Oily rags in a rural paradise: Elisabeth Dunn sees flaws in attempts to neaten up the country

PICTURE the village England you know from the lids of biscuit tins. A narrow lane threads through a steep-sided valley with mellow stone cottages stitched to its verges. The summer sunshine polishes the roses and hydrangeas that cushion their walls. Set back from the road are one or two grander, almost manorial establishments, a horse or two in the paddock and a sprinkling of sheep on the hillside.

We appear to be in the land of the apple- cheeked peasant and the well-bred, kindly paternalist. Yet here, at the heart of the village, is an affordable cottage, a symptom of a bitter malaise in Middle England.

Rented out a couple of months ago, you can tell it is affordable, for the pulse of heavy rock music surges out through the open windows; the garden, innocent of rose or hydrangea, has become the natural home of nettle and willowherb; and on the roadside stands an intriguing collection of vehicles dating from the late Seventies and early Eighties, all awaiting renovation: a disabled minivan, a once-dashing red Capri, a Golf GTi, its engine shrouded with bedroom curtaining in place of a bonnet.

Occasionally, the customary Saturday afternoon symphony for massed lawnmowers and strimmers is enlivened by a contrapuntal theme of marital discord soaring above the rock music. Middle England wonders if it should send for the police.

Before the countryside was annexed by the property-owning democracy, with its undignified wrangles about the siting of boundaries, the affordable house did not advertise itself in this egregious manner. Village roads were caked with cow's muck and agricultural vagabonds tinkered peaceably with decaying machinery - the Capris and GTis of their day. But today's miniature landowner likes to assume the horizons of his large-scale forebears, to have the landscape and its occupants arranged to please his own eye. So there are complaints to the police about the rotting vehicles - not, you understand, because they lower the tone, but because they represent a traffic hazard. Those who complain would willingly see double yellow lines in their place, which would help the village well on its way to the suburban ideal.

Already bonfires are frowned upon, lines of washing deplored; abrupt notices sheathed in freezer bags appear on the gateposts of holiday homes instructing dog-owners to keep their animals from fouling the 'private property' which is the grass verge on either side of the country lane.

There were sighs of relief when a local farmer closed down his dairy, for the lowing herd had proved a serious noise nuisance to some of the newer residents. As for the tractors patrolling the lanes deep into the summer evenings . . .

Blistering security lights and burglar sirens, on the other hand, seem to be an acceptable accessory for our times. And those times include the travellers encamped a mile away on a piece of scrubby land earmarked for housing development but lying fallow until an upswing in the market.

The developers, unmoved by window- stickers that read 'Homeless and harmless', are preparing for the immediate eviction of the travellers' buses. Meanwhile, the travellers are held in the village to be the natural perpetrators of a spate of unresolved minor mysteries in which such useful items as cans of food and petrol, chainsaws and axes went missing while consumer durables remained untouched.

Not that this popular theory has stopped the odd finger from pointing in the direction of the affordable cottage. Was it not from here, after all, that the elegant if slightly menacing-looking mongrel had gone off to ravage a high-born pedigree number? An adventure not to be tolerated in 20th-century village England and from which the dog returned with its leg fractured in four places.

Was it not equally true that there had been a curious outbreak of petrol-siphoning from cars left in the road shortly after the new tenants arrived?

Well, yes. But the elegant dog was immediately seen to, surgically speaking, after his fateful encounter and the affordable wrecks had lost as much petrol as any wash 'n' waxed estate model parked on the road.

For all the lip service paid to the desirability of a socially diverse community, Middle England still likes to see the lower orders scrubbing its floors or toiling profitably in its garden or factory, not oily-fingered underneath a banger on its doorstep.

Odd, really, when you consider that what it has voted for over the past 13 years has been a beneficent climate for private

enterprise.