Tuesday 3 January 2023
As the forecast for yesterday was sunshine amidst days of rain/sleet/mist/fog/wind, we abandoned house-sorting and drove to North Berwick for the coast, to indulge in some treats (a flat white and fancy-ish fish and chips) and because Chris had wanted to go to a particular shop (closed). We have been to North Berwick before and it is a lovely harbour town, but it probably wasn’t what we wanted yesterday. Foolishly, I hadn’t really factored in that it was a holiday and I’m definitely not the only person who likes to be outdoors somewhere nice when the sun is shining. It was quite busy, we encountered a snooty, entitled woman in the coffee shop (great coffee but highly annoying, rude customer with her husband and two young kids who completely took over our table for six, including asking us to move twice and being bangy-onny) and we only got a table for lunch because someone had phoned up to cancel a minute or two before we asked about a table.
North Berwick reminds me of Whitstable in Kent, also a harbour town and also a town and location that, on paper, I love. I lived in Whitstable for a while and I can imagine North Berwick would have similar irritations. We had a lovely day, genuinely, but we were both really happy about heading home to our remote, rural valley where we encounter very few people or cars.
I know that wherever you live in the country, there will always be kinds of people you don’t like. Leaving London for Scotland, you will not escape that, though living far away from big towns does hugely minimise the chances of encountering people you can’t and don’t want to relate to.
Google Maps said we would arrive in Haddington (we had a DIY and supermarket stop) in an hour and a half and North Berwick would be a further twenty minutes. It has never been as apparent to me as since we’ve lived here that Google Maps estimates times based on your keeping to the national speed limit. It took me forty minutes longer than predicted to get to Haddington. I could not and would not drive at 60mph for most of that route as they are mostly country lanes and there was a lot of water and, in patches, ice on the roads. Also, for the final ten miles or so to Haddington, we were behind a large, heavy lorry (that we saw from a couple of hundred metres away pulling out of some kind of industrial complex, sigh) that, entirely appropriately, drove incredibly cautiously.
We left North Berwick shortly after three and got home around half-five, though stopping for diesel and taking a longer but more main-roady route home. For all my worries about living in the middle of nowhere and being scared in the dark, driving the last twenty miles away from the last town before our house, I didn’t feel scared or uncomfortable driving in such a remote area.
This is all making me think a lot about the environments I like to be in and consequently more about what works best for me. I have no idea how I’ll feel in, say, a year from now. But for now, I appreciate being surrounded by trees and hills and rivers rather than people and amenities. But I am well aware that we are very much still in the novelty/honeymoon period of living out here, albeit with the luxury of also having a home in London, which to me is also a great place to live, appreciating now more than ever that we live in Lewisham, a low-key, functional area with a diverse population and so many people around that I don’t have to interact with anyone if I don’t want to (hmm, that might sound slightly more grumpy and anti-social than I actually feel).
Today, I want to get my desk ready and it’d be great to actually have my office ready for use tomorrow.