear I see more things now than when they were all on my doorstep.

'But I have just returned from a typical Londoner's break - a weekend in the country. I was staying at the house of an old friend of mine who spends her week in the fashionable environs of Clerkenwell, working in the theatre, but decamps to the heart of Norfolk at weekends.

'I realise she has the country thing going on a lot more than I do. I struggled to cook on her Rayburn stove, and my partner was flummoxed when he got the job of weeding the vegetable patch and digging in the manure. It could have been worse I suppose - only one courgette plant and a couple of pea plants were lost in the process.

'She makes elderflower cordial, and chutneys and jams from the apples, gooseberries and plums in her garden. I'm a bit rubbish when it comes to that and all our cherry plums get eaten by the jackdaws that live in one of our chimneys and our cob nuts fall to the floor to be eaten by badgers.

'My Norfolk (Clerkenwell) friend has woven the most beautiful living willow fence to separate her garden from her neighbour's - I've just nailed up some chicken wire to stop our dogs escaping.

'I am pretty good at visiting our farmers' market and buying lovely beetroot and parsnips from Prince Charles' stall (he doesn't actually flog his veg himself you understand, just sends a couple of his minions to make a few quid from his organic plot in nearby Tetbury). And I buy wonderful bread from a local baker who sets up there. But sometimes when I come out ten quid lighter with only a couple of carrots and a loaf to show for it, I do stick to Tesco for a few weeks afterwards.

'The magazine image of country living does exist. I know plenty of people who grow their own fruit and veg, who furnish their houses with old linen and distressed oak furniture and make jam. The reclamation yards do a roaring trade around here as people rip out new bathrooms to install cast iron baths and pull up carpet to fit hundred-year old limestone flags.

'But I also know farmers whose families have lived here for generations and shop at Sainsbury's, buy nylon carpets from Carpet Right of Stroud and fit UPVC double glazing as soon as they get the chance. And the teenagers who hang out underneath the medieval market hall in the village of Minchinhampton are all Primark and JD Sports and wouldn't dream of eating anywhere other than McDonalds.

'The local media must take their fair share of blame when it comes to creating the chocolate box image that often clings to the Cotswolds. Friends of ours were encouraged to move here from Kentish Town when they saw the headline in the local paper declaring ‘Rabbit Stolen - With Hutch'. They figured if that was the worst that was happening, they'd up sticks and move.

'But I remember another front page headline ‘Ducks Drown in Pond' which was the lead story around the time a man who lived in Stroud had made the national news for smuggling the largest ever amount of heroin into Japan. It doesn't quite suit the image, that that sort of thing might be going on behind the Farrow and Ball painted front doors of the stone cottages (with the roses around the porch).

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