Living "in the sticks"

Two ever-so slightly contrasting stories:

LONDON

I'm at the Friendly Society: a slinky, trendy Soho basement gay bar. There's a hot boy.  He actually talks to me.  The conversation goes something like this:  "So whereabouts do you live?"./. "Spitalfields" ./. "Really? Me too - just off Middlesex Street"./. "Yeah, same here. I live on Strype Street"./. "No?! So do I.  Brody House"./. "What number?"./. "Number 306"./. "Hi, I'm apartment 307..."

We'd been next door neighbours for 18 months.  I hadn't even SEEN him.  Not in the hallway, not on the stairs, not at the mailbox downstairs.  I wasn't convinced anyone was living in the apartment, actually.

[Editor's Note: Peter would *so* have noticed aforementioned hot gay boy neighbour.  This no doubt goes without saying for anyone who knows him.]

THE STICKS

I'm at a Christmas party in Suffolk.  I haven't actually moved into my cottage yet: it's being refurbished.  A Tory wearing a flashing Christmas Tree brooch approaches me.  I think, gulp, I wonder if they hunt Socialists up here with dogs?

The conversation goes something like this: "Hello I'm Peter, I've just moved to Eye"./. "Yes, I know.  You live opposite us"./. "Oh okay"./. "I gather you're doing a lovely job on your cottage"./. [Pause and think: that's interesting as precisely NOBODY has been inside my cottage] ./. "Really?  Erm, who told you that?"./. "Michael" ./. "Michael?" ./. "Yes, the carpenter who fitted the new locks to your front door."

Cue mild panic attack and consideration of how long it will take to sell up, get my ass back out of here, and to somewhere in Zone 1, where I could die in my apartment and peacefully lie undiscovered until around 2078.

Wind forward around 8 years

It was my dog Oscar's birthday on 23 September.  He was 9.  That date also happens to be the anniversary of my completing on my cottage, a year later in 2003.  The mutt's first two months with me had been spent at best friend @dominic_uk's house.  In fact, ALL of this is Dominic's fault.  In his ever so random way he had seen his now home, Yaxley Hall, for sale in the Sunday Times property section.  He didn't even look at another property anywhere else in the country, let alone in Suffolk.  He bought it and moved up from Central London.

Because our business was run together, so did I.  I'd seen a little run down cottage with 6 foot high nettles in its garden in the neighbouring "town" and thought let's give this country thing a go.  Neither of us had the slightest connexion to the place: it was completely random.  On 23 September 2003 I obtained the keys to my cottage.  Michael the Carpenter later fitted the new locks some time later, as we've already established.

Chocolate Box? Much!

I put the word "town" in inverted commas because anyone else would call Eye a village.  It's an absurdly pretty little place with a Norman castle, beautiful English Gothic church, thatched cottages, little local shops, and a bizarre 19C town hall.  However it is technically a town and used to return two MPs.  The handsome Georgian house opposite was (I'm told) used in one of the Miss Marple movies *and* had 5 suffragette sister inhabitants who would travel down to London and cause all sorts of mischief.  Fabulous.

And I've been here ever since.  I've been to 63 countries and have lived for varying lengths of time in 11.  This is the longest time I've spent anywhere.

The Former Guild Hall

What's it like?

Well it's surprisingly wonderful.  First my cottage: it's thatched, tiny, but is the snuggest home I've ever lived in.  It's listed as being 18th century - however clearly the council don't know their arses from their elbows. The builders found the chimney is all Tudor brick and they discovered some kind of wooden thing up in the roof (please note my precise architectural terminology).  Smoke was let out through this when the place was still a one storey structure.  My Suffolk hippy historic builders told me brick chimneys made it to this area in the late 1400s.  Until then a fire on the dirt floor would have been the main source of light, heat and for cooking.  It's almost Monty-Python-Esque.  Their guess is therefore the place is older than 1450.

That's amazing!  1450!! This place was probably at least 130 years old when the naughty Spaniards tried to invade.  180 years old when the Pilgrim Fathers set off to open the first Starbucks.  Over 300 years old when Captain Cook set foot at Botany Bay.  Almost 450 years old when Bertha Benz borrowed her husband's new invention (the car) to drive to a Schnell Imbiss in Pforzheim.  It's seen some history that's for sure.  And poverty of course.  Real poverty of a type we cannot imagine: hungry mouths, infants dying, possibly plague, famine.  It's just a little worker's cottage.  At night I often try to imagine all the people who have lived here: their fears, their joy, their toils, their hardship, the changes as events in both history and their personal lives unfolded.

The cow-poo and stick walls of the cottage are not thick, but they are incredibly dense.  The roof is warm.  By putting in secondary double-glazing the place has become really snug and so cheap to heat.  The BBC ran a story on this type of construction and the Prince's Foundation, ever champions of learning from traditional building methods, commented on what I have noticed: "The smartest way to save energy may be to live in a Tudor house and insulate the attic and repair the windows."

But what about the Locals?!

Well, they're for the most part absolutely lovely.  I was really worried about curtain twitching and what on earth they would make of a homosexual, Labour voting, half-German, Europhile, vegetarian in their midst.  The Tory with the flashing Christmas tree broach wasn't being nosy: it's just inevitable that people take an interest in a small place.  She was being friendly, which took me some time to grasp properly.  People look out for each other: that's quite remarkable and not something I was used to.  I've been invited to all sorts of events, dinners etc. Warm, welcoming, not in the slightest snooty, and not at all judgemental is how I'd describe it.

