a city break

My wife has left me, but it is only for a week while she takes in some European culture in Rome, and more relaxation and sightseeing in Sorrento. Luckily she has a best friend to share this sort of trip with, instead of having to drag a less-than-keen miserable bastard (me, in case you were wondering) along.

I don't even get asked any more. "Would you like to come to Rome and see the sights there?" sounds simple enough, but in my mind it's instantly translated into the reality of "Would you like to travel to the airport, deposit the car and about £50 somewhere in a big grim square of concrete, struggle with cases on a shuttle bus, mill about feeling lost in crowds of people all looking around to find their check-in desks, join a queue, inch forward for what feels like hours, do the check-in eventually, pay whatever absurd extra fees they sneaked in since you booked, go off to do security in lines of people, get through with some of your dignity left if you're lucky, sit in departure lounge for what feels like at least two days, get herded on to plane, two to three hours of relative peace, land, pray for fairly straightforward reunification with your luggage at some stage, do a load more queuing for more hours at Border Control (thanks Brexit, we're outsiders in Europe now), finally get out of airport in destination with a blank look that says 'new arrival, brain and normal function may reboot soon'.

And then it's all roads and concrete and noise and cars and buses and millions and millions of people. Busy, busy, busy. So it's generally a no from me.

"But wouldn't you like to see all the interesting history of the place?"

"I know the interesting history of the place. The trouble is these days, the interesting history of places is an industry, as much of an insufferable process as getting through an airport, lines of people being amazed that yes, it's just like the pictures they've seen, but with added lines of people and noise and smells of traffic fumes."

"You are a miserable bastard."

"Yes, I know."

I just can't get on with cities. We live in a rural part of Cornwall, where there are three houses within sight of each other, then it's nearly a kilometre to the 'main' hamlet. Yes, hamlet, not a village. There's no store, or pub. Just a loose collection of about twenty homes around a crossroads, and a 16th century farmhouse which is probably the centre point which the hamlet grew up around. The roads don't even go anywhere, just off to other hamlets in each of the four directions. 

The nearest place with a shop and Post Office is about 3km away. The end of the country (the cliffs and the coast) is about 5km away. I am used to walking along the clifftops, with only the sound of the seas below, seals mournfully calling to each other, gulls wheeling in the spindrift, skylarks singing and tumbling above the fields, and rarely a man-made sound to be heard. 

This is the sort of population density that I am happy with. The traffic outside our house is generally agricultural, either motorised or on legs. The lane is less a route, more a means of getting between different fields. If you go on Google Earth, you can follow the same herd of sheep being driven up the lane between fields that the Google car was on picture taking day. Occasionally, we see a camper van or car towing a caravan go by in the summer. They'll be lost, they can't be deliberately going anywhere.

Apparently, most people do get on with cities - most humans live in them, sometimes even by choice. They even like travelling away from the one they live in to see different ones that they don't. They value things like convenience, being able to have takeaway food on a whim, shopping in malls for more stuff, attending events which are apparently 'culture'. Weird. And, if I may be so bold, the reason the planet is in trouble. All that humanity, all that convenience, all that consumption.

I don't want to go and see all the places in which humanity has made its mark on the world over hundreds or thousands of years. There's nothing beautiful about the story and where it's led to.