Last updated 11:48, Thursday, 02 October 2008

IT’S official. We Cumbrians are living in a cliché.

A two page spread in one of the Sunday newspaper property sections at the weekend really put the way outsiders view us in context. We are, they said, living in “Beatrix Potterland.”

I realise we have to prostitute ourselves a bit for the benefit of the tourist industry. The chocolate box image contains only the sweets with the soft centres.

But I sometimes wonder how visitors view us, if they have read these cutesy, countrified travelogues before heading for the Lakes.

No wonder so many of them wander dreamily into the path of my car when I am trying to negotiate my way through Keswick, Ambleside and Bowness.

I suppose it wouldn’t do to raise the question of second homes, jobs and the closure of more and more of our rural services.

After all big rabbits with floppy ears don’t have these problems, not in Beatrix Potterland anway.