Friday 10 March 2023
We have snow. But nowhere near as much as I expected. There’s probably about one inch. My friend Carla in West Yorkshire, expecting us to have a similar amount of snow to be excited about, sent me a photo of their garden this morning, with about ten inches of snow, a conifer tree bowing under the weight of thick snow. It’s now official that only half of planned visits have been able to happen, Carla had to cancel her first attempt at visiting (the -15°C weekend in January) and Chris’s son, Sam, isn’t able to come across from Durham today.
I am going to continue the good things about living here so far, not including the scenery, which I banged on about yesterday, or the house as a comparator to living in a smaller flat in London.
Yesterday, Chris and I decided to drive about eight miles to a small shop and café next to a static caravan park. There are new owners and they’d posted a flyer through our letterbox and Chris had seen them on Facebook. It’s a very small shop but, very unusually for a small community shop, they are open every day – yes, seven days a week – currently 10:00 to 14:00. We met and chatted with one of the owners, who, like everyone we’ve met around here, was genuinely warm in her welcome, both us to the shop and having told her we’re new to the area. She told us when we could order meat from the Selkirk butcher (order by Tuesday, delivered on Thursday) and that if there’s anything we’d like them to stock, they’d do their best. We bought Cheddar, butter, bacon, two slices of homemade carrot cake and a 50p second hand book and nothing was more expensive than it would have been in a supermarket.
We both came out of the shop with smiles on our faces because it was a genuinely enjoyable experience. We then went for a walk, exchanging hellos with a passing dog walker (who must have been a visitor to the area; she was dressed entirely in very pale off-white). Chris and I continued our walk, talking about how we had kind of expected a bit of frostiness from people, particularly Scottish people who have lived here forever. Instead, with one slight exception, everyone has been enthusiastic to tell us about the area and how much we’ll love living here. People have been welcoming and helpful and there is a real sense that people look out for each other. We live in a long valley with few houses. We know that the valley gossips and we know that more people know about us than we know about them, but I feel that, at least so far, we are not part of any of that (we don’t work locally and don’t regularly see people) and yet I know that if we were in trouble, anyone here would help out. It isn’t easy living out here in many respects but we all need each other. Even the rangers (I don’t know what their jobs are exactly so “rangers” as a generic term) who have stopped to say hello and check I’m okay; I find comfort in knowing that people will do that and not just drive past you when you’re walking along a forest track. If someone had told me that drivers would stop their vehicle to check I was okay while I was living in London, I’d have been horrified. Here, it seems right and proper and I like it. It’s also nice now that there are a few people who drive past, in vehicles I recognise, who I can share a cheery wave with. It’s good to engage with people. I most definitely do not take that approach in London.
Similarly, our close neighbour actually volunteered to help us try to unblock our drain. He brought over a bendy, pokey device and the three of us fiddled with our drain when it was blocked up. It was too big a job for the bendy, pokey device so we had to call the drain man, which was a couple of weeks ago. But it was great to have a neighbour willing to help us with, ultimately, our sewage. He’s helped with other things too. I don’t even know the five neighbours along our section of the corridor in Lewisham. Though it’s a very, very different lifestyle in Lewisham to here and most people in London adopt the same approach to neighbours, which is an awkward hello in the lift at a stretch. It kind of works though, but – well, it, and people, are just different.
I hadn’t expected to feel so welcomed here or to enjoy chatting with people we (admittedly, rarely) meet around the area. Carla has always tormented me by trying to chat to people in London when she’s stayed with us in London; I think she’ll be surprised how readily we now engage with people. The only reason she wouldn’t have witnessed that when she stayed is because we barely saw any other people. It’s good to feel people are around, even if we don’t often see them, who we’re confident would help if ever a need arose.
It’s 08:16 and the sun is now shining. I’m going to go out in the snow. The snow just outside the front door looks ever so inviting …
