Small Town Living

So I shall be departing for foreign lands in just over a week and have been thinking today about the eccentricites of England that I will miss. Particularly the eccentricites of small towns, for example the 37th Annual Pumpkin Fair that I visited today.

It's pretty much what it sounds like. There is a biggest pumpkin contest as well as various other giant vegetable competitions, flowers, cakes, stalls, tombolas. This year also featured ferret racing. The mind truly boggles.

However I hardly ever experienced anything like this until I moved to a small town. I'm not saying that large citys can't have events like this, it's just that I noticed a particular type of community feeling that seems to come from holding an event in a town where everybody knows everybody else. It just feels so much smaller and closer and in a way more personal because we all know each other and all have links with most of the groups that are there. I certainly remember the times growing up when I got to enter the Guide competitions that involved doing something creative and then see my work displayed in the pavilion.

It was as I was watching the Morris Dancers though that I really got a sense of the strangeness of small town communities and their events. I think it was because they weren't amazing and although everyone had realised this I was still prepared to watch and clap because of the strange sense of pride in the community that I felt. I did also enjoy wondering what the Portugese family next to me was thinking about the men with sticks and bells occasionally waving hankies around but that's probably another blog.

This is now starting to creep towards being ridiculously patriotic but lately I've become more affectionate towards my small town (and my small country) because I'm going to miss it and all the crazy things that it does. I'm going to find myself in a strange country that has different eccentricites that I won't understand and I find that both saddening and exciting at the same time.

It all goes down on October the 3rd, the countdown has begun!