The beauty of a nation is its countryside

I have been champing at the bit staying in drab, colourless, ostentatiously wealthy London which I do not like as there is something horribly unreal about it. So, it was a joy last week to escape London's clutches and take the train out into the countryside of Sussex to meet up with both my webmaster and my financial adviser on the South Coast by the sea. Hectic and noisy, of course, there is also something joyless about London. It is exhorbitantly expensive (for example, to buy fresh cut fruit costs me 10 times what it costs me in Chiang Mai), a sort of selfish and self-centred consumerist temple that seems to force the smile out of people's faces. In contrast, in the countryside, there is nature's kingdom full of colour, of greens, blues, browns... earth colours and sea and sky. And the air is fresh and breathable. With nature, there is no stress, no pressure as everything functions at its own, knowing pace without the help of humans. It feels so much the right place to be, no neurosis and filled with dormant life waiting for the coming of spring when it will awaken again and surge into full bloom. And that time is almost now. In fact, the first daffodils and narcissi are already waving their yellow heads at us in greeting. Winter is waning, spring is coming.

Yes, this is a different Britain, ancient, acceptable, offering stability and a grounded base out of which to forge a life of meaning. It is gives me a sense of belonging which London can never do. It is this that is my home country although I have to say I would never live here now as the cost of everything is too high to make for even a reasonable quality of life. For me, my own country of bith has priced me out of the possibility or even the desire for residence. Yet the countryside of Britain remains in my very bones.

One thing about London that exercises my mind is the inability of people to look you in the eye and smile. People here don't seem to want to connect. They appear to be cut off from each other and so there is no great sense of that deep, innate interconnectness which is the reality of our natural state of being. Maybe this is why there is a sense of joylessness in the city. People feel cut off and therefore lacking in identity. There is a crisis of identity in Britain. As a country it no longer knows its role in the world and, worse, it no longer knows who it is at home. As one man said, after some idiot minister had talked about "punching above our weight", "I have no wish to fight at all. We are just a small but prosperous country which needs to realise its place in a peaceful Europe. That is enough". And he is right. You get a feeling that the British people are being forced into a role that they don't wish to be in and it is creating great stresses and strains in our culture. Personally, in London, I find Britain no longer a comfortable country to be in, although it becomes much more pleasant when you get out into the countryside.