There's more to the country than rolls in the hay

Would you swap a poky flat behind a shop for a huge Victorian house with a swimming pool?  I’ve been posing myself this apparent no-brainer of a question all week.  Last month, I decided I’d had enough of my current North London digs.  The ugly modern church outside blocks my light and the dried-on un-removable pomade stain on my velveteen headboard was doing my nut in.  Working from home, my flat felt like a cell, especially without Karim around anymore to brighten things and bitch about the electric shower.  So when my friend Louise mentioned a room in a massive house with its own vegetable garden and pool for similar rent, I jumped at the chance (who wouldn’t?).  “Where is it?”  I asked.

“Er, South”

“Where in South London exactly?”

“No, not South London, Southern England – East Sussex”

The country!  As a born city boy who can’t even drive, I’ve always been wary of it.  I may be bearded and wear boots at times, but the country strips away my pretensions to rugged masculinity and makes me feel like I’m going to break a heel or rip my dress climbing over a stile.  Still, it’s prettier than the concrete canyon I’m currently living on, and being kept awake by foxes rutting would be refreshing after my usual lullaby of sirens.  If it got dull, I could always come up at the weekends for a dose of carbon monoxide.  So why not give it a go?

Here’s why not.  London may be dirty, expensive and occasionally shallow (a bit like me), but I love it.  It’s returned that love in some ways –this is the place where I’ve met most people I’ve ever cared about, and it hasn’t lost its sense of romantic possibility for me.  This city is crawling with the sort of interesting, impossible men that spark my interest – and I’m prepared to put up with its haemorrhaging infrastructure and blank-faced crowds to meet them.  Of course, after the occasional bad night I start doubting – bombarded with music I don’t like in some generic club that’s left a tidemark of grime on my shins, I sometimes wish I was exiting to green fields and peace rather than to a vomit-slicked pavement and a gauntlet of unlicensed cabbies.

But then I remember the good things, like this city’s crazy mix.  The house I grew up in, for example, had Brazilians on one side and a family from a TV-hating fringe Christian sect on the other, so we were sandwiched between blaring Bossa Nova and wheezy hellfire organ.  And many times, lying awake in bed with someone I loved, I’ve listened to the hum of the city outside, imagining all the other millions of people in their beds and feeling so glad to be among them.  There’s also the gay thing – living solely among homos is no dream of mine, but neither is spending my life in a place where the vicar and me are the only gays in the village.  London might be near, but I don’t want to be one of those desperate people on Gaydar who pretend to be in Highbury when they’re really in Hemel Hempstead.  Though it can be a pain in the arse, this city’s heart still beats with potential for me – I’m not ready to dump it yet.

I've always fancied a little weekend bolthole in the country

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