The Community and Me.

Mrs Thatcher once famously said ‘There is no such thing as society. There is the individual, and there are families.’ This can be interpreted in a number of ways, but I read in it a brief expression of the current trend to move away from the community ethos and towards the cult of the individual. And that’s one of the things I find interesting about living where I do.

I’ve lived at seventeen different addresses during my life, covering a wide variety of environments, and never before have I been made so conscious of the fact that people are watching me, and that they’re curious. I’ve been called by my name several times recently by people to whom I haven’t given it. That means either that I’ve come up in conversation, or that somebody has asked the question: ‘what’s his name?’ And dear Christine added an extra layer last night when she reported the query: ‘who’s the strange man who lives up by the school?’ So they’re not only curious about me, but at least one of them has decided I’m strange. That’s a side effect of the community ethos, and it has to be said that the community ethos does have a negative side, especially when the core mentality is rabidly conservative and consequentially judgemental. They use the word ‘proper’ a bit too much, and place undue reliance on their narrow definition of propriety.

A few decades ago I would have found this inhibitive, but not any more. I will continue to stand on the lane and stare strangely into space, content in my own knowledge that I’ve had an abiding interest in the physical landscape all my life, and haven’t yet lost the keen observational habit I developed as a landscape photographer. And I will continue to live alone in the reassuring certainty that I haven’t the slightest desire to hang around the school gates with a bag of sweets. And I will continue to attempt connection with the community on my own terms, unconcerned that they think me odd. And if I can give something back to the community, also on my own terms, so much the better. And as long as they don't form a mob to chase me to the burning mill with pitchforks, I should survive.