Country Girl – Small Town Lovin’

I’ve noticed that it’s all a bit different here in the country. There’s something in the air, maybe it’s the manure; I’m not sure. But here dating is altogether different. You see, when I was a teenager and I met a boy I liked it would usually mean a film at the cinema holding hands in the back row, or maybe out for a burger. In the country ... film, burger? ... gosh, you're so city living!

The other day hubby came into the house after working outside for the day. “A tractor with a young lad in it and what I can only assume was his girlfriend perched next to him has been up and down that lane more times than I care to remember, the whole time the pair of them have been giggling like school children” he announced with a cheeky glint in his eye. What we eventually deduced from this sight was that the young lad had just passed his tractor test and farmer dad had said “go on then son, you can take the tractor out for a spin” and then son had headed straight out with a hoot and a brum brum to pick up his girlfriend. Obviously said girlfriend had clearly been way more impressed than I ever was when my first boyfriend turned up at my parent’s house with a pushbike ...

It’s quite strange getting used to such sights, especially when I was previously a city girl through-and-through. But I kind of like it. I also love the pace of life here, which with the amount of tractors chugging around on the roads is decidedly slower. Most days when we are out in the car we get stuck behind a tractor, or two, and instead of people beeping their horns and shouting abuse, which is kind of what we’re used to, everyone just seems to accept it as part of country life. I have to point out, though, that most of the farmers who drive the tractors are not normally dressed as women with a pink wig to boot:

Trust me, the one in front really is wearing a pink wig!

Ahh, life in the country, it’s good for the soul. Now I’m just wondering if a tractor-driving teenager might one day woo my own daughter? I’m kind of thinking that we should hang around for a few years just for that because I am pretty sure that hubby’s ‘cheeky glint’ would be more a ‘glint of anger’ if we go back to the city and a suped-up sports car pulls up outside to pick our daughter up for her first date … thankfully that's a long way off anyway ;-)

Wondering what funny tales you have to share about dating teenagers in your neighbourhood?!

Alice Griffin is a writer who, for the next six months, will be living in a rambling 300-year-old English farmhouse on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. During this time she plans try and grow vegetables, finish writing her first book, Tales from a Travelling Mum, and share the peculiarities of country life.