Wednesday 8 November 2023
It’s 07:28 and sunset isn’t for another three minutes. Outside is grey, slightly foggy and either raining or just looking like it has been and still is raining. We are ten days away from having lived here for a year so I’ve been thinking more than usual about some of the differences about living here compared to London. I’ll list the first three that come to mind.
Weather. I remember thinking that it would rain more and be colder all year round. I was correct. However, there is probably nothing I can say that can emphasise enough that, even expecting that, it is significantly wetter and colder in Scotland than London and the southeast. Unimaginably so. Fine, you can come to Scotland for a holiday, it’ll rain and be cold. You kind of expect that to happen. But when you’re living here, you really, really notice it. On the flip side, when it’s sunny, no matter the temperature, in fact more so over the non-summer months, it is so incredibly stunningly green and beautiful (thanks, of course, to all that rain) that for that day or those hours you somehow forget how wet and grey and cold it is most of the time. The weather is a much bigger consideration to anyone moving here than I could ever have predicted.
People. In Scottish Borders, Scottish people have been very friendly and very welcoming to us, but I have heard of anti-English sentiment (eg some nasty posters up in Dumfries). There are a lot of English people living in this part of Scotland (and I’m sure in other parts too) and I feel aware of accents, which is sort of a shame. It’s not like that in London, where your accent is no reflection on whether you live in London or consider yourself a Londoner. I like that people here (maybe also in part because it’s a very sparsely populated, rural community) look out for each other, say hello if you walk past and are likely to be friendly in shops and other public-facing environments. I do struggle with out of date, to me controversial, lifestyle and gender roles but it is relatively easy for me to avoid being confronted by them because I don’t work here, for example. But I feel welcome here and everyone I have encountered in our valley has been friendly and helpful.
Driving. There are a lot of people who drive like idiots everywhere. Generally, most definitely not always, local drivers are fairly considerate. It is very easy to identify tourists/visitors on the road. I feel confident that if my car broke down or I needed help, a local would stop to help. Everyone drives, everyone needs to drive, though in a rural location that applies to anywhere in the country. However, the towns and villages make it easy for people to park. Parking is generally free and with no time restrictions (except around high streets in busier areas, but it’s still easy and possible to park a very short walk away from town centres). Along country lanes, like where we live, you need to embrace reverse gear, particularly when logging trucks come towards you. I have heard lots of complaints about the logging truck drivers (an Openreach engineer in his van was forced off the road by one and got stuck in a ditch on two wheels and a few weeks later, as in the photo, another van was forced too far into a ditch by a logging truck (not the one in the photo), and the truckers do drive faster than you might expect). However, I appreciate that they generally thank you for pulling over and/or reversing and, when I’m walking on the road, they also generally slow down (not always) and wave. I’m a sucker for someone waving/thanking me. I also kind of appreciate that they’re up and down the roads 24 hours, six days a week so I know someone will always pass by if I run into trouble overnight. Not that I choose to go out in the middle of the night. They have, I believe, satellite phones and basic vehicle maintenance equipment (they towed our neighbour’s daughter’s car out a ditch once, and it wasn’t one of them who had forced her to drive into a ditch). Some of my friends who have visited have expressed concern about reversing long distances along narrow roads. Admittedly, I’m now used to it, but have anyway always been a confident reverser. It is a bit of an issue for some people. I have definitely seen a few tourist drivers in complete meltdown about being confronted by a huge truck laden with logs that can’t as easily reverse as they can. Maybe I should have a separate category for sides of roads/ditches. They are sometimes softer, deeper and considerably less drivable in/along than you might hope.