You can take a girl out of the countryside, but you can't take the countryside out of the girl ... After years of living in towns, seduced by the convenience of being able to walk up the road and go into proper shops and restaurants, I bowed to the inevitable and persuaded Steve (brought up above a hardware shop in Balham High Road) that green fields and fresh air were what we wanted, especially if we were planning to start a family. So we moved to Wiltshire, selling my three bedroom semi in St. Albans and buying a detached bungalow with half an acre of garden - and had enough change to do it up and buy new furniture.
Threee years and our first baby later, we moved to our present house and have remained here ever since - the longest I've ever lived anywhere. It's also the only time in my life that I've truly felt part of a community. I grew up in a small village on the other side of the country, but didn't mix with the other inhabitants - my father was headmaster of a private school, which held itself aloof from the hoi polloi, apart from graciously hosting the local flower show every year. Unless the villagers did our garden, cleaned our house, serviced the car or (like poor Mrs. Brown), washed my nappies, I didn't know them. And as I went to my father's school and then on to another private school in the nearby big town, I didn't know their children either - apart from some deeply embarrassing forays to the youth club (for which I wore ski pants - with my thighs! Aagh!). I was shy, they doubtless thought I was posh and stuck up, and no lasting links were ever forged.
Even in our first Wiltshire village, we never felt part of it. This was mainly down to the bungalow's position, right on the outskirts, with a half mile walk across the fields the only safe route to the pub. But here, things are very different. Why?
Well, first of all, there's a lot going on, not just Jam and Jerusalem. There are groups to cater for every age and taste (even, so rumour had it, a wife-swapping ring, though we never sampled that!). But even in a socially thriving place like this, you have to go out and meet your opportunities, they won't come to you. And we had the perfect key to open the door to community life - our children. Toddler group, playgroup, and then the primary school, led us and the boys to new friends, new experiences. I'd always said that the school (at the end of our road, about 10 minutes' slow amble) would have to be Dotheboys Hall before I didn't send the children there. It wasn't, and off they went. At the school gate, at the end of the day, I usually arrived five minutes or so early, and there was always someone else to chat to. Parents came from every social class - even, for a couple of years, the child of the 'big house' - and on the whole the children mixed together very successfully, though once, I and another mother had to bribe our sons to go to the birthday party of a boy in their class who came from the 'pariah' family in the village. I joined the playgroup committee, then the PTA, helped at the school and when my younger son turned 11 and went off, with the children he'd known all his life, to the local 'bog-standard' comprehensive, I had to give it all up with some relief, but also with real regret. I still see my closest friends on a regular basis - we meet every Friday morning for breakfast in each other's houses - but occasional encounters in the village shop or post office or at the Carnival are no substitute for the easy, friendly camaraderie of the school gate.
About ten years ago, a small family moved into one of the houses in our road, stayed a year or so, and then left, saying they'd never felt part of village life. To me, the reason for this was blindingly obvious - they hadn't wanted to move their little girl from her existing primary school, so they missed out on the community readily available to them fifty yards away at our school gate. I feel sorry for all those other children who, for whatever reason, live in the village but go to school elsewhere. Some of them attend the shabby private school a few miles away - it has limited facilities, but only a dozen in a class, so people think it must be worth the exhorbitant sums it charges - and others the spanking new state primary in the next village, getting the benefit of showy pristine surroundings but surrendering the benefit of being able to walk there, and to learn alongside their friends from playgroup. I've never regretted sending my sons to our own school, where they mixed with children from a wide variety of backgrounds, learned to get on with all sorts of different people, never thought of themselves as privileged or superior, and could walk or cycle there, when old enough, on their own.
So, if you want to take a full part in village life, get a kid! And, if this is not possible, get a dog - which will be the subject of my next post.
Threee years and our first baby later, we moved to our present house and have remained here ever since - the longest I've ever lived anywhere. It's also the only time in my life that I've truly felt part of a community. I grew up in a small village on the other side of the country, but didn't mix with the other inhabitants - my father was headmaster of a private school, which held itself aloof from the hoi polloi, apart from graciously hosting the local flower show every year. Unless the villagers did our garden, cleaned our house, serviced the car or (like poor Mrs. Brown), washed my nappies, I didn't know them. And as I went to my father's school and then on to another private school in the nearby big town, I didn't know their children either - apart from some deeply embarrassing forays to the youth club (for which I wore ski pants - with my thighs! Aagh!). I was shy, they doubtless thought I was posh and stuck up, and no lasting links were ever forged.
Even in our first Wiltshire village, we never felt part of it. This was mainly down to the bungalow's position, right on the outskirts, with a half mile walk across the fields the only safe route to the pub. But here, things are very different. Why?
Well, first of all, there's a lot going on, not just Jam and Jerusalem. There are groups to cater for every age and taste (even, so rumour had it, a wife-swapping ring, though we never sampled that!). But even in a socially thriving place like this, you have to go out and meet your opportunities, they won't come to you. And we had the perfect key to open the door to community life - our children. Toddler group, playgroup, and then the primary school, led us and the boys to new friends, new experiences. I'd always said that the school (at the end of our road, about 10 minutes' slow amble) would have to be Dotheboys Hall before I didn't send the children there. It wasn't, and off they went. At the school gate, at the end of the day, I usually arrived five minutes or so early, and there was always someone else to chat to. Parents came from every social class - even, for a couple of years, the child of the 'big house' - and on the whole the children mixed together very successfully, though once, I and another mother had to bribe our sons to go to the birthday party of a boy in their class who came from the 'pariah' family in the village. I joined the playgroup committee, then the PTA, helped at the school and when my younger son turned 11 and went off, with the children he'd known all his life, to the local 'bog-standard' comprehensive, I had to give it all up with some relief, but also with real regret. I still see my closest friends on a regular basis - we meet every Friday morning for breakfast in each other's houses - but occasional encounters in the village shop or post office or at the Carnival are no substitute for the easy, friendly camaraderie of the school gate.
About ten years ago, a small family moved into one of the houses in our road, stayed a year or so, and then left, saying they'd never felt part of village life. To me, the reason for this was blindingly obvious - they hadn't wanted to move their little girl from her existing primary school, so they missed out on the community readily available to them fifty yards away at our school gate. I feel sorry for all those other children who, for whatever reason, live in the village but go to school elsewhere. Some of them attend the shabby private school a few miles away - it has limited facilities, but only a dozen in a class, so people think it must be worth the exhorbitant sums it charges - and others the spanking new state primary in the next village, getting the benefit of showy pristine surroundings but surrendering the benefit of being able to walk there, and to learn alongside their friends from playgroup. I've never regretted sending my sons to our own school, where they mixed with children from a wide variety of backgrounds, learned to get on with all sorts of different people, never thought of themselves as privileged or superior, and could walk or cycle there, when old enough, on their own.
So, if you want to take a full part in village life, get a kid! And, if this is not possible, get a dog - which will be the subject of my next post.
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