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The great escape
Nov. 11th, 2025 02:13 pmOne of the things my recent trip up north really underlined for me was how much I dislike living in this town. Let me be very clear that the community is great; I've met some incredibly nice people here. The town itself, though, is extremely unsatisfactory; and the surrounding area doesn't help. Having grown up in the middle of some beautifully rugged scenery, I don't take too well to living in an almost completely flat area, and I don't cope with the climate well either. It's not so bad in the winter, when we do get actual rain fairly regularly; but during the summer it is literally drier than some parts of the Sahara Desert, and I hate seeing the vegetation struggling with that. By about September all the grassy areas look like ancient and ill-used coir doormats, and it's depressing. Then the rain starts and we're all giving heartfelt thanks.
I could, however, put up with all that reasonably well if it weren't for the ongoing lack of facilities. For instance, I've been here five and a half years now, and the community centre is only just being built now. Initially it was located in a wing of the primary school, but the school needed to claim it back after not too long; so we were without one at all for several months. Those community groups who could afford to do so (plus our food bank, who were allowed to use the venue free of charge because we're a charitable concern) moved temporarily into the secondary school, which was at that point right on the edge of the town, though the town centre will eventually be out that way. That made it difficult for a lot of people, especially things like toddler groups, because it was too far away from where most people lived. It wasn't a good venue for the food bank due to privacy/dignity concerns, and so after a while we moved out to a neighbouring village, where they had a much better venue but it obviously wasn't ideal because we were supposed to be the food bank for [New Town]. Then, after a while, they stuck up a portakabin on the Green, which was a great deal better, but it isn't very big, and initially the roof leaked. They did, I'm happy to say, fix that quite quickly. That's been going for... oh, what, a year or two now, and the new one's going up alongside it. Finally.
The lack of shops is a huge problem, especially for me because I don't drive; so I can't just nip down to Tesco (which is pretty nearly in Cambridge) or Sainsbury's (which actually is in Cambridge) if I run out of anything. Ironically, all the bumf that was originally handed out to new residents put a lot of emphasis on the idea that nobody would need to use a car here, because of all the great walking/cycling routes and public transport. I've already touched on the inadequacy of the walking/cycling routes; the public transport exists but is pretty minimal; and most people can't manage without a car here. But the place was supposed to be designed so that you could, and therefore there isn't enough parking, which means that people habitually park in the cycle lanes. I get round this by doing all my shopping online, but I resent that quite strongly because it forces me into a routine. It seriously messes with my ability to be spontaneous. (And I'm already forced into one unwanted routine by my medication, but there's nothing I can do about that, so I'm much more inclined to accept it as simply a fact of life; whereas in most places there isn't this situation where I have to know pretty much exactly what, and how much, I'm going to eat or drink for the next week, because if I'm short of something or I get the fit to do some baking or I want to invite someone round I can just nip out and get whatever I need.)
I don't actively hate routines; they can have their uses. Some routines are helpful in that they save me having to remember odd little things. But, on the other hand, I don't like them for their own sake, and I really hate being trapped in them. I suppose it doesn't really help that my late father really liked routines, to the extent that the whole family had to follow them no matter what and he got very upset if they had to be broken for any reason. So if I got into any kind of routine when I was a child, even a simple one like regularly listening to a programme on the radio, I was expected to need to keep it at all costs; to the point where I asked my mother if I could go out blackberrying, and she replied, "No, because you want to listen to your programme." Because obviously I did, because that was the routine. Except that actually I didn't. I wanted to go out blackberrying. (And in the end I did get to go, as a result of a misunderstanding and the fact that my mother wasn't really listening to me because I was a child; and, to my amazement and delight, I didn't get into any trouble for it when I got back, so that's probably the happiest memory of my entire childhood.)
So, despite all the lovely people here, I'm actively considering moving out. I want to go back up north. After all, I can always keep in touch with the said lovely people by e-mail; I do a lot of that in any case, given how scattered my family and friends are right now. I've never been comfortable living here, but it was only the trip up north that fully enabled me to articulate why: this place makes it difficult to be who I am. Simple as that.
There are rumours that they're going to put up some temporary shops here, which is at least better than nothing; but it's not at all satisfactory. For a start, if the "temporary" community centre is anything to go by, they'll be here a long time, and because they're temporary there won't be any incentive for the shopkeepers to develop them nicely. For another thing, why not just build proper shops from the get-go? And, probably most importantly, nothing here ever happens when people tell you it will. One of my fellow food bank volunteers moved into the area 15 years ago on the promise that all kinds of fancy facilities were just about to be built here (before any of the houses went up). Not one of them has yet been built. All we have here, other than a large and growing number of houses, is: several schools and children's playgrounds; two churches (neither of which has its own building); a temporary community centre (plus one a-building); a sports pavilion, for some reason (I have no idea who thought that was more important than shops or medical facilities); and a post box. Triumphant. Honestly, if we have even one decent shop in this town before I die I'm going to be flabbergasted.
