So more than 60 million people are now packed onto the decks of SS Great Britain. And according to the
Express, or maybe the
Mail — but either way, it must be true — the entire population of Romania is about to move here as well. Do you realise what that means? Yes, of course. If all 60 million of us chipped in a quid, Chelsea could buy another striker. But there’s something else as well. As our towns and cities become ever more frenetic, the hunt for “personal space” — for those places where you can be guaranteed a little peace and privacy, far from the madding crowd — will become the ultimate lifestyle quest of our times.
Like Garbo, all of us will “vunt to be alone”. But few of us will be able to realise that dream. The sort of bolt holes that supply total seclusion are likely to become as coveted in 21st-century Britain as thy neighbour’s ass (or, failing that, his wife) apparently was in the biblical era.
However, for anyone with a spare £150,000 to spend — my dentist, for instance — I have found just the thing. A Penzance estate agent is advertising what must be the ultimate bolt hole. Not least because it really is a hole. Well, to be specific it’s a former Second World War bunker, made of reinforced concrete, entirely covered with earth and grass, and hidden in a remote field a few miles from Land’ s End. “A superb rural location with distant sea views” is how the estate agent describes it — a selling pitch only slightly weakened by the fact that, since the bunker has no windows, it would be a bit difficult for its occupants to appreciate any sea views, near or distant.
But hey, some hideaway! The bunker comes with planning permission for conversion into a three-bedroom apartment. There are a couple of catches. One is that the site already has some sitting tenants — namely, a set of badgers — and Penwith District Council has stipulated that before any development takes place the new owner must “ensure the health and safety of the badgers is not compromised”. Wonderful. There is probably a whole EU Badger Safety Directorate to advise on the matter.
And the other catch is that the planning permission has been granted on the understanding that the bunker is used only for “holiday or leisure purposes”, not as a permanent home. The local council has presumably reasoned that anyone who wanted to live permanently in a hole in the ground would be certifiably mad, and should therefore be forcibly removed to accommodation even more secure than a Second World War bunker.
Still, if you leave aside the absence of windows, the health and safety stipulations regarding the badgers, and the estate agent’s slightly ominous statement that mains water is “available from the adjoining field”, what a holiday home it would make! Since we were visiting the area, I showed it to my wife. She sniffed and said she thought it might get a bit damp when it rained. Typical woman! Probably exactly what Noah’s wife said about the Ark.
The trouble is that if you are looking for a place in which to escape the aggravations of urban Britain, you don’t have too many options. Nowadays, if you buy a little country cottage as a second home you are deemed to have committed a crime of political incorrectness on a par with lining your patio with elephant tusks or putting your children on a diet of deep-fried Mars bars. You will be accused of depriving local people of local housing by inflating the market to “city prices” (even though the local people who own the cottages are usually only too pleased to flog them for city prices).
A converted barn or chapel, then? Dreadfully passé, darling. The most frightful oiks have them now. And anyway, most of the conversions are being done by people who used to sell double-glazing.
A redundant windmill? Could be very creaky in a stiff breeze. A houseboat? It’s a lovely romantic notion — the idea of drifting for ever along tranquil inland waterways, like a benign version of cholera. But I always worry about the practicalities. How does the milkman know where to deliver your daily pinta? What happens when you need to have the barnacles scraped off your bottom? And, of course, the boat will sometimes need attention, too.
No, I fear that a wartime bunker may be the best bet for those seeking that special sense of solitude and security. Either that or some other sort of military establishment left high and dry by the end of the Cold War. What about those bizarre early-warning missile detectors shaped like giant golfballs, up at Fylingdales on the North York moors — all of them aimed at Russia? I don’t wish to give our security services any more headaches than they already have, but has anyone noticed that they are now actually pointing in the wrong direction? Either way, I never pass these fascinating objects without imagining them converted into what a resourceful estate agent would undoubtedly describe as “splendidly distinctive character homes in a unique gated community”. But I suspect that, as at Land’s End, the badgers may have got there first.
Why I feel sorry for relegated Pluto
Poor old Pluto! After about four billion years of zooming dutifully around the Sun — admittedly in a weirdly swaying orbit which suggests that it would fail any intergalactic breathalyser test — it was finally elevated to the status of a planet in 1930. But it has been allowed just 76 years at the top table — barely a wink of a cosmic eyelid — before being deprived of its planetary title for being too small. There are many objects in our solar system that deserve to be stripped of their preposterously inflated status. The President of the United States might be one example. Nouvelle cuisine could be another. Tracey Emin a third. But being granted the status of planet should be rather like getting an entry in Who’s Who or being given a peerage: something you keep for the rest of your life, no matter how insubstantial your achievements subsequently turn out to be.
United we stand
Almost a sixth of London’s population — nearly a million people — born to non-English parents. Tens of thousands of economic migrants from Europe, Asia, Africa and the West Indies turning some areas into virtual ghettos. A staggering 100,000 new arrivals from Poland alone in little more than a decade.
Yes, that was London in the year 1900. It was a city seething with disquiet about mass immigration. Yet 40 years later that disparate, fractious population and their children stood united and defiant in the face of the Blitz. Why do we fret so much about where people come from? It’s what they contribute when they get here that counts.
