Middle Class Problems: The first 48 hours of our escape to the country are bliss. Then we are bothered by a nagging itch...

If you don't live there, the countryside is easily romanced into an Enid Blyton dreamscape where happy families pick blackberries, go for deliciously long walks, gather round board games, bake, visit country pubs, and generally live the good life.

Thus does the countryside become a hazy idea of an antidote to anything remotely bad about city life for we middle-class townies, so strapped to our jobs that we daren't think about leaving our urban lifestyles for too long. There it is, that hallowed land, winking at us from the pages of the weekend supplements, in which tale after tale is trumpeted of the young urban family who rejected the rat race in favour of a more humble, outdoor life. How happy they always look!

And so, lured by curiosity, we take ourselves off to the sticks. The first 48 hours are bliss. We have never been so relaxed. We remember we're part of the cycle of life and should not be imprisoned by the metropolis. This is our Walden.

Yet, as time passes, we find ourselves bothered by a nagging itch. For starters, there's no mobile signal; while the first two walks were liberating, we can't face a third; and nice as it is to drink endless tea and read magazines, we can do that at home, where the pubs don't close at dusk. To the cinema, perhaps? What do you mean, it's 45 minutes away…

And so, as our rural sabbatical draws to an unexpectedly early end and we jump on the train back to a noisy bazaar of crowds and tannoy announcements, we let out a sigh of relief. Ah, back to the drudge of life we know so well.