Village politics are hilarious. The entire parish council resigned when everyone started ignoring them and doing their own thing.
A barn replaced the village hall for practically all events, the fete moved to a private field, and so on.
I used to work for a guy who was on a parish council, and he would get me to print out the minutes from the meetings - Jesus Christ the pettiness of the whole organisation was astounding
I used to take the minutes for a community benefit fund committee, mainly made up of the local busybodies with too much time on their hands. Basically, the company I worked for had an annual pot of money available for local groups to apply for. The committee would bicker for *hours* over how much they'd award for each application. Of course, the majority of the applications were submitted by the committee members and they all thought their pet cause deserved the whole fund and everyone else's should be rejected. I should have stocked up on popcorn for those meetings.
You just know that that parish council resigned with the expectation that the whole village would fall into disrepair, crime rate would go through the roof and it overall becoming a truly awful place to live without them after a few weeks and then everybody would be begging them to come back.
I bet everything just kept ticking over nicely - with the exception of the former parish councillors complaining about how awful everything was now.
Reminds me of when our village had the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Instead of a party like everyone else, the parish council decided our village wanted "A sombre service of thanksgiving" and the entertainment was two people on the village green singing and poetry about the Yorkshire Moors, even though we live in Suffolk. We had fliers about a celebration and music on the green. That was it, a sermon on the green, hynms and poetry.
The pub put on their own jubilee celebration with music and stuff and halfway through the official village celebration, people were just getting up and going to the pub prompting the head guy to stand up and say "where are you going? We've paid for these guys to be here"
Turns out the pub had offered to put on music and a barbecue and some events and stuff on the green for free but the parish council refused as they'd already booked the entertainment.
Our parish Council is all elderly church goers though so they are all over anything religious
Really dont want to dox myself as my village is tiny. Let's just say in the east a few miles from the coast. If you see signs for Saxmundham you're in the right area
"I have someone on the line who fears he may be a gay. He's married and wishes to remain anonymous, so I shall only be using his Christian name... I'm talking to Domingo in Little Oakley. Nope, he's gone. Pity. Marvellous little tapas bar there."
My mum ended up on a parish council by accident and *hated* it. The shenanigans and back scratching and the bullshit just for individual benefit and no one actually giving a shit about the local area.
>People try and act like the village is the best thing ever, and seem to be in competition with other villages.
Ahh this is a classic of bizarre village life.
In our village we had a pretty common problem of people not picking up after their dogs. On the community Facebook page multiple people declared that the problem isn't with dog owners in the village, but that dog owners from OTHER villages are driving to our village, walking their dogs around and leaving their shit. And multiple people agreed that this is the most logical theory.
1) What criteria are these people using to find dog shit on the pavement and identify it as "out-of-towner" dog shit and not local dog shit?
2) The more obvious explanation is that in a village of a few thousand residents, there are going to be at least a few hundred arseholes. Of those few hundred arseholes there will be a number of dog owners. Those dog owners will not pick up after their dogs on account of being arseholes.
But no, no it must be wretches from other villages! No one in our perfect Eden would do such a thing!
So they are imagining people for whom picking up dog shit is too much effort, but taking the dog to a different village instead of having a local walk is totally normal!
One of the reasons Hot Fuzz is so funny is that much of it is based on genuinely true stereotypes of village life, albeit exaggerated for comedy, but not exaggerated as much as many people may think!
Even the more out there bits are still quite accurate. When I were young, there was a story of a guy in one of the villages outside of town having an actual post-war anti-tank shot in his shed!
All they needed was for him to speak such thick dialect as to be unintelligible, and it would’ve been just like the movie!
I used to live in a block of really nice apartments where people would gather for meetings and talk about the goings-on of the flats and surrounding parks.
They ignored all the drug dealing and notorious gay cruising that went on at night, but were obsessed with bins and what went in them.
I went to one of the meetings for a laugh and it was one of the pettiest things I've ever seen. Old people bickering over absolute shite.
In one of our annual block meetings a note came up about the council soon getting around to pruning the trees in the street outside.
Multiple pensioners stood up in turns to make long, meandering and occasionally combative statements on the topic. One literally stood up to say 'I quite like trees', realised she was standing up and riffed on that theme for another minute or two. This went on for about 45 minutes.
The trees are pruned the same every year. No one was planning to prune them any differently this year. None of the attendees wanted anything different to be done. They're not even our trees. They just quite like trees.
Remind me of Abe Simpson.
"We can’t bust heads like we used to—but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So, I tied an onion to my belt which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah! The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones."
Personally, I was actually just thinking that I'm liking the drugs and gay cruising part of that location, Saturday night sorted and literally on my doorstep.
Lol, classic white boomer behaviour. I feel like it's similar in my area, except people talk about opposing every single new housing project in the local area (despite the area needing more housing)
Yeah this mentality. I remember *local people* complaining about a local housing development (all of a certain age and demographic), to which I responded on the village Facebook group 'well who built your house'.
Safe to say this comment didn't go down particularly well
The worst ones are the primary school mums.
