Hey there, i’m Jack. I’m a 19 year old materials science student at the University of Oxford. I sit down occasionally and just type a lot without thinking much.

Aug 25, 2016

Why the Shire is shit

The countryside is beautiful. Hour long walks with your dog, the pub… and? No that literally is an exhaustive list of activities in the countryside. Well, almost. Here comes all the reasons the countryside is shit.

Everything is news.

Front page news for most people normally involves ISIS or mass rape or Rupert Murdoch. But in the countryside, everything is front page news. One time a guy was walking his alpacas to Tesco. Front page news. Some muppet hit a cow chilling in the middle of the road at 2am in the morning. Front page news. We get a new ‘shortest cycle path’. Front page news.

To be featured in the local news and journal should be the goal of any countryside dweller. It means your life is marginally less empty than everyone else’s.

Public transport

So i went to London this one time and we missed the bus by 20 seconds. I almost cried. The person I was with must have thought me a right wally. The next one came along two minutes later.

Now i’m not just a muppet, I’m used to buses coming every hour… sometimes. They often just wont turn up. No reason, no logic, no bus. They are always late. Always. Except when you have to get a connecting bus, that second one is always on time or early.

Yes, I did say connecting bus. In the same way people will take two trains to get somewhere, we take two or three connecting buses.

‘Get an Uber’ I hear you cry. Don’t be ridiculous. Uber hasn’t even reached the city of Gloucester in the Shire yet. It won’t be reaching the humble town.

Also does anyone know how to read a bus timetable?

Meeting up with friends

Anything is an absolute logistical nightmare. Everyone lives a 30 minute drive from each other, so organizing anything requires exact timings, dividing of cars and for it to be worth the hour round trip.

The only option to meet up in the Shire is the pub. The only option. So you’ll all drive from the far outreaches of the Shire and end up in a pub. Then none of you will drink more than 2 or 3 because you’re driving. Then everyone will ask for a lift home. Then you’ll stay til 10.30 then head off home. A successful night of socialising. Just enough to convince your brain your not a loner; not enough to actually be fun.

This isn’t even rare. Like once a month?

Clubbing

If one person is the dedicated driver, or you split a £60 25 mile taxi; you can go clubbing! When I say clubbing I mean a single room with large speakers, “choons” and Jagerbombs. Lit.

I went clubbing last night. With valiant spirit in we went, my mates determined they were gonna find me a sexy senorita. We walk in… lots and lots of 15 year olds. Well, they looked 15. They were possibly 18 though because they got ID’d. Anyway no potential candidates. Some guy is so bored that he had tried to fight us 5 times by the 8th Justin Bieber song.

Still not too late to say sorry mate. (thanks, proud of that one)

Clubbing is effectively an utter disaster. Save face, and leave the Shire if you want to have a ‘mad one’.

Drinking

This is pretty much the only activity you can do for entertain yourself. Go to the local spoons because every other pub is £4.50 a pint.

To give an indication of how important drinking is to countryside life, my village has 600 people in it total. We have 4 pubs. They are also always full.

In fact the make up of businesses in the Shire is ridiculous. A town will have one small store, 5 coffee shops, 3 cupcake stores, a ‘paint a pot’ and the rest will be pubs.

We drink and know things, that’s about it.

I wasn’t joking earlier. This happens once a month.

Flirting

‘This can happen anywhere, no excuses’

Oh no, don’t be ridiculous. If you ever have a girl or guy be needy as fuck… they’re from the countryside.

The issue here is numbers. There are possibly about 2000 people your age in the nearest 25 miles. I know because I, and everyone I know, has ran out of people on Tinder with their radius set to an hours drive.

Of those possibly 300 are attractive. Of those 300 you will know 80 of them through school or parents. Its the Shire, everyone knows everyone.

This means then that having lived in the shire for about a year you have pretty much exhausted your options. Also, with no mechanism to meet people other than being introduced by friends (and tinder)… you’re effectively destined for celibacy.

There is no such thing as a ‘casual hook up’ in the Shire. You will 100% see them again, they live 22 miles away and they’re not drinking because they are driving. The ‘we’re obviously gonna hook up’ walk for 2 minutes back from a club is far easier to do than the 45 minute drive. Not to mention the fact that literally everyone lives with their parents or is dog-sitting.

So yes, when someone from the countryside returns to Uni and seems needy as fuck to meet up. Understand, they have been socially isolated for the entirety of the 4 month holiday. Its a case of needing to socially retox.

Nothing to do with flirting, but its funny.

The pub

Let’s not get it twisted. This is one of the absolute highlights of the countryside. It’s still shit though.

You walk in and see loads of actual 15 year olds because its the countryside and ID’s havent been discovered yet. You walk past the exact same haggard 50 year olds sipping what seems to be the exact same pint they were sipping a few days back. You order your choice of pint, from the huge plethora of options, using your inate knowledge of craft ales. Then you sit down with your few friends. You chat shit for 3 hours, then leave.

Its the highlight.

Dog walking

I’m trying really hard to think of something bad to say about this, but there literally isn’t. Oh apart from the fact that ‘driving to walk your dog’ is a thing. I didn’t even realise this was weird but a London friend told me it was. So we all live in the middle of effectively a field. We could just walk out of our house and walk the dog. But the same patch of grass gets dull. So we will drive for up to 30 minutes to the place where we will walk the dog.

Oh worth mentioning as a reference. In an hours time spent at pretty much the Shire’s biggest attractions, you will be lucky to see more than 3 humans and 4 golfers. Oh and you’ll inevitably chat to them all about their dog for 5–20 minutes. At uni its: ‘What subject?’, ‘What do you do?’. In the Shire the questions are: ‘Boy or girl?’, ‘How old is she’, ‘Is it a beagle?’.

Its normally to some common or beacon or something. The dog doesn’t really care.

Pretty much the highlight of every day is walking around the common, breathing fresh air, avoiding cow shit and just chilling. Its so relaxing and refreshing and amazing.

Leave a ❤ if you found this mildly entertaining.