not quite town, not quite country

[sack the chimp]

just been watching newsnight, a stroy about how there are areas on the edge of towns which aren't quite town and aren't quite country, and how we can get rid of them.

I almost started throwing things at the TV! Am I alone here, but I grew up in an area like that, and hope to settle down in such an area. You've got some of the life of the town, with the space and greenery of the country. It's the best mix, for fucks sake.

If people dissagree with me, please say so, I just didn't get that at all.

[plattbridger]

i have to completely agree with you here!!!

i too grew up in such an area there are forests canals fields and nothingness for some distance just a few minutes walk from my house even though i live about 2 miles from the centre of wigan it still feels really country-ficated

infact countryfile visited just down the road from me about rural/suburban conflict (cow tipping in otherwords id imagine)

thankfully though all the land around where i live is protected and part of the greater manchester greenbelt although houses are now springing up on EVERY single available patch of land along the main roads where i live

im still amazed that even though i am wedged in between two major cities and live in one of the countries most densly populated areas there are still little twisty country roads with hedges and pheasants in the fields etc

just driving down the east lancs youd be forgiven you where in the middle of nowhere along certain stretches and not on a major trunk road between manchester and liverpool


in conclusion: i agree with you sack the chimp!

[Dr-Electro]

I think you could have phrased your post a bit more elegantly, but I agree with you. Journalistic responsibility has fallen into the cesspool. I will elaborate more later, as I have specific opinions on this issue, but I must get back to work. I have to pay for my Internet service somehow! :D (and one little "lol")

[Alomie]

I live in a place right next to the south downs... but i am a 30 min bus drive from the center of Brighton.

YaY! go me i love my little country town type place!!

[nutnoodle]

Yeah it's like the best place to live. You are close enough to go to the city or town when you need to, without taking a train.

AND

You aren't stuck in a busy metropolis, and there's trees and stuff.

You get the best of both worlds AND you get to avoid some of the worst parts of them too :D.

I love living in this crazy country/town place :)

[plattbridger]

Actually I'd prefer to be completely away from the city, I've lived 15 miles away from Manchester City Centre all my life and I'd never been there till I started going to Manchester University.

I can't be doing with cities, they're too big, crowded, noisy and dirty.

[nutnoodle]

Yeah.. I went to London once and I hated it. It was so crowded and busy and the people there seemed really depressed to be honest. Plus a bottle of coke was £1.10 which is just downright diabolcal!!! :eek:

hmmmm mabye I've got the wrong priorities..... Well hey £1.10 for my daily caffiene hit is too much!!!!!!

[squealpiggy]

I love cities! I love to walk around cities and to marvel at the incredible things that humanity has built! I aso like to go to natural places, to mountains especially, it's very humbling.

[Tommuz]

Originally posted by nutnoodle
Yeah.. I went to London once and I hated it. It was so crowded and busy and the people there seemed really depressed to be honest. Plus a bottle of coke was £1.10 which is just downright diabolcal!!! :eek:

hmmmm mabye I've got the wrong priorities..... Well hey £1.10 for my daily caffiene hit is too much!!!!!!

where was this bottle of coke? thats the cheapest i've heard it being sold in london! :p

Anyway. I live in the suburbs of London, yet I still need to take a bus, train and tube to get into Uni. I love where I live for all the reasons everyone else said about their area. The only downside to it all is I still get the prices of London (£2.80 for a pint of Guinness!? £1.00 for a can of Sprite!? £1 000 000 for a 2 bedroom apartment!?). Still, I love it all, the greenery, the people and the city scape in the distance. Is all very nice. I don't plan on spending the rest of my life here though. I'm moving out of the country as soon as I can. :p

[elbillingino]

I also grew up in such an area, and find it quite disgusting.

I could go on one of my anti-GATS / IMF / World Bank rants, but I won't bother.

[plattbridger]

My Grandad told me about the time he went to London (this was in the 50s) he arrived at Euston and was wandering around, he said he must of stopped about at least 40 people to ask for directions and not one of them spoke English :D

They were all Hugarian, French, Italian, Spanish etc- infact Monty Python did a sketch about all the Hungarians in London.

When I went there I found it exactly the same full of Johnny Foreigners, noisy, dirty and stupidly expensive :D cosmopolitan :rolleyes: meh

I'd loose my mind if I had to live in a city I think, which is a shame cos I really liked a degree course at UCL.


Eeee it's not like that 'round these parts a can tell thee

[terrrbite]

I love living in Manchester city centre (ish). Kicks ass.

[Dr-Electro]

I love cities,
I love towns,
I love the country,
I love the downs.

Anonymous

It sounds English to me, but I still agree. I love seeing places I've never seen before. I'm running short of those, due to my age and the amount I have traveled, but I still get there on occasion.:D

In West Texas, a metropolitan area with a population of approximately 200,000 people is considered the city by all the rurals and small townspeople in the surrounding countryside, which is vast. Most of the folks living here think Dallas when the word, "city," pops into a conversation.

The context is based on where one lives. Some of London's suburbs would swallow the entire population of my local "metropolitan area" and never even need to burp.

New York and London are proper cities. They have everything a city should have: Endless streets, traffic congestion, bright lights, pollution, millions of sweaty people who fart and sneeze, cars, traffic lights, taxis that smoke up and down the streets, traffic congestion, huge buildings, shops of every description, traffic congestion, sanitation problems, people who take city life in stride, the most outstanding night life anywhere, great restaurants and hotels, traffic congestion, millions of sweaty people who fart and sneeze, timeless architecture, bridges, awe-inspiring skylines, huge buildings, endless rows of streetlights and stoplights, traffic congestion, hustle and bustle, everything money can buy, high rents, rich people, poor people, lost tourists, lost country bumpkins, millions of sweaty people who fart and sneeze and traffic congestion. Yep. Just what a city needs to be a real city.

