Everything Else

Are you a urban person who suddenly finds themselves living in a rural setting? Do the sounds of cud chewing ruminants keep you up at night? Are the cattle lowing and crapping all around your garden? Then here is a test to see if you are loosing your city ways and becoming a true country rustic.


Just answer this question: How many pairs of green rubber (or any color rubber) wellies do you own?


Answer: I own ...


0 Wellies: You are safe and do not need to be deprogramed. You are free to travel even to known rustic hotspots such as Scotland, Yorkshire, Canada and the American Mid-West for short periods without any great risk.


1 Pair of Wellies: Caution is required as this is the top of a slippery slope into rustic behavior. Best to start visiting nearby provincial capitals regularly for shopping, drinking and the arts. However, avoid extended travel to Scotland, Ireland or the middle bit of the USA where they raise crops or cattle, talk slow, are polite and have funny accents. Go to a coffee house at least three times a week.


2 Pairs of Wellies: Go to London Right Now! It's not too late. If you are a man buy a business suit (no tweed) if you are a woman buy shoes with high heels that are impossible to wear along country lanes.

3 Pairs of Wellies: Full rustic aversion therapy is needed. Eliminate oats from both your diet and your thoughts. You must spend a month in New York City dealing with rude New Yorkers or, if time is of the essence you can spend two weeks in Paris being insulted by sneering beret wearing, Gauluoise smoking, Derrida or Sarte quoting, intellectuals who hate you because you are a bourgeois Anglo-Saxon.
If you actually wear a pair of rubber wellies in Paris you have already gone completely rustic and there is no hope. Just buy some gardening tools and plant 'taters and chew your cud with your neighbors.