Serving the Local Community

[Scribbly]

"We are living in the age where the pursuit of all values other than money, success, fame and glamour, has either been discredited or destroyed." - Michael Alig Party Monster (2003)

I live in a tiny little village in the middle of the picturesque English countryside. It was created to service the need for a railway station for several smaller villages, originally. Now, it is the only non-US based headquarters of GE Healthcare. We have a cancer rate roughly four times the national average. My parents weren't born here; people who are born here can't afford the housing here. A fact that I am now starting to come to terms with as I look at striking out on my own.

When I was much younger, the village was quaint. There was a local butcher, baker, post office, and greengrocer. We knew the majority of the people in the village, and we all went to the local school. I'm only just into my twenties, but already that has changed. The local shops have all been knocked through, except for the hardware store. A monolithic Tesco now dominates the village stores. For the moment, only the lower floor facade has been remade in glass and steel. I'm sure the upper floor, with it's older stonework, will soon be gone too.

There's graffiti now. I'm told that since I was away at university, the gangs have followed me back. A far cry from the violent psychotics of inner city London, perhaps. Not much in the way of hard drugs. They drink cheap cider- sold by Tesco- and hassle the old folk trying to walk through the village green. The local policeman was reallocated to the general city police force about eight years ago, the chap who used to know the residents by name and would spend all day walking around, checking that there's no trouble has been replaced by a gleaming new squadcar. It purrs past once every eight hours to make sure that all road users are going at the appropriate speed. The cameras on the way in and out don't catch everyone.

The village fair has also changed. It used to be, way back before I was born, an annual event where local tradesmen would turn out and entertainers would be brought in. A good time had by all! This year, it was sponsored by GE Healthcare. Who are 'Proud to serve the Local Community'. They set up speakers all through the village and pounded out the latest pop hits.

Twenty years, and we've gone from picturesque, to completely unrecognisable. Then the most amusing news of all.

A proposed high speed rail link will ram its way through the countryside, in the name of taking 20 minutes off the journey from here, to Birmingham, the city I am trying to escape from. It will cost billions, and chew up fields and forests which haven't been disturbed for hundreds of years. On top of that, the council has been informed that they are expected to build another twenty six thousand houses. My tiny little village is expected to triple in size in the next fifteen years. Subsumed into the greater mass of the town next door, and forever lost. Ironically, the modern train system is likely to cause such renewed interest in the area that the village which serviced the old one will be lost forever.

Progress marches ever on. I doubt the people living here four generations ago would recognize the state of the place now. I doubt that I will recognize it in ten years, let alone twenty. The village I grew up in is already gone, and the last remnants on the way out. They'll pave over the parks I used to play in. They'll ensure that the trees and animals are kept within acceptable, neatly designated areas.

It's just one small village. In the broader scheme of things, it means nothing. It isn't historically important. It's purpose has been served, and now that it is no longer needed, it will be allowed to melt away. An artificial slice of rural lifestyle that will be ushered on into the modern, urbanized era. The residents are angry, there have been protests, even strongly worded letters. But the People in Charge have made up their minds.

Isn't life better now that we've got the cheaper prices that Tesco can bring us? Isn't it more fulfilling to live here with the knowledge that we contribute to GE Healthcare, helping it develop new ways to combat cancer with radiation? It used to be that the children had nothing to do, at least now they are socializing on the green without the Constable making them feel targeted! And the high speed rail link, all those new houses, closer links with the town next door... why, it'll bring new blood into the area. More jobs, more money, more success, more fame, more glamour. Why already, we've got three footballers, a millionaire, and Robert Kilroy Silks living in the area! Times are looking good!

So I should stop feeling sick about seeing the past die, really. They wouldn't do anything bad, after all. These people are all there to serve the Local Community. They know what is for the best.

[Doktor Howl]

Progress.  It marches on a road of bones.

Whose bones?  Well, aside from the cemetaries which are in the way, yours.

