17 signs that you’re a country bumpkin stuck in the city

It’s a big step that many have to take: packing their bags and heading for the city where the money is. But take a puppy away from its mother and it’s going to have a few rough nights. Things happen differently in the city – people walk fast, litter, honk furiously, scrabble for the last seat on the bus and queue for miles to get into a dingy club called Infernos. People have short tempers, hate noise of any nature before 9am and spend their time nursing a hangover on a Saturday rather than trying to catch fish with their bare hands.

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life” goes the famous quote. Horseradish. A man who isn’t tired of London doesn’t know what he’s missing. Sound familiar? Here are the signs that you’re more suited to the countryside than the city…

1. Your Barbour jacket gives you accidental fashion credibility, 2. You whinge about the price of pints – they’re far cheaper in your local at home, 3. A weekend in the city is seen as a weekend wasted, 4. When you walk into a flock of pigeons, rather than duck and squirm you point and shout ‘bang!’, 5. You squeak at foxes, imitating a dying rabbit, 6. You prefer to walk long distances rather than get the Tube, 7. When your date declares she is a vegetarian, all you can think about is finding an excuse to leave, 8. When asked where you live, you say a large town nearby as no one has actually ever heard of your village, 9. You buy meat from a butcher, or return from the country laden with plucked game from your mother, 10. You turn your nose up at going to see the deer in Richmond Park – you see better in your garden, 11. You always opt for the pub rather than that new hipster bar in Brixton, 12. You find it hard to believe that people have to pick up dog poo – nothing is less dignified, 13. If you find a log fire, you never want to leave it, 14. You complain about the taste of the air, 15. You never buy chopped veg, 16. You don’t whinge about how long it takes for you to get from Clapham to Fulham – it’s how far your father has to go to get milk and the papers every morning, 17. Whenever you return home, you ask yourself (and your friends) why you’d ever work in the city when this is an option