Back to the Smoke

What ho, anxious world!

I have been away. In the Cotswolds (as if you care) enjoying a few days of peace, appalling British weather and quite alarming quantities of cake.

One did those things that the British are popularly imagined to do (by Johnny Foreigner, at least)...gentle strolls to the village pub; a few pints of foaming, nut-brown ale; bracing walks through verdant countryside; visits to ancient Cotswold churches and idyllic houses, nestling peacefully amidst their ancestral lands. I skipped on the bestiality and morris dancing but otherwise, I think we covered all the bases.

I met up with an old friend whom I shall call (for security purposes) 'A'. He is as urban as they come, having grown up in a working class family in a certain North western English city that is a byword for unbridled criminality and general scallywaggery (any Briton reading will know by now where I mean). Over the years, the entire extended family have migrated from the city and made their way to the Cotswolds, causing car insurance costs to rocket in several sleepy villages. The interesting thing is that 'A' constitutes an uncontaminated sample on which the insidious influence of Cotswold life can be studied, rather as biologists examine small islands suddenly thrown up from the ocean to track the arrival of species.

In 'A's case, the first signs were probably a previously unremarked tendency toward brogues. Obviously this is a specialism of mine and I have recorded the pace a which they have rivalled and then supplanted other shoe styles. Then we noted an outbreak of blazers. Then tweed began to appear; fleeting sightings initially but with greater and greater frequency. And now, nearly a decade after first exposure occured, 'A' is a member of a rural shoot, attends point-to-points and boxing day hunts, possesses several tweed shooting suits complete with plus fours, and has not engaged in criminal activities of any kind for some years.

You may make of this what you will. It is for me proof positive that regular healthy access to firearms, tweed, and brogues produces well-balanced and law abiding citizens who only occasionally go berserk and kill everyone in sight.