A Distant Shore

England has changed. These days it's difficult to tell who's from around here and who's not. Who belongs and who's a stranger. It's disturbing. It doesn't feel right. Three months ago, in early June, I moved out here to this new development of Stoneleigh. None of the old villagers seem comfortable with the term "new development." They simply call Stoneleigh the "new houses on the hill." After all, our houses are set on the edge of Weston, a village that is hardly going to give up its name and identity because some developer has seen a way to make a quick buck by throwing up some semi-detached bungalows, slapping a carriage lamp on the front of them and calling them "Stoneleigh." If anybody asks me I just say I live in Weston. Everybody does, except one or two who insist on writing their addresses as "Stoneleigh." The postman told me that they add "Weston" as an afterthought, as though the former civilises the latter. He was annoyed, and he wanted me to know that once upon a time there had been a move to change the name of Weston to Market Weston, but it never caught on. He was keen that I should understand that there was nothing wrong with Weston, and once he started I could hardly get him to stop. That was last week when he had to knock on the door for he had a package that wouldn't fit through the letterbox, and he said that he didn't want to squash it up ("You never know what's in it, do you, love?"). He told me that he had been instructed by head office to scratch out the name "Stoneleigh" if it appeared on any envelopes. Should the residents turn out to be persistent offenders, then he was to politely remind them that they lived in Weston. But he told me that he didn't think that he would be able to do this. That actually if they wanted to live in cloud-cuckoo land, then who was he to stop them? He didn't tell this to his boss, of course, because that would have been his job. There and then, on the spot.

So our village is divided into two. At the bottom of the hill there is a road that runs west to the main town which is five miles away, and east towards the coast which is about fifty miles away. Everybody knows this because just before you enter Weston from the town side there's a sign that says it's fifty miles to the coast. Then after that there's the big sign that reads "Weston" and announces the fact that we are twinned with some town in Germany and a village in the south of France. In the estate agent's bumf about "Stoneleigh" it says that during the Second World War the German town was bombed flat by the RAF, and the French village used to be full of Jews who were all rounded up and sent to the camps. I can't help feeling that it makes Weston seem a bit tame by comparison. Apparently, the biggest thing that had ever happened in Weston was Mrs. Thatcher closing the pits, and that was over twenty years ago.

The only history around these parts is probably in the architecture. The terraces on both sides of the main road are typical miners' houses, built of dull red brick; the original inhabitants would have had to bathe in the kitchen, and their toilets would have been at the end of the street. However, these houses have all long since been replumbed, and the muck has been blasted off the faces of most of them so that they now look almost quaint. Mind you, the people who live down there still have to deal with the noise of the traffic at all times of day and night, and I imagine it's murder to keep the windows clean. Besides the terraced houses there's a petrol station, a fish-and-chip shop, a newsagent-cum-grocery store, a sub-post office that opens three mornings a week, and behind the far row of houses a pub that sits smack on the canal, which runs parallel to the main road. There's also a small stone church, with nicely tended grounds, but I won't be needing to go in there. Stoneleigh is up a short steep hill and it overlooks the main road. We're the newcomers, or posh so-and-sos, as I heard a vulgar woman in the post office call us. There are not that many of us, just two dozen bungalows arranged in two culs-de-sac, but there are plenty of satellite dishes, and outside some of the houses there are two cars. Me, I don't drive. We don't have any shops up here, so if I do want anything I have to trek down the hill to the newsagent-cum-grocery store. Either that or catch the bus the five miles into town.

In May, I retired as a schoolteacher. Four years ago the school went comprehensive and since then standards have plummeted. It left me in a bit of a spot as I've spent most of my life banging on about how it would be better if kids of all levels and backgrounds could be educated together and learn from each other. It's what Dad believed. He hated seeing the grammar-school boys in their white shirts and ties, and their flash blazers, while the kids from the secondary modern could barely find a pair of socks that matched.