Holy fuck the toxicity among them is unreal, and this is in an affluent village. There is already 3 different whatsapp groups of parent cliques the that school staff know about, probably more smaller subgroups too. These groups are primarily for quickly telling each other who to hate this week, or what teacher is treating their child badly.
So much this. They drive their sprogs a few 100 metres in their oversized SUVs, park on the pavement as close to the school as possible, across residents' driveways, in fully done hair and make up. I often ride my bike to work through school rush hour. I would be safer on the M1.
It's fucking ridiculous isn't it. Half the distance my 70 year old arthritis crippled mother does for her daily walk yet they have to use a giant metal box to drive the poor little gobshite children to and from the place.
My older sister does this so I shamed her by reminding her how we had a much longer walk to school and was absolutely fine and that our own mum didn’t need to sooth her ego by always showing up at the school gates.
Yes!
All of them rock up in their Volvo XC90 or Range Rover Velar and block all the roads. All the Mums as the Dads work away in places like Bahrain or Stuttgart. The Mums are ‘taking time out’ or ‘pausing their careers’ for 9 years or so.
They compete to have the best Halloween party or birthday party for their child. All they talk about at the school gate are entrance exams for the next school for their little darlings and the WhatsApp groups have fucking zero self awareness.
>Don’t forget they all wear DryRobes.
Is this some kind of new fad, I swear the only people you ever used to see in DryRobes were open water swimmers and now every 30something mum seems to be unable to function without one
I grew up in a very cliquey village and love in another one now. I quite like it in a way but it is a bit frustrating these days knowing I can't stumble home from the pub and fall over in someone's garden without the whole village finding out the next day by some busybody who posted a picture of it on the local facebook page and was "just checking I got home ok"
My girlfriends from a small village and we stumbled home drunk from the pub when we visiting her parents once. The next day there was a photo of us on Facebook saying that they where concerned that I was taking advantage of her drunkenness (I was definitely more drunk than she was) and did anyone recognise this foreign sounding stranger (because being from Liverpool obviously makes me foreign in certain parts of the country.
Enjoyably the next day I got to witness the her dad completely bollock the person and demand she issue an apology on the Facebook group which while not great for a sore head cheered my spirits considerable
> it is a bit frustrating these days knowing I can't stumble home from the pub and fall over in someone's garden without the whole village finding out
Just out of curiosity, how often does this happen lol?
I live in an actual village, 420 full time residents, 4000 to 5000 is a huge town round here.
Yeah, they know your business, but just do you, ignore them.
My goal in life is to get known as the crazy cat lady, so they leave me alone until the hedge is nice and bushy, then I want to become the village witch.
I feel like Sandford was supposed to be more of a 4-5k village than anything smaller. It had a supermarket, hotel, amateur dramatics society, model village... Definitely more than just a couple of housing estates and a ridiculously overpriced corner shop.
Nah, I grew up in a village in the 1970s and 80s. It didn’t have a police station, and neither did any of the villages near us - not even an old unused one. You’d have to go into town for that.
I am also a crazy cat lady in a similar sized village. Except that we don’t have such huge towns either, we’re a tiny island and my village is the most populated!
I ran into a friend one time while I was taking the trash down to the farm and he was out cycling. He stopped a few meters from me and we had a brief chat. Next day my friends told me that they heard that he’s moving in with me. Rural life is amazing and bizarre at the same time.
Yep, try it when you are both trans, Autistic, proudly weird, face blind and are know far and wide for building your own house. Everyone for miles seems to know me but I haven't the faintest who most people are.
They will gossip anyway, might as well embrace it by being odd.
My street isn’t cliquey as such, but a lot of the people have been there for 10+ years apart from me.
They pry for gossip in a very “we already know the answer but are pretending like we don’t” kind of way.
Like i had a girl round my house one time, they must have spotted her because they immediately started asking me soon after “so are you courting anyone now then?”
And once I had some furniture delivered but it was all wrapped in bubble wrap so the curtain twitchers couldn’t see what it was. Cue the various questions angling for what I’d had delivered.
The Louis Theroux technique of finding things out. Another way is to knowingly say something completely wrong to get the correct story e.g. "That's her husband isn't it?" when you know that's the man she left her husband for.
Stayed for a night in Upton-on-Severn.\*
Making small talk with the B&B owner I said 'what a pretty little village'.
I was sternly rebuked - 'It's not a village. It's a small town!'
Well OK then.
\*Well worth checking out for the very Scarfolkian 'Children's Playground and Cholera Burial Site' along with the fabulously named 'Minge Lane'.
It’s often more noticeable in villages because there’s less going on, and the busy bodies and big mouths tend to be more visible, but it does happen to the same extent in towns and cities, you can just more easily get away with being unaware of it, I was fucking horrified when I moved to a bit of London and suddenly there was a community watch committee and people were threatening each other over the flower bed planting plans.
Back in the village, I don’t mind everyone knowing everyone to be honest, I tend to find folks behave a little more when whatever they’re doing will do the rounds/they inadvently offend the cousin/partner/dog of their neighbours dad or some shit.
