ANOTHER VOICE
It is often a mistake for exiles to return
AUBERON WAUGH
After Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea and Holland, England is the fifth most densely populated country (of more than a few million inhabitants) in the world. We English live on top of each other at the rate of slightly over 940 to the square mile, 363 to the square kilometre. Most, of course, live at much closer proximity than that, in urban housing which is more com- parable to Hong Kong's 13,800 or Macao's 75,000 to the square mile.
The difference is that Europeans eat more food, produce more solid waste, drive more motor-cars and make more noise. Many of us also seem to carry in our genetic memory bank some awareness of a previous time when human beings were not required to live at such close quarters. Perhaps when they were hunters and gatherers, herdsmen or cereal growers. These town-dwellers see the shrinking countryside around the urban conurbations and suburban sprawl as their own territory from which they have been exiled. They reserve the right to go and spoil it further by building retirement bun- galows wherever they wish, and demanding that once they have built their retirement bungalows nobody should be permitted to spoil the view by building another.
This is entirely separate from the demand that urban England should be enti- tled to trample free of charge over any- body's private property, although it may gain some of its support from the same mystical, atavistic grievance, a sense of hav- ing been exiled from the countryside where all Englishmen and Englishwomen belong. All my remarks on this point are addressed to England and the English, as I have very little idea what happens in places like Scot- land, which has one of the lowest popula- tion densities in Europe at 168 to the square mile, 65 to the square kilometre. I would certainly not wish to discourage any- one who wants to build himself a retire- ment cottage in the Cairngorms and play his bagpipes or his pibroch out of doors in the clear bright air all day and all night. Nor would I discourage anyone who wished to retire to the South Pole where, I believe, a no-smoking rule has already been enforced to welcome them and ensure that they live even longer in retirement than they might do in England.
It may seem to be in response to this inherited sense of exile that Tony Blair pro- poses to institute a Right to Roam in hon- our of John Smith, the former Labour lead- er, who enjoyed going for walks. Ostensi- bly, the measure will restore to the English a lost Eden, where — perhaps in the fifth century after the Roman legions had left they could barge through anybody's proper- ty without so much as a by-your-leave, free to trample wild grass in the sweet, cowpat- scented air. My own view of these ramblers, as they lope around in threatening gangs of 30 or 40 ugly bearded dwarves with their hunchbacked women, is that their chief motivation is anger. They do not particular- ly enjoy the grass or the sweet cowpat-scent- ed air; they wish to spoil the countryside by their presence, assert their right to terrorise it as an act of revenge for the urban depri- vation they suffer. When Tony Blair oppor- tunistically promises to give them what they want, he has no real idea of what they want. A licence to vandalise country churches would do the trick just as well.
The urge towards rural retirement, while possibly springing from the same genetic roots, is completely different in its applica- tion. Here the motive is not to punish, humiliate or terrify the 'haves' on behalf of the 'have-nots' (or dispossessed urban pro- letariat) but to join the 'haves' and keep the `have-nots' at bay. Quite apart from the peculiarly English perception of the town as a place of exile from the countryside, there are solid disadvantages in urban living to be measured against the obvious advan- tages. There is the constant irritation of human proximity to be measured against the social opportunities, the obnoxious smell of hamburger gases in every street to be mea- sured against the ready availability of conve- nience foods; the importunity of socialist councils to be measured against the chance of attending lesbian awareness hula-hoop and juggling sessions, freely supplied.
One of the worst complaints about urban proximity will always be the noise. Since your average British teenager, unemployed and on income support, can now afford
`Can I have a drink of water, please?'
sound amplifiers fit to blow the heads off an audience of 100,000 in Wembley Stadium, a new hazard has been added to urban life. Few flats in Britain are well insulated for sound in any case, and the neighbours' televi- sion sets are bad enough, long before the teenagers open up with their ethnic CDs.
My point in drawing attention to what may well indeed be the greatest threat to human tranquillity in the years ahead is to urge that there must be better solutions to this problem than coming to live in the country. It is quite wrong to suppose that the country is much quieter than the town, and many find country noise more irritating. There is scarcely a spot in England which is silent, where you do not hear the distant roar of traffic, with aeroplanes overhead, tractors, saws, cows bellowing, geese honk- ing, church bells shattering the silence. It is no good urging that people who do not like the sound of church bells should not buy a house near a church. Ancient planning, reinforced by new doctrines of 'in-filling development, ensure that nearly all houses in the country are pretty close to a church. As soon as new arrivals in the country start complaining about these noises, they become the focus for a second wave of hatred. People complain of urban alien- ation, where bed-sitter neighbours never talk to each other. In the country, neigh- bours loathe each other. Far from being ignored, their every movement is watched with unremitting hostility. Much of the oppressive legislation of Mrs Thatchers Mad Period, 1985-90, provides a snooper `s charter to inform on neighbours in the country. Last week we read of Rosalind Ingrams, at Garsington, being fined a total of nearly £1,000 because a neighbour reported her for cutting down two sick and dangerous trees. Next month her husband faces prosecution under the Noise Abate- ment Act for having organised an opera festival — again on the anonymous denun- ciation of a neighbour. Nobody can leave a country pub without two or three people falling on the telephone to warn police of 3 drink-driver on the loose. Everybody dislikes somebody and ip some villages everybody dislikes everybodY else. In many, you cannot open a window without being reported for breaching plan' ning regulations. We who live in the country have our various ways of exacting revenge „ on each other, but I would not recommend it to townies seeking a peaceful retirement-
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