Countryside
Programming note: My domain is now live, and so I plan to post here fairly regularly.
Growing up in the countryside, or at least close to the countryside, is an experience that back then I don’t think I fully appreciated, but with a decade of hindsight, I can definitely see shaped my view of life and our times.
We are, after all, living in a country that sort of embodies one global idea of “countryside”, or at least as far as we can generalise such a concept. Rolling hills, old oak trees, inns, horseback; these are ideas that clearly have an enduring appeal, as evidenced by the stream of knightly and medieval TV shows1 and movies in the second decade of the 21st century.
In 2026, we are so distant from how our food is made, the inputs that go into both plant foods and into meats, that we barely even consider that the chicken breast we are holding in Tesco represents the life of one whole chicken,2 and I say this as someone who eats a huge amount of chicken every week. Moving to cities, away from nature, has fundamentally changed us in just 6 or 7 generations.3
For a huge number of reasons – the predominant one being “this is how the world works”, as someone who was born into a world moulded by our overarching, capitalist system – Western human society has shifted towards a meat production and food consumption model that privileges incredible quantity and, therefore, the ability to set relatively low prices. Chickens, and indeed all meats eaten by humans, are reared expressly to grow as big as possible before being killed and eaten.4
All of this is well known, studied, and felt by those who care to look, and so I’m mostly thinking about this with a link back to the English countryside.
My childhood wasn’t one living on a farm; I lived first in Ipswich and then in Woodbridge, looking out to the beautiful, flat Suffolk countryside and coast. This put me proximate to food production – mainly piggeries, and crops like oilseed rape – and I think showed me a part of the world that kids growing up in towns and especially cities are so divorced from.
Implicit in this, of course, is the fact that the labour and end product of these processes ultimately form such a vital part of everyone’s life. As we abstract away from working directly in food production, and increasingly into working sedentarily, sat in front of a screen, food becomes more of a brand, an idea conveyed through packaging.
An example I’ve been thinking about lately is baked beans5, an excellent tinned food derived from rehydrated haricot beans in tomato sauce that sits so far from its original ingredients while being a pervasive staple, used in mealtimes across the land. No one would ever make baked beans, though, and I think this tells us something.
Getting back to nature is tricky, and something I’m trying to do more of within the bounds of a North London lifestyle. Luckily for me, one of the most natural places in the city, or at least my part of it, is two reservoirs, one that houses a working lake and the other a nature reserve.
Being able to easily access these bodies of water, taking a quiet walk through a facsimile of the broader nature I know from Suffolk, has nourished my soul too many times to count while living in this city. (To give something back, I plan to volunteer there on a more regular basis.)
I originally went to the reservoirs when I moved to London in early 2022, after spying them on Google Maps. In a physical map I have6, they are clearly visible and appear next to a water works, the towers of which sit castle-like in the cityscape.
Not even 300 years ago, we had a completely different, much deeper, symbiotic relationship to nature and the countryside, a lifestyle that had endured for literally tens and hundreds of thousands of years.7 In the modern world, do we feel this alienation in some way; a yearning in our subconscious?
The beautiful film Hamnet, a story about William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes – or really about Agnes and her motherly grief – set in 16th century England was, for me, a visual representation of how my life could have been, steeped in green, trees, nature, mud, animals, peace. Agnes’ peace in nature, from the opening shot of the film, is incredibly striking in our age of concrete and metal.
My affection for the countryside has definitely grown as I’ve become older; in some ways, growing up in it pushes you away and into the city, a place of amenities, shops, happenings. In time, I think I’ll definitely return and enjoy a life of green spaces, an interaction with the world and land around me.
If the sun is shining, I have to go outside, an impulse that somehow makes inside things I enjoy, like watching TV and the exchange of my mental labour for money, really annoying. On rainy days, the reverse is true and I could happily spend two or three days inside, provided I have enough food and there isn’t a gap in the clouds.
Again, I think this is a feature of growing up. I remember whole summer holidays in my teenage years spent inside, on my laptop, watching stuff, browsing the internet, blogging – worryingly close to what I’m doing right now – without a care for the outside world. The fact this delivered me an internet job only compounds things.
I’m writing this under the spell of HBO’s A Knight of Seven Kingdoms, which is both excellent (after four episodes) and intersects with my post-university interest in Anglo-Saxon and then post-1066 Britain.
Around 6-8 years in a back garden, 6 weeks for commercial meat, and 2-3 years for commercial egg laying hens.
The UK became a predominantly urban society in c.1850, or 175 years ago.
UK welfare groups say today’s broilers can reach roughly 2.2 kg in about 35 days, and are commonly killed at around five to six weeks.
For people who might want to experiment: seasoning a can of any type of baked beans (including very cheap supermarket ones) with some Henderson’s Relish, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, or whatever else you desire works wonders.
Sheet 3 of the 1891 edition of Stanford’s library map of London, showing Stoke Newington, Hackney Downs, and Finsbury Park.
Of course, many people around the world still live in this way, and I’m talking here about my own experiences living in England.