Village Life

Back at work. Give me five days off in a row and I get quite spoiled – it’s tough getting back into the swing of things. is still sick at home, after a night of broken sleep, fever and sweats. :(

Everyday Stranger had an interesting post that I really related to, as an American expat living in an English village. I love where we live. Granted, it’s not an especially posh village, and we live in a terrace (Phil insists that it’s a townhouse)…but it’s still lovely. We can walk downtown from our house (townhouse) on Saturday mornings, and buy meat from the butchers, breads/cakes/pies from the pie lady (who recently retired), vegetables and fruit from the market stalls, etc. There are milkmen who deliver milk every morning…and damn thier milk floats to hell when they drive down our street at 5:00 am. ;) The guy who has the food stand in the centre of town where I get egg sandwiches asks what I want on them, and when I say mayo he says “of course you do,” even though I buy one every month or two, not every day. His wifes tsks and says “you should know that!” *s* I see people that I know in the shops or on the street, and we always stop to talk.

I love the buildings. Our town has the record for the most pubs for a small village in England, and the biggest monument for a small village. The churches are old and lovely, and the buildings are a mix of the half-timbered black-and-white buildings, old stone farmhouses, and lovely, decorative brick Victorians. You have to look up to see many of the features that I love: the alternating black, red and white decorative brick trim and chessboard tiles, the ornate Victorian doodads on top of the roofs, the shapes of the chimneys, the trim under the eaves. It’s lovely.

The streets are narrow, and two cars oftern cannot pass side-by-side. People wait for each other to go, then take their turn. The person who was waited for will give a small wave to the car who let them through, a transatlantic version of the finger-wave acknowledgement that people in the west give each other from their cars. (No, not that one, a polite wave that feels like an old cowboy tipping his hat. It’s nice.)

Everyone goes everywhere with their dogs. Old men take their dogs into the pubs, and you see them lying underneath their owner’s barstools.

I love it here. When I walk through the centre of our village it fills my heart up.