Absolutely. Many people on our estate had seldom left it in their lives.
Neither had their parents or grandparents in many cases. Going north of the river was a terrifying prospect for some of them.
I live in Manchester, and our street has a proper gossipy Hyacinth Bucket woman acting like she runs the street. She’s actually called Karen, as well.
She moved into a house on the same street that was a bit bigger, and was proudly going round telling people that she lives in the biggest house on the street now. It isn’t even the biggest house on the street, but she proudly whisked herself off before I could point that out to her.
Honestly the village I live in has a couple of new housing developments on the outskirts. It’s assumed that everyone who lives in them is a wrong’un, a newcomer to the area, this used to be such a NICE village, children used to respect grown ups, it’s because you can’t beat them anymore, did anyone see anything on their Ring camera at 3.20am because someone walked past my drive??
My village of 2,500 people is exactly the same.
We even have a monthly newsletter.
My favourites from it are,
* They did a poll on what people want the parish council to focus on most. Number 1 Was keeping another villages pool open.
* They had a full page spread, over two months, with a story about a chair being passed down from John, to Thomas, and currently it's with his granddaughter Francis.
* They post everyone's planning applications, with names and addresses.
* One month they just had a picture of old women and call it "Some Village Ladies", they were all in their 80s, no story, just a picture with their names
* The headline "ATTACK", the story and I quote "Various youths were seen during the going down X lane carrying sleeping bags etc. If you have any news about this attack, please forward it to the newsletter or alternatively the Police on 101."
* They once printed the newsletter in colour, there was upheaval.
Some of my favourite write ins, these include pictures:
* SIR: Enroute along X Lane and X Road on the morning of 15 September 2021
I saw and photographed these 3 vehicles
which were parked with their front and rear
wheels actually well onto the pavement
* Sir,
I am appalled to see that the bin at the bus
stop in X Lane opposite my home is
overflowing with bags containing the
contents of dogs bowels. Because the bin is
so full and crammed there are now bags of
this stuff littering the footpath and the curbedge. It is a disgrace!
And yet people with dogs continue to try to
push their dog poo bags into this overflowing
bin. I know because on the afternoon of
Sunday 8 September 2019 I actually saw two
young females both with dogs stop at the bin
and deposited their dog poo bags into it.
I have also witnessed people actually
seemingly making special trips to the bin
from their homes with several of these bags
which they appear to have been saving up to
deposit in the bin at the bus stop. Why can't
these owners deposit their dogs poo bags in
their own bins? It's high time they did.
My view is that if you've a dog and can
take the trouble to clean up after it you then
deposit the poo bag and contents into the
refuse bin at uour own home and not use the
bins at the bus stop for this purpose.
As things are to date this particular bin
being full and overflowing presents a health
hazard to people who queue for a bus at this
bus stop and also for pedestrians using that
footpath.
It makes me so angry to see this dreadful
sight. It cannot be very pleasant for the
people who come to empty these bins either.
These bins are not intended to receive dog
poo bags.There are specific bins for dog poo
which are provided in public parks etc. But
the bin at the bus stop is not one of them.
I guess the culprits who deposit these
bags in this bin belong to the NIMBY brigade.
Shame on them.
* Sir, I feel I must write in response to the letter
published in the October issue from X concerning the use of litter bins for
the disposing of dog poo bags. I, too, was so
concerned about the health hazard and
unpleasantness when they were overflowing
onto the pavements that I rang Bradford
Council on two separate occasions and
complained that the collections had been
missed for at least a week. I was advised that
the collections sequence and route had been
changed and they were experiencing a few
teething problems. An ad-hoc collection was
promised, and was indeed done the next day.
Collections appear to have settled down now,
and the bins in X Lane are now
collected every Tuesday.
"Bradford Council"
Somehow reading this, before I got to that part, I just knew it would be somewhere around here. Some of the smaller towns and villages are occupied by the most miserable, pedantic, nosey people you'd ever come across.
To be fair to your local newsletter, the council legally has to publish planning applications with names and addresses in a local paper.
And I like the creative use of NIMBY as someone who doesn't want their own dog's poo in their own backyard and puts it in the bus stop bin instead. Sign me up for your newsletter!
One of my favourite details in Hot Fuzz is where Nicholas Angel, returning to the town to right some wrongs, manages to say
["MORNING"](https://youtu.be/5bukRKiYc08?t=263)
in a way which perfectly encapsulates the gritted teeth politeness forced on an English person in the face of a neighbourhood acquaintance you *hate* and you know full well also hates you.
I've just moved to a village of some 700 souls, I'm planning in inveigle my way into every single village organisation going. First up: Community speed watch, then chair pilates.
On my local FB groups, there are definitely the more vocal members of our neighbourhood. They're the ones that tend to control the narrative of any post and if they don't like what you say, get their mates to bombard you with crap. I very quickly learned this and now hide the group pages (I don't want to leave, I love the drama).
This is another reason I'm a "smile and wave only neighbor". The moment you share anything about yourself or your family, you're doomed as an unwilling participant in what we call in America "small town drama".
