The Village Idiots

LOOK, I'm a woman of the world - I've BEEN to Taunton. So nothing annoys the hell out of me more than people making assumptions about me on the basis of my age, the way I look, the way I talk or where I live.

Us down yer in the West Country suffer from this a lot. If you have any kind of an accent you are immediately labelled a carrot-crunching village idiot with straw for brains. As George Bernard Shaw said: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

I am, of course, being a little hypocritical because it works the other way. If I never hear another braying woman wittering on about her bargain bedspread woven from the pubic hair of Amazonian indians, it won't be a day too soon. (I've written about this before…..click here).

My friend, born and bred on a Devon farm, was chatting in the village pub to a couple who had just moved into the area. The conversation turned to food and the different varieties of bread. “We like ciabatta,” said the woman, “but I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it.” Why on earth wouldn’t she have heard of ciabatta? She can read. She has visited Italy. They sell it in the local Tesco, for God’s sake.
But she shook her head. “No, I don't think I have,” she replied. “But I did go to ‘Exeturrr’ once,” exaggerating her already quite long Rs.

The woman smiled as the heavy irony sailed miles over the top of her head, and chattered on about bread, giving detailed descriptions of focaccia and sourdough like a teacher lecturing a class of 10-year-olds.

Personally, I would have taken my long Rs and shoved them up hers.

For, you see, the main conflict between country folk and in-comers has nothing to do with taking our houses or swanning into the village at the weekend with carrier bags full of provisions from a little delicatessen in Notting Hill and then complaining when the local shop closes down, or joining all the local committees and trying to take over without any real knowledge about rural life – although all those things can be galling - but treating us like simpletons. Or worse, a different species.

They corner us in our natural habitat, the pub on a Saturday evening, and capture one of us, usually the oldest and scruffiest, and force him to perform. For the price of a drink they expect ‘the local character’ to entertain them. Old George may decide to play up to the stereotype and tell exaggerated stories in an impenetrable accent. He’ll take the role in exchange for free cider all night. He'll then go home to running his agricultural business which employs 200 staff.

This is harmless enough but there are those who expect to tame one of us and take us into captivity. They want their own ‘little man’ or ‘little woman’ who they can train to perform menial tasks. They can then tell their friends, “I’ve found the most perfect little gardener. Of course, I can’t trust him with my azaleas but he can do the small stuff.”

They leave a long list of tasks that if performed properly would take the best part of a day, but pay for two hours. They treat the cleaner like a Victorian downstairs maid. If they had a range, they'd be making her black-lead it. These two have bald patches and dodgy knees, what with all that tucking of forelocks and bobbing curtseys.

My partner makes bespoke furniture; he’s cabinet maker, a craftsman, justifiably proud of his work. But some people, charging hundreds of pounds an hour for their professional expertise somehow seem to think that he should charge minimum wage for his. Not only that but he should abandon a £25,000 job to pop round and fix their faulty hinge – and be grateful for the work. They look askance when the reply is, “Sorry, mate, I’m a bit busy.”

This may sound like we're an unwelcoming, insular bunch, but we're not. Our pubs are full of people who have moved here from other parts of the country. They have settled in and made friends - because they try to join in without taking over and because they are, I don't know, just NORMAL people not trying to put on an act.

We are a peaceable tribe on the whole. It’s just that we can spot a phoney from the other side of a swede field.