Town and Country

Famous last words... before we arrived here, I mentioned to Brendan that I might like to live in a quaint English village. Now, after almost two months of living in a quaint English village, I am ready to give up and run screaming back to the city again. Why? Because of streetlights. Yes, streetlights. At 4pm the sun has already gone down, since it's winter here, and by 5pm it is pitch black. And apparently the villagers don't want streetlights, since it means they would then be a town, forbid.

So I end up doing my marathon training between 3 - 4:50 pm, before it gets too dark to see the road. It's a bit worrying running along the country roads here sometimes, since they are mostly one-way and very narrow and winding, with tall hedges on either side.

Unlike New Zealand, where 'living in the country' really means that you can live at least 30 minutes from anywhere, living in the 'country' in the UK means that you live in a sort of suburb next door to about 50 houses, interspersed with maybe 5 paddocks on a 3km stretch of road. So it's really more like living on the outskirts of a town, but without the benefits of access to shops, street lights or public transport. We're trying to juggle two people, one car at the moment, made easier since I mostly use the car to attend job interviews in Southampton.

Add to this our landlord issues, and you have a recipie for Brendan and Tina moving again. Of course this was always meant to be a temporary fix until we could find a house in town, but it's a bit more urgent now. So we'll let you all know when we move.