In the country, like the places where I spent most of my childhood, you have everything the country should have: Farms, animals that shit and piss, crops growing from horizon to horizon, dusty deserts, wild animals, wild plants, mountains, rolling grasslands, dust, frighening thunderstorms nobody can hide from, bugs, cow manure on the road, fences, "howdy, neighbor" people, friendly little towns with greasy spoon cafes, miles and miles of roads that only have more miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, wide open spaces, peace and quiet, bugs, wild animals, badger poo on the doorstep, dust, cactus growing wild, wildflowers that make city gardens look shite, birds of every description, swamps, beaches, trees like a city dweller only imagines but bigger and better, impossibly distant horizons, dust, bugs, wild bears and coyotes, magnificent elk and moose, badgers, badger poo on the doorstep, rats and mice, dust, cactus growing inside abandoned farmhouses, cotton farms, corn farms, flower farms, cow manure in the middle of the road, the aroma of wild skunk, dust, unfiltered sunlight, rain and snow, muddy roads, bugs and the most sleep-inducing peace and quiet a body could ever want.

So, what's in between? Suburbs.:p

[squealpiggy]

Originally posted by plattbridger
My Grandad told me about the time he went to London (this was in the 50s) he arrived at Euston and was wandering around, he said he must of stopped about at least 40 people to ask for directions and not one of them spoke English :D

They were all Hugarian, French, Italian, Spanish etc- infact Monty Python did a sketch about all the Hungarians in London.

When I went there I found it exactly the same full of Johnny Foreigners, noisy, dirty and stupidly expensive :D cosmopolitan :rolleyes: meh

I'd loose my mind if I had to live in a city I think, which is a shame cos I really liked a degree course at UCL.


Eeee it's not like that 'round these parts a can tell thee

Nutty writer Nikolai Gogol theorised that cities were designed as machines for making people insane. I disagree.

[plattbridger]

Originally posted by squealpiggy
Nutty writer Nikolai Gogol theorised that cities were designed as machines for making people insane. I disagree.

Lol well I think he was on to something. Yea Dr-Electro that’s the weird thing in America there doesn’t seem to be a very definitive rule of thumb for what makes a city, over her you either have to build a Cathedral or get the Queen to give you a Royal Charter. And city status is a specific legal status. Which is a bit daft I suppose especially if you’ve ever been to St David’s which is a city with a population of about 20 and a bloody great big cathedral, and god knows why they turned Preston into a city :rolleyes: :D

[sack the chimp]

Originally posted by Dr-Electro

So, what's in between? Suburbs.:p

Yeah, I'm not sure, not necessarily. Back at my folks house for the weekend, I look out of the window and I can see fields for a mile or so, then a wooded hill. Over that hill is a small town, with pubs and stuff (easily walking distance, even when bladdered).
10 minutes drive and I'm in Birkenhead, 15 and I cna be in Liverpool city centre.
I guess it is sort of suburbs, sort of country, that would be more accurate perhaps.

Where I live in coventry now is just pointless. It's clearly city, but there are no decent nights out, and I have to go further than I do back in the wirral for pretty much anything.

I cant see fields, and I cant even get decent TV reception.

Maybe this isn't a town v country issue, more I just can't stand coventry. Still, there you go.

And on UK cities being weirdly defined, they were trying to get city status for the Wirral a while back. That would have just been weird.

[plattbridger]

City status for The Wirral?! hehehe yea they seem to be going a bit trigger happy over creating new cities at the moment. But surely living on the Wirral you can get Welsh TV? Even I can pick that up in Wigan!

I don't know whether greenfield sites are doing much to protect open spaces, though in Wigan in particular they are filling everysingle brownfield site available with new houses.

And just looking at John Prescots plans to concrete over the South East I can't see it being long before the government builds another Skelmersdale or Milton Keynes.

[sack the chimp]

Yes. For years I've only been able to get S4C instead of channel 4.

Now I've moved to coventry. And I can't get 1 or 4 at all. 5 is perfect though. Isn't life great.

I didn't know Skelmersdale was a Milton Keynes type thing. Is that full of roundabouts too?

[MrPlowHamburglr]

I'm sorry if someone has already mentioned this but what exactly constitutes a not quit town, not quite country area?

I think I grew up in a fairly mid town, mid country area and it was good. Last vacation I went back to my hometown (quite a roadtrip) and found that my old hood had been turned into a concrete wasteland. It was very depressing to see a place where wolves and deer once roamed, and forests hid all sorts of neat stuff like little, old, overgrown farms complete with tractor parts, reduced to a dense, sterile grid of roads and houses. We all knew that was going to happen eventually, but damn those tractor driving, dream crushers sure were thourough. Anyways, my home area probably wasn't anywhere near as rural as most of yours, but it still was nice.

[MrPlowHamburglr]

Looking back on some of the posts I see that you say 1.10 pounds for a soft drink? Yay for relativly low costs of living where I'm at. ('cept for university tuition and real estate)

[squealpiggy]

Prescott has another plan to create a mega-city across the length of the M62 stretching from Liverpoo to Hull! I don't want to be linked to Hull any more than I have to! Or to Liverpoo.