A SHROPSHIRE LAD[1]

Tomorrow I will be travelling back to Shropshire. I say back as this is where, as the Americans say, I was raised and where, to paraphrase Philip Larkin, my adolescence was unspent.
Shropshire is the most quintessential English county, indeed one could say that Shropshire is England; travelling further north you cross the border into another country which is, helpfully, called The North. This itself is subdivided into sub states, such as Yorkshire, full of people who can best be described as queer folk, not to be confused with an over predominance of homosexuality but in the sense of people who imagine themselves wholly different from the rest of the human race,  and who are we to argue. Further North still there lies a strange country called Geordie land, a place where people speak in a tongue hitherto unknown to humanity, indeed if it can be called speech, let alone be categorised as a language. The less said about these strange people the better.
To the west is the independent city state of Liverpool, or Scouse, a city state equal in its cultural contribution to the world as Athens, Florence or Venice,[2] though its culinary gifts to the world should constitute a criminal offence against cuisine. Further west still lies Wales, which is definitely not England and which is full of Welsh people whom we will not dwell upon,  in particular passing delicately over their strange fascination with sheep.
Further South there is a wasteland called Brum, which seems to have had either the precursor of Little Boy or Fat Man dropped upon it, either that or has been the victim of some horribly cruel biological experiment.
Needless to say, though I say it anyway, London is not England; it is a multi national community, the geographical equivalent, if not literal location of the United Nations. The remainder of the South East is owned by a combination of Arab Oil Sheikhs, Russian Oligarchs, overpaid TV entertainers and ‘self made’ millionaire builders called Les. Whilst the West Country consists of people who are in fact half fish, they spend their days eating pasties and farting whilst sitting in the sun, wind or rain, they are not a sophisticated people.

Which leaves us with Shropshire; it is no accident that P G Wodehouse set his most famous rural residence in Shropshire, in the form of Blandings Castle, seat of the wonderful Lord Emsworth. If between now and when you go to join the choir celestial you do nothing but read a Blandings novel you will die happy in the knowledge that you have led a full life. Amongst many other things these novels are a celebration of life lived in a rural location outside the great metropolis.  For Shropshire is famously a rural county, a location more than amply supplied with farmers, farm equipment and dogs called Lassie and Rex.

I have to say however growing up in the County Town Shrewsbury, pronounced Shreewsbury or Shrowsbury, depending on which side of the tracks you were born,- I was definitely a young citizen of Shreewsbury. I cannot remember growing up in a particularly rural Idyll. True I did engage in something called ‘ratting,’ which involved going down to a nearby bubbling brook equipped with an air gun and several packs of light ale which were left in the water to cool. I do not remember rats playing a significant, indeed, any part in the proceedings; however I do remember shooting a great number of potentially wild and dangerous empty beer cans. The aesthetic pleasure of this pursuit greatly increasing as the number of cans in the water diminished.
All you need to know about Shrewsbury is that it consists of a cluster of very fine pubs situated in a snake like bend of the river Severn. People will tell you that it is a medieval town with much history; you can safely dismiss these wild claims, though there are some very fine medieval pubs, the Dun Cow and the Golden Cross being particularly fine examples. You could of course visit the castle,[3] (not a pub), since it is very close to the Yorkshire House and can be visited on route to the Boathouse, the best riverside pub in the town.
Shrewsbury is run by the soft bourgeoisie who are very taken up with the idea of crafts and spend every weekend organising craft fairs, i.e. the sale of crap which can be comfortably perused whilst eating home made cake and drinking copious amounts of tea. The Soft Bourgeois are the sandwich filling between the peasants and workers and The County Set. Though things have changed,- whilst I was growing up the Conservative party could have nominated a stuffed teddy bear for the parliamentary seat and it would have been elected. Indeed oi believe once for their own amusement they did just that. It held the seat for a good many years.  I seem to remember that it was called Holt, though could be wrong.
So I am going back to my roots, touching base with the earth, going to stay in the country. I will be taking with me two large metal containers of London air and a gas mask. The metal containers to counter the extreme danger of over oxygenating, the gas mask as a precaution, since the last time I was there I opened the window at the crack of dawn to breath in a hefty lungful of shit, which seems to be a local cash crop, (call me picky but I am not very taken with breathing in shit first thing in the morning). 
Lost without the Tube, and bereft of an A to Z I will wander about the narrow passageways and shuts[4] the ‘happy highways’ of my youth, in a town that time almost forgot, is that I McDonald's I spy? Or to be more tiresomely accurate, that unfortunately did not.

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[1] Anyone who reads this short essay seriously should seek immediate psychiatric assistance.

[2] I am aware that there are some who would dispute this, they are a strange sect who worship Manure and have as their God a Scotsman called Ferguson who chews gum and suffers from incurable paranoia, enough said. 

[3] It tells you all you need to know that the castle once served as municipal administrative offices. It is that sort of castle.

[4] Local term for short semi enclosed passageways.

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