On things being A Long Way away.

If you live in the country you grow up knowing that to get to the good places you have to travel A Long Way. You also know that A Long Way can mean up to twenty miles. For example, when I was a teenager (which was A Long Time Ago, never mind A Long Way) if you wanted to go shopping in Top Shop in Cambridge but you lived in a little village fifteen miles outside, then you had to get your Mum to drive you, you had to learn to drive yourself or you had to get a bus which came once every hour and took an hour.

If you wanted to go swimming you had to get the same bus. If you wanted to go to a decent 'youth' pub, you had to get the same bus. You had to get that bus to go to the library, to go to a gallery, to the cinema, to the theatre. That bus was your friend and the journey time became part of your day to day life. You came to accept that to get places takes time.

I know this. I am a country girl.

In the city, everything is near. The shops are near, there is a cinema nearby either in your local area, or in the city centre. There's a library, a chemist, a gallery if you fancy it, a skatepark (a skatepark! Can you imagine!) and a swimming pool. There is so much nearby that if you choose to travel a little bit further to get somewhere it shocks city people. "But that's A Long Way!" they say. "Why don't you choose one a little bit nearer?"

But you see, as I say, I'm a country girl. I don't think four miles is A Long Way. I think four miles is a perfectly acceptable distance to drive to Scouts, even if there is a troupe nearer to me. It's a normal, everyday distance to travel.

You can see this slight overestimation of distance in people who think the other side of a twenty mile city is A Long Way. Country people don't think this; I used to drive a fifteen mile journey just to pick up my best friend on the way to the pub. And a country person will happily drive twenty miles to pick up something from Freecycle, but a city person won't. They're so used to having everything on hand they don't appreciate that people all over the world don't live ten minutes away from coffeeshops and galleries.

It's a state of mind which comes from never having to worry; evidenced also in a city person's attitude to buses. City people have no concept of missing the bus, because there is always another bus. Even the Sunday service means that a bus comes every eight minutes. City people moan about this; they think eight minutes is a long time to wait. To a country person, only having to wait eight minutes for a bus is the height of decadence. In the country people really run to catch a bus because they know that there won't be another one for at least an hour and in fact sometimes, in the smaller villages, there won't be another one for a day.

A bus a day. If your plans rely on catching that it makes you hyper-aware of the time.

And God forbid if you live in the country and you miss the bus after a night out on the town. If you miss the last bus then you're really, truly stumped because there's no way you can afford a cab. The only way to get home is to get your Mum to come and collect you, but mine lives in Somerset and besides, I'm a bit old for that.

Which is about where we came in, isn't it?

Back once again...

Well it's taken some time but I'm back on line with this little blog, just trying to work out now what to do with it. I think I want a site that contains everything, links to my Flickr account and a direct blog every day on the main page. Plus links to the jewellery and all sorts. That means changing my address and all sorts of complications. I might have to consult the Aunt Rosie of Knowage.

So whilst I think about that, look at this:



Oh dear. Look how happy he is chewing! Look how bewildered he is when his food is nicked! And where did that duck come from?

It is a duck isn't it?