love where you live ... and I do!
Posted by:
Jazz_Sue (---.bb.sky.com)
Date: May 09, 2008 12:34AM
The subject title comes from a local government 'promo' designed to make local people feel REALLY proud of the beautiful environment in which they live (landfill sites/graffiti dens/lager louts/entire Green Belt going under thick layer of concrete etc) Actually, that's more the Deadhill area, where I used to live till I moved a few miles up the road. To an ex-council house on a large estate 2 miles from Gatwick airport, adjoining Green Belt land that is currently being covered in a thick layer of concrete. As you do.
Actually, this is a damn site better (pardon the pun) than the place I used to live. You get REAL wild birds, rather than the ones piling out of the local night club cum grotty boozer-with-lights-attached; and when you catch the odd farmyard smell, you can at least IMAGINE it may be wafting from somewhere connected with the rear end of a cow, rather than from the blocked drain at the rear of a suspect curry house (I kid you not. One day, I'll relate the story of the newly installed giant extractor fan, the loud squawk, and the sudden puff of pigeon feathers - when I'm feeling strong enough. My kids STILL won't touch KFC if it's in bitesize lumps)
But I digress. My new home town is, okay, quite a bit greener and more countrified, with a lovely old church and pub ... but those are the bits I can't afford. The bit I COULD afford is bland, modern and soulless. Or so I thought.
At this point can I just say, as I have before, that I am NOT making any of the following up, okay? I only relate incidents where I don't need to make it up - hence the lengthy wait.
It started with the transport system. There I was, idly perusing the bus time table (100/327/665 school days only) and wondering why none of the old dears waiting at the stop had bothered boarding when they finally turned up. And then a new one arrived (bus, not old dear), into which they DID all pile - even though, according to the listings, it shouldn't even have existed. It displayed no number, no destination, just these two proud words, front and back: LOCAL BUS. Those boarding did not converse with the driver as I would, asking from whence the vehicle came or to whither it was bound. If you did that, then plainly YOU WERE NOT LOCAL. Yep folks, there it was, in all it's Royston Vasey liveried glory: A Local Bus for Local People. And I thought: man, I LOVE this town.
But there's more, a lot closer to home - and to this fforum. My smallest daughter has become friendly with a kiddie the same age, a few doors down. My move finally settled - kind of - I'd tentatively begun typing away at my creative writing course again. Cue, breathless arrival of SD and friend.
'Mum, Amy's mum's a famous person! SHE'S RELATED TO JANE AUSTEN! Honest, she researched it and everything and not only that, she's a REAL writer and she's writing a book and it's going to be published!!!!'
Amy was madly nodding her head and beaming, which meant it MUST have been true, so before feverishly logging on here I asked what sort of book her mum was writing, imagining a kind of modern take on Sense and Sensibility, just as well written but with less horses and more sex.
'Um. Well, it's about Thunderbirds really, but after they've all died.'
Look, I realise my daughter could have fallen in with a family of complete fruitcakes with no more connection to the creator of Northanger Abbey than Adolf Hitler. I also realise how unlikely it is that a descendant of Jane Austen would be typing up a novel from the leafy climes of a Gatwick council estate, let alone a novel relating the adventures of a group of Gerry Anderson puppet zombies ...
.. but I do believe in clumping and it would be exactly right if - despite severe reservations - I moved to a spot with close connections to my favourite author, without my realising it. In other words, it is just as likely the whole Austen/Thunderbirds thing is for real, in which case you heard it first, okay?
Whatever. Man, I still love this town.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2008 12:37AM by Jazz_Sue.