I love putting my "vote Labour" signs up in my window.  The Gummers (who live 2 villages along) are frequent visitors to the house opposite, along with various other Tories.  The owners are both Tory councillors and the husband (whom I occasionally love getting pissed on whisky with) was the chairman of Suffolk County Council.  I'm therefore *perfectly* placed to wind this lot up.  They're amazingly tolerant of me in the circumstances and said "We KNOW you just put those dreadful signs in your windows to tease us."  Hehe.

I even stood for Labour in this May's election for the district council and got 11% of the vote.  Not bad for an outsider and a first timer, I thought!

Preaching to the Unreachables

Of course occasionally you get the odd surprise of course: I was told by a former town councillor that London "has no British people left in it: well not whites anyway."  Erm, okay, let's look at that statement... *draws breath*.   A masseur in Norwich asked me what London "was like".  It's £6 if you buy a cheap ticket and two hours away by train, for heaven's sake.  This was a gay 32 year old man who had never been to the capital.  His reason was "I just never got round to it."  I was also told by two sweet old woman they would have voted for me in the election, but they just couldn't bring themselves to tick the box marked Labour.  They looked like they were talking about an unpleasant mess a dog had made on the pavement.

Then there's the odd surprise, such as meeting a lovely old woman in the local café Cornforth & Cornforth (best café *EVAR* btw).   Her heavy Central European accent immediately perked up my interest.  Classy, gorgeous, with the most wonderful accent when she spoke German.  She is the second Vienna Jew in her 80s I now know.  As a young girl Therese remembered the Anschluss vividly, and came across to England in 1939 with her parents.  She joined the Labour Party in 1948, lived in Islington before moving up here, and her home is full of wonderful modern art.  When two fish are similarly out of water, they make friends :)

CRIME and Other Things


I remember loving taking the piss out of the Local PC's crime report in the town magazine.  The first one said "There were 4 crimes to report in the last month.  The two most serious are as follows.  A man was seen trying to obtain a refund for a pair of shoes he had previously stolen in a shop on Broad Street.  A green plastic chair was also stolen from a garden in Victoria Hill."

THESE ARE THE MOST SERIOUS ONES?  What were the other two? One of those chairs costs about £1.99 at B&Q doesn't it?  As my friend Jamie joked, one day something really serious will happen.  CID will arrive and ask the local bobby "Have you had experience of a murder before?"  He'll answer "No, but we did once lose a green plastic chair back in 2003."

Caution: Crime Scene!

But think about this.  It is a rare, wonderful, incredible thing in this country that there can be anywhere that is so low crime (I'm actually only 90 miles from London).  Apparently it's one of the lowest rates in the entire country.  The weather is also great: we get 2 hours more sunshine per week than the UK average and it is substantially drier.  Winters are crap: I'd much rather be in the city when it's dark, cold and bleak here, but for the rest of the year, give me Suffolk any day.

We also have proper local shops.  They're wonderful.  I was once charged 2p for a button in the fabric shop.  Does anything still cost 2p anywhere else?  Tesco is 4 miles away across the border in that there foreign place, Norfolk.  People don't always carry their passports or have up to date visas, so it means that our townsfolk do actually use the two little local Coops, the greengrocer, the pharmacy, the baker, the hardware shop etc.   (Btw the hardware shop is sometimes a little like a scene from Cage aux Folles.  I am *so* not the only gay in the village).

Main Street: Rush Hour Gridlock

The last thing I love is the night sky.  This area is so sparsely populated and the nearest towns (Norwich and Ipswich) are each 20 miles away, which means light pollution is minimal.  I never fail to marvel at the star filled skies on my late night walk with the dog.

What does this all add up to?  Well according to the Telegraph we have the highest rural quality of life in the UK.  I would not disagree with anything said in that article.  Note that house prices are significantly cheaper too: this is actually far from a rich or "posh" area like Surrey or Hampshire, but it is one which has massive attractions.

Twitter

The icing on the cake is Twitter.  It has literally transformed my enjoyment of living here.  I do huge amounts of travel at various times in the year because of my part-time "fun" job taking American kids on educational tours around Europe.  Without that it would drive me a bit mad if I were just stuck in Mid Suffolk.  London is also very possible for an evening out: I'm down in town some weeks twice a week.  I really need that, just for the life and variety.

But Twitter... It has simply stopped me from being lonely and feeling isolated all the rest of the times I am actually up here.  I can connect with "my type of people", have social interaction and intellectual stimulation.  I've also found Twitter friends much more likely to respond to a tweet "I'm in London: anyone about for a drink?" than many 'real life' friends would be.  I can therefore have fresh air, night skies AND access to my buddies from my iPhone when I'm in Suffolk.

I'm sure some studies are required into the emotional benefit of social networks like Twitter - for me being "out in the sticks" it is immense.

A Closing Quote

My cosmopolitan, Hampstead residing, gay, Sydney, Jewish, musician friend Jeremy looked at me when I told him I had put an offer in on a cottage here.  He simply said in his splendidly withering tone "Peter. You move to Eye to die."

I ROFLd of course... and I now have the quiet satisfaction of knowing that he has bought a little weekend cottage a few miles away.  Oh the delicious irony.

The sticks: there's actually quite a lot to be said for them :)