I'm not proposing to wait that long.
I could, however, put up with all that reasonably well if it weren't for the ongoing lack of facilities. For instance, I've been here five and a half years now, and the community centre is only just being built now. Initially it was located in a wing of the primary school, but the school needed to claim it back after not too long; so we were without one at all for several months. Those community groups who could afford to do so (plus our food bank, who were allowed to use the venue free of charge because we're a charitable concern) moved temporarily into the secondary school, which was at that point right on the edge of the town, though the town centre will eventually be out that way. That made it difficult for a lot of people, especially things like toddler groups, because it was too far away from where most people lived. It wasn't a good venue for the food bank due to privacy/dignity concerns, and so after a while we moved out to a neighbouring village, where they had a much better venue but it obviously wasn't ideal because we were supposed to be the food bank for [New Town]. Then, after a while, they stuck up a portakabin on the Green, which was a great deal better, but it isn't very big, and initially the roof leaked. They did, I'm happy to say, fix that quite quickly. That's been going for... oh, what, a year or two now, and the new one's going up alongside it. Finally.
The lack of shops is a huge problem, especially for me because I don't drive; so I can't just nip down to Tesco (which is pretty nearly in Cambridge) or Sainsbury's (which actually is in Cambridge) if I run out of anything. Ironically, all the bumf that was originally handed out to new residents put a lot of emphasis on the idea that nobody would need to use a car here, because of all the great walking/cycling routes and public transport. I've already touched on the inadequacy of the walking/cycling routes; the public transport exists but is pretty minimal; and most people can't manage without a car here. But the place was supposed to be designed so that you could, and therefore there isn't enough parking, which means that people habitually park in the cycle lanes. I get round this by doing all my shopping online, but I resent that quite strongly because it forces me into a routine. It seriously messes with my ability to be spontaneous. (And I'm already forced into one unwanted routine by my medication, but there's nothing I can do about that, so I'm much more inclined to accept it as simply a fact of life; whereas in most places there isn't this situation where I have to know pretty much exactly what, and how much, I'm going to eat or drink for the next week, because if I'm short of something or I get the fit to do some baking or I want to invite someone round I can just nip out and get whatever I need.)
I don't actively hate routines; they can have their uses. Some routines are helpful in that they save me having to remember odd little things. But, on the other hand, I don't like them for their own sake, and I really hate being trapped in them. I suppose it doesn't really help that my late father really liked routines, to the extent that the whole family had to follow them no matter what and he got very upset if they had to be broken for any reason. So if I got into any kind of routine when I was a child, even a simple one like regularly listening to a programme on the radio, I was expected to need to keep it at all costs; to the point where I asked my mother if I could go out blackberrying, and she replied, "No, because you want to listen to your programme." Because obviously I did, because that was the routine. Except that actually I didn't. I wanted to go out blackberrying. (And in the end I did get to go, as a result of a misunderstanding and the fact that my mother wasn't really listening to me because I was a child; and, to my amazement and delight, I didn't get into any trouble for it when I got back, so that's probably the happiest memory of my entire childhood.)
So, despite all the lovely people here, I'm actively considering moving out. I want to go back up north. After all, I can always keep in touch with the said lovely people by e-mail; I do a lot of that in any case, given how scattered my family and friends are right now. I've never been comfortable living here, but it was only the trip up north that fully enabled me to articulate why: this place makes it difficult to be who I am. Simple as that.
There are rumours that they're going to put up some temporary shops here, which is at least better than nothing; but it's not at all satisfactory. For a start, if the "temporary" community centre is anything to go by, they'll be here a long time, and because they're temporary there won't be any incentive for the shopkeepers to develop them nicely. For another thing, why not just build proper shops from the get-go? And, probably most importantly, nothing here ever happens when people tell you it will. One of my fellow food bank volunteers moved into the area 15 years ago on the promise that all kinds of fancy facilities were just about to be built here (before any of the houses went up). Not one of them has yet been built. All we have here, other than a large and growing number of houses, is: several schools and children's playgrounds; two churches (neither of which has its own building); a temporary community centre (plus one a-building); a sports pavilion, for some reason (I have no idea who thought that was more important than shops or medical facilities); and a post box. Triumphant. Honestly, if we have even one decent shop in this town before I die I'm going to be flabbergasted.
I'm not proposing to wait that long.