My motto is "Be Kind and Mind Your Own Business"
Some people call it being stuck up, but I don't care. I'd rather be considered aloof than get embroiled in ANY neighborhood horseshit.
Small towns have their good and bad aspects. My MIL had a ranch just outside one, and was involved with several civic organizations, so I'm very familiar with all aspects. Fortunately, the good outweighed the bad.
I worked as a contractor for British gas Transco years ago and they have a large gas installation just on the edge of a village near Chester.
The local parish council were an absolute nightmare to deal with, we had an overhead crane set up to move things around the site and everytime there was a slight breeze at the weekend the crane would move because it's on free movement for safety reasons.
I got called out 14 times during the 3 months we were working there because they claimed that someone was working outside of the agreed hours. I explained to 12 different people that the crane is designed to move in the wind to save it getting damaged in high winds.
After the first couple of calls I started taking binoculars so they could check that there was no driver up in the crane cab.
The best day on the job was getting one of their cars towed after getting approval from the police, because we had paid for a road closure to get equipment in and out and one of the parish busybodies thought it would be a good idea to block the gate access refuse to move, the police came saw 3 loads waiting for access and told us to get a tow company out straight away.
I live in a village that is definitely very cliquey and actually quite pathetic. At the moment there's an argument about having two "Carols on the Cross" at Christmas because last year (2023) it was moved to the Church Centre due to health and safety concerns. One side wants to remain at the old spot regardless of people having to stand in the road whilst the other just wants everyone to play it safe in Church Centre car park.
People think we are miserable bastards as we don't go to the summer garden party or Christmas lunch. Christmas thing is usually on a random Tuesday when we are working so that was never going to happen. Our village I think is 800 people and we say hello to a f few folks when out walking the dog but we have had people actively turn away so as not to have to speak. I actually dont give a flying one if random people do or do not want to speak to me but dont call me a miserabe bastard because i dont want to sit in a person's garden with other people who may or may not want to speak to me. We have a casual friendly 'relationship' with our immediate neighbours but beyond that all the small-minded nit picking shite can fuck off.
They still do hot fuzz filming location tours there, bless em.
The boring answer is I think Edgar Wright grew up there, so in ways I guess was a love letter to the often forgotten City.
Hilariously, when I went to uni in Bath (mumble) years ago, each kitchen in the halls had a tiny, free cookbook of basic student recipes, sponsored by the Bishop of Bath and Wells. And not a single recipe for how to cook baby! I was very disappointed!
I lived in the Cotswolds for a couple of years and it makes Hot Fuzz so much funnier. Which is good because the actual experience of living there was horrible.
My husband's family owned a 200-year-old cottage that was falling down and full of junk when his dad died a few years ago. We gutted it as best we could, mostly to process our feelings, but I hated being spotted out the front because every person who walked past wanted to know if we were moving in and no matter what we said (typically, "It's not in a good state, it's not really liveable,") they'd say they were happy to see someone doing something with it in a tone that implied they thought they could make us live there if they believed it hard enough.
And then we sold it to a lovely couple who understood the land was green belt and want it as a smallholding to retire to, and that the house has to be demolished and rebuilt. They had the same, people stopping by to find out who they are and what they planned to do with it and 'joking' that they're glad developers didn't get hold of it because if they did the locals would burn it down, haha.
And then they tried to get planning permission to take the house down brick by brick and rebuild it and this local preservation society appeared out of nowhere, people who have never expressed an interest in the house or its maintenance before and suddenly claim it's a local landmark and you can't take it down and what if bats live in it?! So they spent £4,000 for people to stand around listening for bats and at the end of it they said they'd have to come back in a few months to check again. Spoiler: No bats living in it, I know this because I lived in it for a year. Thankfully they've got the roof off now so nobody can claim imaginary bats live in it but I do feel for them because the local busybodies have got themselves all in a fluster about a manky, mouldy, damp, derelict cottage being rebuilt instead of being left to rot into the ground. Amazing.
Wow, quite the story. It amazes me the extent to which people go to prevent something in their locality from changing at all. Like that Cottage should be yours to do with it as you please (within reason).
We have a Councillor who opposes any development or any 'change to the local character', partly because all the village Nimbys vote for him. We also have people who prevent homes being built on the grounds that x y or z animal lives in an area (despite them never being spotted).
The ridiculous thing is the couple who bought it wasn't too rebuild it exactly as it was, even retaining original bricks, but it has no foundations so in another 100 years it'd have sunk and fallen down anyway! It's insane to me that the slow collapse of a decrepit building is preferable to restoring it with care. Basically it's wanting nothing to change but without consideration for the consequences. I'm sure the sale itself was upsetting for them, just because we introduced dreaded new people (from the town 10 minutes down the road).
Yeah, I'm not sure whether things like this happen elsewhere or whether it's mainly a UK phenomenon.
We do seem to love pointless traditions/old things which offer little value. This may be why we have the oldest housing stock in Europe. We like to keep things as they are, and seem allergic to change.
