reggiedh

Well put.

whitelinen

[QUOTE=bil;9271388]I spent most of my life in a fairly leafy village, and you can have it. The small minded petit bourgeois, the backstabbing neighbours... boy, when you have a problem there, you soon know who your friends are. When my mother had her stroke, and we were busting our balls trying to keep our heads above water, there were half a dozen people who really did something to help us. When we wanted to sell the land behind our house, we had a sustained campaign to stop us by the neighbours we thought we got on with. The 'funny' part was that it was lead by one who had sold off half of their garden not long before, and the members were all people whose houses were built on slices of other people's gardens. /QUOTE]

Doesnt quite add up.......village life is crap yet half a dozen people rallied around to help out in a time of need?

As for people campaigning to stop an individual selling their own property....impossible.

Rosemary

I have to say that given unlimited funds I would probably live in England but I would spend a long time picking the location. I have had both sides of the coin in England, where I was brought up was a great friendly area of Sheffield and a wonderful childhood I had. Then I got married, and moved to a village on the outskirts where new housing had been built. Strangely the old locals were extremely friendly but the incomers were out and out keep up with the Joneses snobs. Moved southwards to Bexhill at the end of the seventies and met some of the friendliest people I have ever met then moved to Eastbourne to a road of some forty or so houses where no-one talked to one another and so one became more insulated and ended up with a sod the lot of them attitude. When we moved to Spain we did not tell anyone that we were leaving, not that they would have been interested.
Out of interest the worst piece of dislike, unfriendliness, call it what you will was in an off the tourist area part of Cornwall, I went to the bar in a pub and with my northern accent asked for the menu. I was told that they were not serving food even though they had a board outside. Returned to Rosemary and told her, she went to the bar and in her west country accent asked the same question and was given the menu. It is something I shall never forget.

Graham

bil

Well, the big joke is that they wanted to stop us putting 4 nice houses on there, which at the time would have been a nice little earner, and I could have retired on the spot.

Now the rules have changed, half the land has to go to 'social ' housing, they are getting twice the number of houses (sadly we are getting a small fraction of what we would have got) and they now have a more down market housing group on their doorstep.

Had we been unable to sell, my fallback option was to sell the land for a pittance to the nastiest bunch of gypsies I could have found.

bil

Yeah, funny that. People tend to describe me as negative and pessimistic. I say it's realism. I was in that village for the best part of 40 years, so I got to know the politics and so on of it. When you discover that a big slice of people who are nice to your face are sticking the knife in your back to their best ability, well, that kind of sets you against them.

Some areas in the UK are friendlier, tho if you are going to base your experiences on how nice other walkers are to you, well all I can say is, 'quel surprise!'

Try going to south wales. The people in the northern half of wales tends to be nice, the rest not so.

bil

Out of all the people we thought we knew well, 6 wasn't much, and actually included two we didn't really know that well.

As for the rest, well when you have sold off your land, or have benefited from that process, if you then speak against it it just makes you a hypocrite.

Plus when the hypocrites are telling lies to the planners, that gets really, really annoying.

bil

Mitz, not all villages are heaven on earth, and not all villagers are decent, caring folk.

When people talk of idyllic village life, it's often because they don't look carefully at what goes on behind the lace curtains.

Mitzyboy

And not all village life is crap either Not all city people are decent caring folk. Not all your neighbours where you are will be decent caring folk.

I'm sorry you had a hard time, but aren't you just generalising far too much .... I actually did know what was going on behind the lace curtains in our village because for a few years I ran and owned a furniture cleaning franchise. Strangely enough I got a lot of business in my village, was in a lot of houses, and got to know quite a few people.

What I am saying is that if you cause trouble, which is clearly what the people thought it was (even if it wasn't) in your village, then that's what you get back

Strangely enough though, there was a little village near us called Fenny Compton. The majority of people who lived there were not from Fenny Compton and it seems weren't interested in village life so hardly mixed with each other. They were commuters as it was relatively close to the M40

JLFS

I am beginning to see a pattern emerge.

People often complain about curtain twitchers in the UK in the smaller villages or towns, and lack of acceptance from the locals.

Spanish people often complain about the same thing in Spain, and the cool reception they get when they move to a new area in the "aldea".
They

The ones from say, Madird or other Spanish cities, spend their lives without ever being really accepted in the village, and yet you hear stories of British that go live in these small communites, and the welcome mat is there, the fatted calf brought out (proverb) and they are welcomed with open arms, all this despite a lot of them hardly being able to string a sentance together in Spanish.

It is quite a mystery

Rosemary

Life is full of them so they say.

Graham

whitelinen

IMO its mostly the fault of the ¨incomer¨ especially in the UK.

Some will be brash and pushy and demand recognition and attention from the natives, others will be so far up themselves as to be ridiculous, some will be scruffs and undesirables, some will be Guardian readers.

Can a stray animal force his way into a new pack? humans are no different.
Except that humans can smile, behave with decorum and most importantly be polite and welcoming themselves ......... these are the ones that ease into their new society.
However, many cant and they are the ones that will not/cannot integrate.

JLFS

I am talking about Spanish people moving to other Spanish areas, (no Guardian readers at all) not being accepted smaller Spanish villages.

Just like some say it is in the UK, but the British often talk about acceptance they receive as "all enveloping, and clasped to the bosom type of welcome, in those very same villages.

bil

My grand mother was born in that village. My mother was born in that village. In all I lived in that village from when I was 9 to when I was about 50.

So, I was no incomer. By comparison, they were. My crime was in having a large house in a much larger than average plot of land, running a chimney sweeping business, and not giving a damn.

Plus I was a guardian reader. I have to say you do come across as the kind of person that would see that as the ultimate crime.

bil

I wouldn't say that our welcome here is 'all enveloping. ' I know I'm always going to be a foreigner, no matter how long I live here. However, the people smile more, they are more chatty, and our welcome here has been far kinder than when we moved to Royston in the UK for 3 years.

cricketman

I think when foreigners move abroad to a village then they are just happy not to be ran out of town with a pitchfork.

While Londoners or Madrilenos going to the sticks in their own country probably expect to be greeted with open arms and for the locals to thank them for finally bringing some civility to their village

Different expectations