[BadBeast]

From another point of view, I have lived most of my life in a County (Wilts) made up almost entirely of villages, from quite large ones, like Pewsey, or Marlborough, to tiny ones, like Stert, Boyton, or Sherrington. I have lived in a few of these villages, and although they are singularly nice enough, they are also largely in the process of a slow, and lingering death. This is because they are NOT being changed, preferring to remain in a rose tinted past, that never really was. Some of these places are no more than one Street, half a dozen houses, a soulless Pub, maybe a tiny Post Office (if they are particularly lucky) Or a Farm. (Usually without a resident Farmer) These places are populated by a strange mixture of people. There are the descendants of agricultural workers, from the bygone days when the land needed people to work on it. People who bought their Council Houses, when the Tories dangled the carrot of home ownership in front of the aspiring working classes. And tweed wearing Huntin' Shootin' and Fishin' types. Who still seem to be thriving, whatever the economic climate says for the rest of us. Pony Club for the Little girls, Gymkhanas and Land Rovers, green wellys and Barbour Jackets, Public School, Oxbridge, then "something in the city" .
One of these Villages I lived in, has a kind of apartheid thing going on. Two Pubs, one for the Toffs, and one for the Oiks. A few dozen Council Houses, full of Cap doffing working class types, who have no aspirations further than the Village boundaries and shop in Tesco's once a week, in one of the half dozen villages that managed to survive the aftermath of two world wars, by growing into what passes for a Town here.
And the moneyed and educated Homeowning Upper Middle Classes. Lots of "Old money" types, retired Military, (Officers, of course) or Gentrified City people, with their "Little place in the Country".
Their kids may go to the Infant and Primary school in the village, but then it's off to Eton, or Marlborough College, maybe Stonar for the Girls.
So in a Village of maybe 500 people, one half of them are running round having Coffee Mornings, organising Gymkhanas, or playing Lord of the Manor, while the other half concern themselves with petty crime, growing skunkweed, poaching and dogfights.
Some of these places don't even have a Bus stop, and it's a two mile walk to the nearest village with a shop! No Local Government is going to invest any money in these cultural dewponds, so any investment is from the Housing Associations, who see themselves as "Social Engineers", rather than just Landlords.
So I see these villages as just run down parts of dead Estates, with no local industries that would have kept them alive in the past, outsourcing their populations to work in Towns 30 or 40 miles away, and slowly rotting away. On the surface, it all seems quaint enough, but to live there is stultifyingly dull. It seems that the only things that are kept, are obsolete attitudes alluding to better times, and anything else that keeps the Rich / Poor dynamic going.
Anyone from non moneyed stock, are kept in ugly council estates out of sight of the picturesque cottages that perpetrate the myth of the idyllic rural community, While the poverty, and squalor of what life really is for a large percentage of Britain today. carries on in the same way as any inner city sink estate. Not as inspiring as it might seem to someone passing through, or reading the Daily Mail/Country Life/Horse and Hound. Just as much of a shithole, as the rest of Britain, really. Except more backwards and provincial. Both richer, and poorer than a proper County, full of proper Towns. Sometimes it lulls me into a kind of benzodiazepine trance of contentment, but It's all down to perspective. Sometimes, I can't say I wouldn't jump at the chance to move somewhere else, but everywhere is pretty much the same these days. The same old shit, with the same old people, doing the same old things, over and over until they die. These are times when I want to stab my eyes with needles just so I don't have to think about it. A future that follows the present, but only drags the dead things from the past along for the ride. Nothing that is new, nothing that would improve my cynical mood, or my anarchistic pragmatism. Nothing to inspire, or engender hope, or surprise me at all. Which is basically why I ended up here. In the Mothlight of the PD
bumping my head against the light bulb of Eris's Apple.
At least there are people here who can still think. Still express anything other than aneristic doom.
Oh, and Sepia. Sepia makes me step back from the grey dullness, and
gives me something new, and worthwhile to read. Which is good.
The amphetamines just make me go on, and on, but sometimes a combination of factors make a incendiary mix that keeps me going for a while. It's either that, or just lie down on the floor and stay there until the end. Or go fishing. I might do that instead.