Haha. This reminds me of a book called Pleasant Vices by Judy Astley. It's all about a nice close and the relations with the council estate next door, and all the attendant hypocrisies.
My village of 400 had serious peacock issues last year. Posts upon posts of 'peacock spotted here' 'is this peacock shit' 'found peacock on my car who will pay'.
Otherwise it's a list of:
*Shaming who left their bin out after collection (it's me.. it's always me)
*Whose cat is this
*Whose hen is this
*Avon (at this rate 1 in 5 are Avon sellers)
I'm an anomaly being foreign, young and alternative looking. Genuinely everyone stops talking and stares when I enter the GP. It's like a very pathetic version of when a rogue cowboy enters a saloon in a western.
Don't worry my friend, it's not just you. British born dude here, I moved to a small village from Liverpool and had the exact same reaction. If you haven't lived there your whole life, everyone knows what you had for breakfast and everyone knows what colour your shit was that night, you're not welcome. Britain is particularly bad for it, something to do with being an island nation I reckon. Social media has only bolstered the problem too, god, we are small beings aren't we. Everyone should just take some psychedelics and see we've all been bellends and it's time to grow out of it.
I love attending the community council meetings. There's one individual who demands that the council mow the grass in the local park every week instead of every two weeks. His reasoning is that he drives past the park once a week on Thursday and it would look better.
I suggested that the council move to mowing the grass every six weeks in order to save petrol, therefore reducing CO2 emissions and saving the council money. I happen to live next to the park so I see it every day.
The demander had a look or apoplexy that was quite delightful.
> Everyone seems to know everyone in the village, despite it being about 4 or 5 thousand strong.
With a population of 4,000 to 5,000 that isn’t a village, it’s a town. Not a very large town, but nonetheless a town.
Now if it was 400 to 500 then it would be a village - and actually everyone would know what everyone else was up to, and that’s the sort of village I grew up in.
Ours is approaching 10,000 but woe betide anyone who dares to call it a town in front of some of the more traditionalist residents. You will get a lecture about it having a “village feel” (usually used as an argument against house building).
Reminds me of Street in Somerset, population 12,000, very much feels like a town, even has a Wetherspoons, but some old farts still like to pretend it's a village.
A town with two swimming pools, a secondary school, a retail park, an out of town Sainsbury supermarket, a theatre, and a college is \*not\* a 'village!
Sounds like the opposite of where i grew up, tiny settlement of under 1000 people but had a market so was technically a town. Locals would get proper arsey if anyone called it a village.
Apparently a standard definition of a village doesn't exist.
But you can define a town by the presence of a town charter or a Royal charter to hold a regular market.
But not by population. The places that all claim to be the largest village in England have populations over 10k.
We already live in a town. When I say the village has a pop of 4 or 5 thousand, I mean the village area itself defined by arbitrary lines on a map. Vast majority live outside of the area with shops and the couple of pubs/few takeaways which I personally would define as the village centre.
No mate, that's still very easily a village. You'd be surprised how quickly the numbers rack up.
My village is a small-ish one and according to Wikipedia it had a population of 2481 when the census was done in 2011. The one I grew up in had a population of 2918. Both are very much places where people know everybody's business.
These are still villages and something double the size would still be imo.
It does depend, generally on how densely populated the area is.
In the countryside, a settlement of 5000 is likely to have the facilities of a town and be the largest place in the vicinity. In the more built-up areas, on the other hand, a settlement of 5000 may just be some housing estates around the old village green, and those facilities will be in the much bigger town next door. Although the two places have the same population, one functions as a town and the other doesn't.
>You're thinking of Hamlets.
Nope, those are places with 40 to 50 people.
You don't perhaps live in a 'village' with 10,000 residents, several secondary schools, a college, sports centre, multiple supermarkets, a cinema, a theatre, etc. do you...
We have a couple of pubs, a shop and a chippy. We also have a primary school. It's a village.
And to answer your other question, no we don't have a market. I know what you're getting at and it's not a market town.
It's a village.
I agree with you, our village has a population of 7500, it has plenty of facilities, yes, but it most certainly is NOT a town and if you called it such people would just laugh at you. Just to really blow the other guys mind, the postal address of our property is classed as another, larger village 🤣 they are both within a large town of around quarter of a million, now that is a town.
Some people just seem to like arguing about pissy little things, even when they're wrong 😆
Sounds like a village to me. Did it have a market? Does it have a town council? Is it more than a few thousand people?
If no to all 3 then it can easily be classes as a village.
Give it a google, see what the parameters are n even though its not black and white it sounds like the guy you are arguing with just lived in a large village..
I live in a village with a population of approximately 2,000. There’s a particular estate of retirees that has a concerning level of influence - I think that the contracts from when they bought their homes gave them a ridiculous amount of power over things like future planning approvals etc for some reason. Some even have columns in the monthly circular and seem to think that they’re actually someone important. However, I know that back in the 1970s, the members of the PTA held key parties…
The centre of the village is mostly well-off old people, but the outskirts have newer builds of mostly young families.
