The uniqueness of a village is what really arouses me

Yahoo

24-05-2025

Maybe its an age thing, an ongoing mid-life crisis if you will, but we recently had the annual conversation about moving to pastures new.
Despite not really meaning it, and going so far as to use the local estate agent whose time we happily waste to see how much our drum would be worth, we had a forced introspective as to how much we really enjoy living in a village.
Having resided in towns and the big smoke, villages are, if mine is a yardstick, very much engrained in a 'us and them' mentality.
St Albans, which is not a million miles hence, always seems to get the funding and the 'glory' despite us paying the same, if not more, council tax than they do, for which we get in return not an awful lot.
Want to save a few quid? Turn out the villages streetlights at night but keep St Albans' on. Want to dump a new unaffordable housing development in the vicinity? Go to the village, where the voter base is not so harmful on our chances of re-election, and so it goes on, as the little guy gets smashed from all sides, and ultimately, inevitably, loses some of the battles.
Our local 'big' car park, frequented by those popping into the shops for a pint of semi-skimmed or a box of takeaway chicken is soon to become a paid for exercise which will add further nails into local businesses' coffins who struggle to keep their heads above the waterline at the best of times. Why? No one seems to know, its not near a station, but such is a village's lot: to take their beating and not forget to say thank you, please for the privilege of being milked like the cash cows we are.
It is the uniqueness of a village that arouses me. You actually know, and speak to, your neighbours despite never really feeling like you truly belong, but that's ok, as they were born on their Nan's kitchen floor in Kings Road, have lived here man and boy, and they remember when it was 'all fields'. Pop to the Co-op and, at any time, dawn or dusk, there is the woman wearing pyjamas, a dressing gown and slippers, but that's the new norm and she has now become something of a monument to village life.
There's the chap who dresses like a cowboy and, rumour has it, 'lives in' the roundabout. The traveller family whose horse is often left to graze on the verge in the cul de sac and the local slimming club whose members never seem to lose any weight except for from their wallets, once they enter the ramshackle, but endearing, community centre.
The online community forums are the pulse of the village life, and many now choose to post anonymously, only to be outed as we all know each other so well, so we can fathom who the poster is from the tone of the post and the inevitable spelling mistakes.
And then we have the village idiot who, I am sure, may well be me. I prefer the term 'jester' but, either way, reputations are easily made in the village and hard to dismantle should they become embedded.
But move back to the smoke? Not on your nelly. It's nice to give your neighbours a cheery wave, and trust them to look after your cats when away, and even share a cold tinny in the back garden at the first sign of sun, as you all rub along nicely as they aren't the enemy, are they?
That mantle lies with the local big boys and we have our pitchforks ready in unison for when they come for us once again, as they plunge us into darkness and charge us for daring to support local businesses as we doff our caps in village style semi-complicity…
Brett Ellis is a teacher