Town Mouse, Country Mouse

Saturday afternoon, the sun is shining, and we have a plan.
We are going to visit a house in the country: it's the first tentative step towards something we've been thinking about for a long time... Something we have decided we can make happen, though it will require patience, stamina, a little bit of courage and an understanding bank manager. The photos of this house have been making us drool for days. OK, so the electricity and the plumbing will need a little work, but so what? We know we don't have the money to buy perfection. And those views of the countryside are beyond what money can buy.

We are bright and perky. We have two adorable kids in back. Man, we are a happy little family.
Two hours later, after a 45-minute stint on the windiest road imaginable, the happy little family has lost some of its spark. Most of its spark, actually.
LB, who had been looking a little out of sorts when we set off, is now a pale shade of green. The contents of his stomach will soon be adorning his car seat.
BB, contrary to expectations, has not slept peacefully during the ride, but has now reached an unprecedented level of hysteria. After a particularly gruelling game of "hide the dummy", said dummy is now lost. We pull up, search every square centimetre of the damn car: the dummy has vanished into the twilight zone. BB wails and screams as though part of his own body has been hacked off, which, in a way, it has.

The house we have come to visit turns out to be not so much a house as a shell. A spookily empty shell with no electricity, no plumbing and, consequently, no toilet.
The view is less breathtaking and more oppressive: we are surrounded by imposing hills and valleys, a vast, human-less expanse of emptiness. This is the countryside alright, just not the one we had imagined. The quaint village turns out to be a drafty street of shuttered houses, with a cemetry and a statue.
Dutily, we visit the house. We are all feeling miserable, some of us more obviously than others.
As soon as it is polite to do so, we pile back into the car and hit the gas.
We must get out of this place before dark - though dark is looming - find our way back to civilisation and a chemist.
Unfortutanely, our progress is hampered by a procession of sheep being herded to other pastures... and an improbable charity "event" which involves slightly crazy-looking locals rolling beer barrels down the road and chanting into megaphones.

The windy road never ends. As LB cries and BB screams, I wonder why someone didn't just put up a helpful sign saying "Civilisation: this way". Then at least we'd know which road to take.

By the time we get home, the happy little family has become the Dysfunctional Family. The kids are physically drained. The parents are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
They lash out like snarling cats: well whose idea was it anyway to get a place in the country?! Man, never mind the country house, I don't even want to live with you anymore!

Later, much later, our mood softens and we are almost able to smile and shrug off our disasterous day.
We talk, we reason, we make conclusions, as sensible adults do.
The dream is intact. But we pull it down a notch or two.
See, there's countryside and countryside, yes? And - er - the one we've been imagining involves bakeries and cute cafés and a reassuring shopping centre not too far away.
You get the picture?
Yes, we are town mice-on-the-turn, and town mice have to come down a peg or two before they think about taking on those country mice.

All in all, a very enlightening day.