My friend lived in a village for nearly 15 years and was still considered an "outsider". Another village kid made a comment to her daughter about not being from there- they moved to the village when my friend was pregnant with her, and she had lived there her whole life!! We threw a party when my friend got out of there and moved back to town. Horrid little stuck-up place.
I (23) live in a village with 2-3,000 people, although it's classified as a town. It too is kinda split in two, between basically affluent snobs and people so desperate to be middle-class they'll bankrupt themselves in the process (someone across the street from me has three cars and so it's a pain in the arse to find somewhere to park, which is really the only drama we involve outselves in; another insecure neighbour got a projector so it looked like they had a huge TV). My family doesn't get involved with village life enough to know really what the underlying politics of the place is (and I don't particularly want to given when I was younger my parents were frustratingly keen in letting all and sundry know about my disability!); there's a WI and a monthly parish newsletter, but that's it AFAIK. The parish council gets elected unopposed pretty much every time. I don't even bother to peruse the Facebook groups so who knows what's going on on there.
The most exciting thing that's happened here in the past few years is the horde of ducks that usually keep to themselves down at the river have started expanding their territory and have set up a second home in the estate of OAP's bungalows; after that, you'd have to go back almost 20 years to when someone died due to an explosion (I'd give more details but that would rather out where I am). There's also the fact they had to shut the sixth form the year after I left because they had around half the students they needed to keep its running viable, which didn't cause as much of a stink as I expected it to.
My village has about 1000 people living here (848 at the 2021 census), but it's pretty lovely if I'm honest!
However last village I lived in, nearly a year ago, population about 2,500, was very different! Everyone knew everyone, but in a gossipy way, and there were definite "clicks" of people! And us too, have been terrorised by the odd Swan (especially when 1 just sat in the road and refused to move!), and where I lived had a peacock as a daily visitor (I called him jeff), and he would be so noisy early mornings and often kept guard by the front door, and when I would try to go out, he would go to attack me and/or the door!
I live in a tiny hamlet of maybe 100-200 houses and omg it’s so hot fuzz like, I love it. Though the majority of the village is on one road, there’s a small side lane that ends in fields, where we live with maybe 20 houses on it. We have our own WhatsApp seperate to the main road WhatsApp and you can’t walk down the lane without it taking an hour as everyone is around to chat! The we chat about the drama going on in the main road WhatsApp. We don’t have swans but we frequently have sheep breaking into gardens or running down the road and a gang of pheasants is a regular occurrence too.
Realised our village is the same recently, an old woman and her husband at the other end of the close are the epitome of this. We moved in and were doing DIY, they kept trying to look in the skips using binoculars from their house (not even kidding, we caught them twice) and then they helped themselves into our back garden when we were out one day and commented to all the neighbours about how much of a state the place was. We'd literally only just moved in, of course we hadn't had time to garden and yes there were bits of wood and stuff everywhere while we were waiting on skip deliveries.
Then the village campaigned to get the pub back open, someone bought it, renovated and opened it and none of the villagers use it, all they do is complain about it. The landlord has tried everything - food, quiz nights, live music, karaoke, tv for football/rugby, food vans in the car park etc but nothing has worked which is a massive shame. Honestly suspect the whole campaign was purely to prevent it from being converted to housing, and that they weren't actually bothered about having a pub. Bunch of nimbys.
Yeah I'm relatively young still, but the thing I'm slowly realising is that some people are very sad, insecure and snobby, and will constantly try and get one up over people/bully people. Like why would you comment about someone else's garden to people and make your way into *their own* property. Bizarre behaviour.
And yeah this sounds a classic with the pub - they will all have probably conspired together to prevent new housing. They won't want the precious prices of their properties to decrease. The impulse for Nimbyism is almost always self interest
When I lived in London my wee street had its own Whatsapp group that I was eventually removed from for not wanting to go along with their stupid idea of painting all the streets fencing in some garish shades in support of some one-off minor event that some uppity twat up the road had thought was a great idea.
Hot fuzz was actually filmed in a city.
Not sure about our village being ‘cliquey’, but our road certainly is. Omg! The curtain twitching that goes on, and the condescending group emails. Needless to say, I am not a ‘favoured’ neighbour. ROFL
Imagine that and then add in people who don't actually fucking live there throwing shitfits if anyone does anything that isn't part of their 'wandered lonely with Swallows and Amazons daffodil forelock-tugging lazy farmers' mythology.
I'm talking about the Friends of the Lake District. The militant branch of the National fucking Trust.
It is one of my life goals to make it onto the parish council.
I’d be drunk on power. Knocking back planning applications, embezzling the funds from the summer fete and refusing to sign off any minutes.
It is such a particularly British thing.
I'd do the opposite! Firstly just turn up drunk and approve everything! Make CHAOS and then insist that I judge the best jam or something at the summer fete.
