A long, long time ago, I used to be on chatting terms with the late Times journalist John Diamond, who was married to Nigella Lawson at the time
, but who was tragically dying of a slow cancer. He could be quite a stroppy bastard at times, especially when it hurt, but he had the ironic ability to see himself through others' eyes, and to extract the urine appropriately.
So he would loudly opine that the only purpose of the countryside was for driving through when it was
absolutely necessary. And that the greatest pleasure of the city was its theatre and its restaurants and its art and its dinner parties and its highfalutin' culture, not all of which he had much to do with. He did it mostly to annoy us rural dwellers, of course. And yes, he'd have been genuinely spooked by the dead silence of the night, with only the owls and the foxes making conversation, and nobody breaking bottles or ripping the door mirrors off the cars. (The quiet spooks some of our townie visitors too.)
The point was, Diamond said, that it was a good feeling just to know that the delights of the city were always just a cab call away. No matter that you didn't really know any of your neighbours, or that you would bang on the walls if they played their music too loudly, and they'd do the same to you. (Or worse.) He sort-of got the point that rural relationships were more long-term and more genuine, and that we wurzels could rely on our neighbours to help us out even if we didn't particularly like them. But for him, the transience, the dirt and the constant elbow-jostling of the city were all worth it for the buzz.
In return, we decided not to mention that Londoners had their transport massively subsidised, whereas we didn't see a bus from one day to the next. And that the press's infatuation with London theatres, London galleries, London music and London bloody everything, was the welcome price that we had to pay for the privilege of not being overrun by people who couldn't really see our environment as anything more than just a pretty view.
This country mouse spent four years on Fleet Street and couldn't wait to get out of the City. (The internet and WFH eventually made that possible.) There are more psychos and drifters and dangerous people per square kilometre in the city, but heck, everybody knows that. We still envy you your public transport, though.
BJ