Town Mouse

Unfortunately not for the first time in my life, I find myself comparing my thoughts to those those of the great Latin poets.

The deal is, it's summer. Except it's not, it's April and it's sunny and I live in England and we pretty much don't care what time of year it is, but when there's sun outside, goddammit we will act like it's a Mexican heatwave. We will sit at the little tables outside cafes, shivering slightly and sipping frappucinos, pretending we're in a French film. We will bare our cottage cheese stomachs, arms and thighs because we are getting that slightly more jaundiced shade of off-white if it kills us. And for the love of all that is good and pure, we will have a barbecue. We are British, and there is sun.

I like the sun. I just don't like being in it. I'm essentially a cat. I like padding around the house barefoot and curling up in small places and eating jellied chicken innards, except maybe not the last one. Having sun outside makes me feel extra stretchy and content. "Look," I think, "the sun is out and am inside, saving myself the pain of sweat, sunburn and heat rash. How clever I am." Also, English sun is deceptive. It looks glorious outside. There are flowers and everything. 'Maybe I shall go for a walk,' you venture. 'Yes, I shall go for a walk and I shall discard my winter coat and I shall not even bring a light jacket.' Approximately two blocks from your house, the chill starts to kick in. Two blocks - too far to go back for a coat or give up, not far enough to cheer yourself with the thought that your walk will be over soon. So you soldier on, growing colder and colder and you glare at all the sunny flowers and the bees and the children playing (because my god, have they not nerve-endings?) and everything that tempted you out of the house in the first place because it all seems to be having a wonderful time and the whole thing is a sham and a farce and you are never leaving the comfort of your squalid den ever, ever again, ever. And you probably have hay fever and forgot to bring tissues.

So that's why I stay indoors during hot (or deceptively cold) weather. But even I, practiced cynic that I am, occasionally find myself staring longingly through the window and wondering what exactly it's like Outside. My garden, for example, looks beautiful. We haven't done a thing for it so it's taken matter into its own hands and a riot of bluebells and forget-me-nots and dandelions have flooded our lawn and it looks sort of like a Monet painting if you put your contact lenses in without washing your hands first and your eyes start watering like a bitch. "Maybe I should go for a walk, " I think. There's a lovely park near where I live which used to be the grounds of a stately home at some time or another and it's part woodland, part rose gardens, part winding rivers, and all lovely and picturesque. I have visions of myself wandering under verdant, shaded avenues of elms in a straw hat and a long white dress, casually clutching a slim volume of poetry. "Maybe I'm not an inside person, after all!" I think excitedly. "Maybe I really have the soul of a Romantic poet and I will only be fulfilled through my communion with nature! Maybe I hate living in the city! Maybe I'm secretly a Jane Austen heroine, even though I really don't see how that could be at all possible because they're fictional!" And then the most dizzying thought of all will strike me: "Maybe I should move to the countryside."

And this is where the Latin poets come in. Because I shouldn't move to the countryside. No-one who lives in the city should. No-one really wants to. But the fact is, it's there. It exists as a perfect dream for those of us who have a routine that involves roads and buses and microwaves and noise and people. The countryside does not seem to have routines. Or people. It presents itself as a life that we could have, just twenty minutes off the M25. And, of course, it's a delusion. There are people and routines everywhere, just different and maybe quieter in the countryside. And it's also boring. I know, I've been there, the things I've seen, the horror of it all, etc etc. I have a three day threshold, I find, for countryside tolerance. After that, I need the noise of traffic to get to sleep at night like a lullaby.

This double bind is pretty much what the Ancient Romans felt. If you were rich enough, you bought yourself a country estate somewhere nice so that you could complain about not being able to spend enough time there. No-one really wanted to leave the town - the town was where things happened. But it was hot and noisy and dusty so occasionally a life spent in the rolling Sabine hills looked pretty good. Horace gets it down nicely in this little bit from the Satires (2.7):

Romae rus optas; absentem rusticus urbem

tollis ad astra levis.

Which I roughly translate as:

In Rome, you long for the country;

In the country, you praise the distant city to the stars,

You fickle bastard.

I might have taken a few liberties with that last part.

The point stands, the Romans wrote about how great country life was because they couldn't experience it. Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics are supreme examples of wishful thinking. And not just the Romans, but all poets have written about existences that they don't have - Marlowe's pastoral booty call 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love' was answered by Walter Raleigh's 'The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd'. In a weirdly Wordsworthian strop, Byron decided that "High mountains are a feeling, but the hum/ Of human cities torture", although you never can tell if he's being ironic or not. (By/ironic? Damn, that's already a word.)

So to wrap up this rather rambling musing on Latin and sunshine, I guess the moral is this: the grass is always greener on the other side, except in the countryside where it actually is greener but don't move there anyway.

Oh forget it, here's some Martial (courtesy of Robert Louis Stevenson):

Martial, Epigrams 5.20

God knows, my Martial, if we two could be
To enjoy our days set wholly free;
To the true life together bend our mind,
And take a furlough from the falser kind.
No rich saloon, nor palace of the great,
Nor suit at law should trouble our estate;
On no vainglorious statues should we look,
But of a walk, a talk, a little book,
Baths, wells and meads, and the veranda shade,
Let all our travels and our toils be made.
Now neither lives unto himself, alas!
And the good suns we see, that flash and pass
And perish; and the bell that knells them cries:
"Another gone: O when will ye arise?"