My Aunt Maud

[Victors Mate]

Thought is was time I wrote summat.

[align=center]Geraniums on the windowsill.[/align]


It was the sort of village where it should always be a sun lit, church bell ringing Sunday morning. In your mind’s eye in every cottage on the kitchen scrubbed deal table you could see a chipped enamel pie dish just waiting for apples, pastry and the upside down porcelain egg cup
The village green had the church at it’s corner, the cricket square in the middle, the village pub in line with mid wicket and cottages filling the remaining space surrounding the green. Quacking came from the pond at the end of the green alongside the High Street. Down one side of the green ran the chestnut tree lined Church Lane and in the third thatched cottage along lived a little crippled lady. My Aunt Maud.

Aunt Maud crippled from birth. Aunt Maud who walked with a rolling gait and a stout walking stick. Aunt Maud flower arranger for the chapel, seamstress and Lacemaker to the village and dinner cook to the widowed blacksmith. Aunt Maud to whom the lady of the manor acted as a willing chauffer. Aunt Maud whose lavender aroma preceded her.

Now several years later, Aunt Maud has gone. The Blacksmith’s Forge is no more and with unsuitable embellishment is called The Old Smithy. The Cricket Square is no more and the village green uncared for. The village pond covered in green slime.

The village was destroyed by those who came to enjoy the rural idyll without knowing what rural life is about.

Progress some would say but not I.

[rocky]

[font=Tahoma]Bittersweet memories, VM. [/font]

[dejavou]

Twas ever thus VM, people see a place, love it, ruin it and then move on

[Penny]

True of today I'm afraid. It happens in villages all the time. Only recently something happened here and we just cannot see why some people come to live in the country when they object to country living. cheers Penny.

[Rowan]

So true - there was something special about village life and to all intents and purposes its gone. Why do they want to live in a village and then bring a whole town with them. They don't use the shops, post office or pub they don't contgribute anything to the villlage they just take.

[Oddquine]

I agree with all of the above....but where I am, the problem is not only with the incomers......but with the attitudes of some locals to the incomers, because a lot of the time, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don't........whatever they do.

A couple of years back, at the local Gala day here, the main speaker chewed up the local bigots and spat them out.....but it hasn't made a lot of difference since....given we even have lhe odd local councillor differentiating between incomers and locals. If you lived in a really small community, as I do, you would know that arseholes exist on both sides of the divide....and I speak as a Scottish incomer, and not an English one.

See me..if folk want to fit in, then that is just great.....but there are certainly incomers who want to change things to conform more with what they have always been used to...but there are just as many locals who refuse to contemplate that incomers can offer anything to the community.

I have often read the local monthly "Blether".......noticed a plea for people to help in the youth club, the community hall committee, the Gala committee, the Day Care Centre etc and thought.."I could do that"......and not offered because I know there are people involved who will simply not accept anyone who was not born and brought up within spitting distance of the village...and my days of setting out to seek rejection are over.

[Lacemaker]

Very nostalgic, VM. I loved it.

It was ever thus, Oddie.

[vannin]

Yes, I agree! There are beautiful memories and present-day disappointment. The first home my daughter bought, in 2001, was an 18th century pretty cottage 45 miles out of London. Already it was filling up with 'second homers' causing some resentment. I don't include her as one of them........she had left this home to go renting ten years before!

When exploring the few shops there, I could feel the two-communities thing. Still, it was a fantastic little home. My husband was recently retired, and commuted every weekday to there, to carefully work on the cottage which was Grade 2 listed. I was gutted when my daughter put it up for sale after 18 months because she had found True Love who was living in London........so back she went again!


Viv

[ciderman_nz]

It's a sadness to see the inability of some newcomers to see that what they like about a locality, will be the very thing which disappears if they persist in attempting to make the new locality like the locality they have left. I noticed in Cyprus last year, the proliferation of copycat activities, imposed on the local scene by part time immigrants. Sports bars, fish and chip shops and a thousand sun beds on the beach, occupied by completely static British and east European figures looking a bit like tanned leather or beetroot, depending how long they had been there. There was still much to be treasured once off the beach front but one wondered for how long.

[vannin]

It's a sadness to see the inability of some newcomers to see that what they like about a locality, will be the very thing which disappears if they persist in attempting to make the new locality like the locality they have left. I noticed in Cyprus last year, the proliferation of copycat activities, imposed on the local scene by part time immigrants. Sports bars, fish and chip shops and a thousand sun beds on the beach, occupied by completely static British and east European figures looking a bit like tanned leather or beetroot, depending how long they had been there. There was still much to be treasured once off the beach front but one wondered for how long.

Pat must be permanently brown now, I'm thinking! But she would be fitting in with 'the natives' if I know anything....and she is fulltime not part-time.
Not been there but would hate to think Cyprus was spoiled by those types you mention.
Viv

[ciderman_nz]

Yes she fits in with the locals and is a resident there. We had a great time for 3 weeks there but much of the island is not ruined just bits of it. The Turkish bit up north was delightful.
My attitude to different cultures is to try to fit in. Diversity of culture is fascinating to me. I wouldn't go to a fish and chip shop or a McDonalds although I have nothing against them per se, but I can do that at home!