Squeaky Sneaker

Things you need to know about the countryside:

• It smells like sweet death. By that I don't mean sweet death in an Emo 'Oh God wouldn't it be great to be dead' kind of way, but an all encompassing vaguely saccharine smell of decay. There's a lot of dead stuff lying around in the country, usually closer than you think, so it's hardly suprising. Sheep are popular. I've seen about three or four recently, in various stages of decomposition. They stink. Add to that dead leaves, dead birds, roadkill, dead flowers, horse shit, cow shit, sheep shit, dead rabbits, dead hedgehogs, dead pheasants. You get my point, the country smells like a carrion strewn battlefield.

• You can drive along a straight stretch of country road for an hour and not see another vehicle, but the second you head into a blind corner, you're going to meet a gigantic wheeled tractor. Usually towing an oversized trailer. You will normally leave this encounter with a branch of some sort sticking out of your passenger window, a strange grin on your face and a stronger than usual smell of crap in your car. This will always happen - it's one of Murphy's laws. Fucking Murphy

• Slugs are bastards. In fact all insects are bastards. I'm aware that a slug is a mollusc, but I'm corralling all garden pests under the Insect Umbrella, just so it's easier to WIPE THEM ALL OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET. Before moving to the country, I held aloft a naive Buddhist philosophy that everything was one, living in perfect harmony, that could be my nan reborn as a moth. Now I'm Kilgore - ' I love the smell of slug pellets in the morning'. The first time I laid them and saw the resulting slug carnage in the morning, I jumped round the garden like I was holding the golden ticket to Willy Wonkas chocolate factory. My vegetable patch now is blue with pellets, with tiny shoots of green poking out amongst them at short intervals. It's like a cluster bomb dotted village in Lebanon.

• People in the country are very friendly. It must be a shared sense of isolation, knowing that the only sucker that's going to dig your house out of a ten foot snowdrift is your neighbour, so best get the preserves out straight away and get round there sharpish. I had a welcome card off a woman I'd never met before, within the first twenty four hours, delivered in possibly the heaviest rain storm I've ever seen. I was showered with jam and chutney and complete strangers were lending me hedge cutters, for no better reason than I've got a MASSIVE friggin' hedge to cut. Coming from an urban situation I was quite freaked out by it all.

These are my first observations, after a month. I'll be sure to regale you with more when they strike me.

For now though, here's some tunes that have been drilling my seedlings recently

Tom Deluxx - 'Reactivate'

Acid Girls - 'The Numbers Song'

Riton & Primary1 - 'Who's There (InFlagranti Rmx)'

Jupiter One - 'Countdown (Designer Drugs Remix)'

Thieves Like Us - 'Your Heart Feels (Designer Drugs Remix)'