Local shops for local people

Do you really want to be where everyone knows your name?

It was lovely morning the low sun and mist making every view look striking, even the shuffling teenagers in hoodies looked more exotic backlit with halo of glowing sunlight.

I Went down the village for some “bits” from co-op, (why are local shops so far away in small villages?)
In the chiller section of the co-op an older women asked a younger lass to get something from the top shelf. When the younger one asked after her health she replies “ooh it’s me ribs” “sorry to ‘ear that love did ya fall” “no love it was me son (This is when I feared the worse) he ‘ant sin me in six month, he’s back from Iraqi and he ‘ugged me too ‘ard and it popped ‘art”, her companion then went on to fuss about her health and then offered the older lady a lift home.
Town or Country?
What was surprising about his (putting aside how Tony Blair’s is still putting clumsy big local lads in harms way for no foreseeable positive result) is the old chestnut about small towns being friendlier.
I’m not so sure, firstly in small places people HAVE to get on because you see the same people all the time. Also on the whole I think the same people are nice where ever you go. I was helped and given directions by an older woman on the bus in north London recently she was the same age as the woman who cheerily pointed me in the direction of the dates in co-op just now. But then I wasn’t thanked for holding the door for a 20 something in my flat in Deptford nor by the tanned and blonde harridan squawking into her phone outside Waterstones in Leeds the other day. I have feeling if people are nice to you “town” they are being nice. Also going out of your way to drop an old dear off at home in Deptford would mean 45 minutes in the New Cross one way system as opposed to just going the long way round your car fee estate.!


Pink Fraud:
The only reason to come to my Dad's village before he moved here was to go to the baths. Seeing it today brought back memories of going there one time on school bus it would have been xmas ’79; we trundled along eating my first ever monster munch chanting to “we don’t no education” on radio, my teacher at the time hated the song and we couldn’t see why. Now that I’m closer to her age (then) I’m with her, what a stupid song for a bunch of mainly working class kids to sing, in out free coach, from our free school on the way to our free swimming lessons, 4 years before the Tories closed down all the local pits/work. Roger Waters didn’t “need no education” because he left public school joined a band and spent the rest of his life as permanent petulant teenager.

1984 and all that a coda
On the way home the local paper billboard read.” Scargill to name names over strike” sadly not much of a revelation, it’ll be a list of either forgotten or dead NCB chiefs, Tory cabinet members and odd scab thrown in, it’s been a long time since it would have caused an uproar. He might as well list the backroom boys in the gunpowder plot or the henchmen in Princes in the tower mystery, it seems so long ago.

One Tan shop towns:
Sorry no photos the only thing I didn’t pack was my phone charger and this being a friendly small village there are no shops selling phone chargers phone card, Bluetooth headsets, saffron, polish beer, cock soup, Yams, Turkish delight, hot and sour soup. Unreleased Hollywood DVD……..