“Now Harry it’s the Christmas carol service tonight, and I’m singing three kings. You can join with me at 6 o’clock” my Dad remarks, flicking and turning the thin pages of the Telegraph magazine in his relaxed Crew fleece and Fat face slippers in front of the flickering open fire. Caught In the midst of grey cast shadows, I knew that I was back home in the rolling hills of the south downs. Sat on my chest was an odd feeling, but after a long three years and not quite graduating later I’m back where I started, in a house I was last properly acquainted with when my temperament was still marred with the lingering musk of lynx body spray and voice breaks. Locating just quite how I feel is fraught, whilst sipping my Baileys and wriggling my toes into the oaken coloured carpet. Deflated would be too harsh, and ecstatic would be an overstatement but I know that for the minute, it’s right being where I am. There is no need to scoff brie and cranberry filo pastries and descend into a privileged gripe, after all I am not a cul de sac casualty quite yet.
There isn’t really much in the village, a pub where I work, a village green I grew up playing football on, a healthy handful of village fanatics and a feeling that is very far removed from the rest of the world (or at least one I’ve been used to). It’s scarce, sparse and it ceases to change, except for the rotation of people in it. If they’re not retired commuters who know each other from the 7:42am train from Haslemere to London Waterloo, or aren’t part of the local village church goers they’ll most likely be a horse or dog breeder, who has as many pictures on their mantle piece of pedigree terriers as they do of their grown up married children. A community changes, although the ethic and customs of the village stay the same, this being said I’m only just starting to really understand them; it is crucial I do.
Despite growing up in this house I never assimilated into the community. Most evenings on weekends were consumed around drinking my dad’s Old Speckled Hen ales and eating a takeaway curry from Meghdoots tandoori, since I wasn’t ever cool enough to be invited to a party. Alternatively I was spending the majority of my time at my £28,000 a year boarding school away from any form of outside life. Restrictions and security were high, and my exposure to any form of outside life was always limited to a free period trip to Tesco for a meal deal and a selecky of snacks and bites. In both worlds I never saw anything aside from a weekend sports fixture card, an academic timetable and a Friday chapel hymn sheet. Confronted now at 22 years of age is a place I still call home, yet I never got to properly know it past that second date phase. However, now I have one more shot to make it work out and start to try and properly catch feelings for it, and appreciate it for what it is. This being said let’s see if I lose my marbles before Countryfile airs, my Hunter wellies start to give me blisters and the cords I was given start to chaff.
There is a lot to meet and experience in the world, with a lot of it being found in your own back patch without trying to sound too earthy and preachy. Sure I might hold some bias, since I can’t put a car past 4th gear or check my rear view mirror to see the sign of my village move into the backdrop, but I do still think it’s the case. It is easy to be dismissive (like every bouncer smirking at the green glaze of my provisional license) of your environment, although it’s better to acknowledge the positives and negatives and begin to embrace it’s ambiguities and express them from your own perspective, instead of going looking for controversy. I’m not trying to encourage a culture of pre-packaged local safari’s, rather I am promoting the idea that there is beauty in this space and the areas that you occupy, coupled by a collection of people who might be more similar or different to you than you may have imagined.
Whilst the carol service did make my eyes roll, and jilted me to scurry to the cupboard to get another drinky, I’ve realised with sobered January reason on this very bleak Monday afternoon, that it was and will be the closest thing I have to a sense of community in the forthcoming months. This is something we cannot take for granted, even if it’s as weird and backwards as we supposedly think. The mundane speaks for itself, and chasing an idea of a world far away is not going to solve differences, if anything it will isolate us from the only localities we know. There is no need to shout London the loudest just to prove a level of social validation and shelve any embarrassment of not having better wanting of something bigger, this being said maybe it’s about time I now change my Hinge profile location from Finsbury park to Petworth park.
