I couldn’t leave the city for 18 months – not by choice, but forced by Covid-19. Many a morning during those first few months of lockdown I was rudely awakened at 7 o’clock by my inconsiderate neighbour using his angle grinder. I’d lie in bed longing for my cottage in the peaceful platteland, where, many a morning, I had been rudely awakened at 7 o’clock by the sculptor next door using his angle grinder.
Words, like viruses, mutate. The 2011 edition of the defines “platteland” as “remote country districts”. But over the past decade or two it has become a buzzword meaning something more along the lines of “eternal longing”. To assuage this longing, many city dwellers would buy weekend homes in