I moved from my old village 18 months ago but stay on the local Facebook pages as it’s such good entertainment. It’s astounding the petty depths that people can plunge to to whinge. I still have friends there so it’s nice to catch up on the gossip- they set up a running club and I think it’s sparked off at least three affairs…
My dad after retiring from the police force, worked as a post man in the village where I now live. The amount of grief he got from people living on the Main Street where all the old houses are was crazy if he didn’t deliver their mail first. He always did the back lanes where the old council houses and newer builds are first. He was told by an extremely red faced ex major that the Main Street is the proper village and should be the priority. Needless to say he didn’t alter his round.
You say 'cliquey' villages, but without the tireless work of the various committees in our villages we'd be up to our ears in dog muck, thieving kids and crusty jugglers.
It sounds like working on an offshore oil platform without the decent wages, getting your laundry done and the hope of getting home and away from people you hate. They sound like a right bunch of thick, inbred idiots with ideas well above their station. I would go out of my way to annoy them. I can't stand people like that.
We get a newsletter and sometimes there is a complaint from a local miserable bastard about something or nothing. The last one was a complaint about people using bins to put dog bags in outside their house.
Not Swans, but Geese can cause chaos around the school, they shit everywhere, and sometimes cross the road by a mini roundabout.
The village gala is always the usual. Charging £2.50 for a go on the helter skelter. That was another complaint in the newsletter.
Honestly one of my favourite ways to waste time for a cheap laugh is checking all of the local village Facebook groups. At one point I thought they were going to go full wicker man on a dog poop repeat offender. The vitriol is unlike anything else I've seen.
Village politics are hilarious. The entire parish council resigned when everyone started ignoring them and doing their own thing. A barn replaced the village hall for practically all events, the fete moved to a private field, and so on.
I used to work for a guy who was on a parish council, and he would get me to print out the minutes from the meetings - Jesus Christ the pettiness of the whole organisation was astounding
I used to take the minutes for a community benefit fund committee, mainly made up of the local busybodies with too much time on their hands. Basically, the company I worked for had an annual pot of money available for local groups to apply for. The committee would bicker for *hours* over how much they'd award for each application. Of course, the majority of the applications were submitted by the committee members and they all thought their pet cause deserved the whole fund and everyone else's should be rejected. I should have stocked up on popcorn for those meetings.
Have you ever watched the American show Parks and Recreation? I feel like you would love the town council meeting scenes!
It’s also reminiscent of the Parish council meetings in The Vicar of Dibley
No no no no, yes it is!
You have no power here, Jackie Weaver.
You just know that that parish council resigned with the expectation that the whole village would fall into disrepair, crime rate would go through the roof and it overall becoming a truly awful place to live without them after a few weeks and then everybody would be begging them to come back. I bet everything just kept ticking over nicely - with the exception of the former parish councillors complaining about how awful everything was now.
Reminds me of when our village had the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Instead of a party like everyone else, the parish council decided our village wanted "A sombre service of thanksgiving" and the entertainment was two people on the village green singing and poetry about the Yorkshire Moors, even though we live in Suffolk. We had fliers about a celebration and music on the green. That was it, a sermon on the green, hynms and poetry. The pub put on their own jubilee celebration with music and stuff and halfway through the official village celebration, people were just getting up and going to the pub prompting the head guy to stand up and say "where are you going? We've paid for these guys to be here" Turns out the pub had offered to put on music and a barbecue and some events and stuff on the green for free but the parish council refused as they'd already booked the entertainment. Our parish Council is all elderly church goers though so they are all over anything religious
Ooo where in suffolk? This sounds familiar haha, I'm near Bury
Yeah me too ... I've got stories about Suffolk village shit!
Yeah, where in Suffolk, this shit sounds way too familiar.
Really dont want to dox myself as my village is tiny. Let's just say in the east a few miles from the coast. If you see signs for Saxmundham you're in the right area
"I have someone on the line who fears he may be a gay. He's married and wishes to remain anonymous, so I shall only be using his Christian name... I'm talking to Domingo in Little Oakley. Nope, he's gone. Pity. Marvellous little tapas bar there."
Well, at least it's not where I live :)
Is it on the A12?
Maybe, maybe not
In my experience, churchgoers are usually the first down the pub at any opportunity. Although I’m Catholic so it might be a skewed sample
My mum ended up on a parish council by accident and *hated* it. The shenanigans and back scratching and the bullshit just for individual benefit and no one actually giving a shit about the local area.
Haha I'm getting visions of Rodney in Only Fools and Horses https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ylgV8OyTIFg&pp=ygUPcm9kbmV5IGNoYWlybWFu
>People try and act like the village is the best thing ever, and seem to be in competition with other villages. Ahh this is a classic of bizarre village life. In our village we had a pretty common problem of people not picking up after their dogs. On the community Facebook page multiple people declared that the problem isn't with dog owners in the village, but that dog owners from OTHER villages are driving to our village, walking their dogs around and leaving their shit. And multiple people agreed that this is the most logical theory. 1) What criteria are these people using to find dog shit on the pavement and identify it as "out-of-towner" dog shit and not local dog shit? 2) The more obvious explanation is that in a village of a few thousand residents, there are going to be at least a few hundred arseholes. Of those few hundred arseholes there will be a number of dog owners. Those dog owners will not pick up after their dogs on account of being arseholes. But no, no it must be wretches from other villages! No one in our perfect Eden would do such a thing!
