Village life.
I love living in a village, I have been fortunate that I have spent most of my life living in them.
You can't beat looking over the back fence and gazing over fields and saying good morning to the horses.
Where we live now is not my village of origin.
I grew up in oxfordshire in a typical chocolate box village.
My family have lived there for over 100 years, (yes we are relative newcomers)
Here is my great grand father and 2 of my great uncles in the village football team.
My great grandfather is sitting to the left of the football (1929)
It was traditional in all ways, it had churches, pub, shop and school.
As pretty as it is there is one thing I do not miss......The gossip!!
Traditionally in small villages everyone knows everyone else and their business. Not a day would go by without my mum or nan exchanging information on who was doing what with whom and what they thought about it! It did not have to be anything big, more Archers than Eastenders! If someone walked past the house it would be;
" I wonder where they are going? or I wonder where they have been? John's bought a new suit, I wonder where he is going. the Jones's are getting a bigger car I wonder if there is a baby on the way? "
"Andrew's late going down to the allotment, Jean's changed her washing powder, have you seen the girl that the Thompson lad is courting..........."
Even now, when I go to visit my Nan I get an update on the major events, births marriages and deaths of people I knew or should remember. My Nan and other villagers can remember 60+ years worth of knowledge and gossip about those around them. Generations worth of information and stories. many families have remained in the village for 3-4-5-6-7-8+ generations (we only have 4) the knowledge of the village remained as a living history, it was not all salacious gossip. How families were interconnected who had lived at what house and when and how families had changed etc.
That's all going now, in the village where my Nan lives she no longer knows everyone who lives there, local people cannot afford to buy houses. Farms are becoming more industrialised and no longer need as many workers. Rental properties are being rented by families outside of the village.
Now we don't talk about our neighbours, because we don't know them. As village life has declined over the past 50 years so the popularity of soap opera's has increased. We can now live vicariously through the experiences of those on TV not just our neighbours.
However you cannot gossip about the plot of the Archer's or Emmerdale, it all happens in front of you. Instead we gossip about celebrities, instead of looking out of the window we are looking through the pages of the Hello and Ok.
If we want human tragedy we turn to Jeremy Kyle or Take a Break magazine....
We still do talk with one another, but instead of being at the school gate or the village shop we do it via facebook or twitter, we don't phone we text.
We all still live in villages we just construct them differently, I am lucky that I still have horses at my gate...