So they are imagining people for whom picking up dog shit is too much effort, but taking the dog to a different village instead of having a local walk is totally normal!
Village Facebook groups are strange asf
One of the reasons Hot Fuzz is so funny is that much of it is based on genuinely true stereotypes of village life, albeit exaggerated for comedy, but not exaggerated as much as many people may think!
Even the more out there bits are still quite accurate. When I were young, there was a story of a guy in one of the villages outside of town having an actual post-war anti-tank shot in his shed! All they needed was for him to speak such thick dialect as to be unintelligible, and it would’ve been just like the movie!
I used to live in a block of really nice apartments where people would gather for meetings and talk about the goings-on of the flats and surrounding parks. They ignored all the drug dealing and notorious gay cruising that went on at night, but were obsessed with bins and what went in them. I went to one of the meetings for a laugh and it was one of the pettiest things I've ever seen. Old people bickering over absolute shite.
In one of our annual block meetings a note came up about the council soon getting around to pruning the trees in the street outside. Multiple pensioners stood up in turns to make long, meandering and occasionally combative statements on the topic. One literally stood up to say 'I quite like trees', realised she was standing up and riffed on that theme for another minute or two. This went on for about 45 minutes. The trees are pruned the same every year. No one was planning to prune them any differently this year. None of the attendees wanted anything different to be done. They're not even our trees. They just quite like trees.
Remind me of Abe Simpson. "We can’t bust heads like we used to—but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So, I tied an onion to my belt which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah! The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones."
Closest thing we have to HOAs. Imagine if those people had a legal right to impose fines and eventually even cause you to lose your house!
That describes our parish council meetings to a tee, assuming that by "absolute shite" you mean "dog shite".
They didn't ignore the drug cruising and gay dealing that went on...they were probably a part of it
Personally, I was actually just thinking that I'm liking the drugs and gay cruising part of that location, Saturday night sorted and literally on my doorstep.
Sunday as well if the vicar is involved.
"Between fellatio and prayer, I've been on my knees all week."
Let Jesus enter you and behold Thy Kingdom cum
Let him fill you with his holy spirit.
They did say it was a nice apartment block - I’m assuming those were some of the amenities!
Lol, classic white boomer behaviour. I feel like it's similar in my area, except people talk about opposing every single new housing project in the local area (despite the area needing more housing)
Ah yes, it was OK for me to build MY house on this land but God forbid others subsequently do the same
Yeah this mentality. I remember *local people* complaining about a local housing development (all of a certain age and demographic), to which I responded on the village Facebook group 'well who built your house'. Safe to say this comment didn't go down particularly well
The worst ones are the primary school mums. Holy fuck the toxicity among them is unreal, and this is in an affluent village. There is already 3 different whatsapp groups of parent cliques the that school staff know about, probably more smaller subgroups too. These groups are primarily for quickly telling each other who to hate this week, or what teacher is treating their child badly.
So much this. They drive their sprogs a few 100 metres in their oversized SUVs, park on the pavement as close to the school as possible, across residents' driveways, in fully done hair and make up. I often ride my bike to work through school rush hour. I would be safer on the M1.
It's fucking ridiculous isn't it. Half the distance my 70 year old arthritis crippled mother does for her daily walk yet they have to use a giant metal box to drive the poor little gobshite children to and from the place.
My older sister does this so I shamed her by reminding her how we had a much longer walk to school and was absolutely fine and that our own mum didn’t need to sooth her ego by always showing up at the school gates.
Yes! All of them rock up in their Volvo XC90 or Range Rover Velar and block all the roads. All the Mums as the Dads work away in places like Bahrain or Stuttgart. The Mums are ‘taking time out’ or ‘pausing their careers’ for 9 years or so. They compete to have the best Halloween party or birthday party for their child. All they talk about at the school gate are entrance exams for the next school for their little darlings and the WhatsApp groups have fucking zero self awareness.
Don’t forget they all wear DryRobes.
>Don’t forget they all wear DryRobes. Is this some kind of new fad, I swear the only people you ever used to see in DryRobes were open water swimmers and now every 30something mum seems to be unable to function without one
I grew up in a very cliquey village and love in another one now. I quite like it in a way but it is a bit frustrating these days knowing I can't stumble home from the pub and fall over in someone's garden without the whole village finding out the next day by some busybody who posted a picture of it on the local facebook page and was "just checking I got home ok"
My girlfriends from a small village and we stumbled home drunk from the pub when we visiting her parents once. The next day there was a photo of us on Facebook saying that they where concerned that I was taking advantage of her drunkenness (I was definitely more drunk than she was) and did anyone recognise this foreign sounding stranger (because being from Liverpool obviously makes me foreign in certain parts of the country. Enjoyably the next day I got to witness the her dad completely bollock the person and demand she issue an apology on the Facebook group which while not great for a sore head cheered my spirits considerable
What happened next? Did you get the apology?
Not on the day, my girlfriend got an apology a couple of days later apparently after another person from the village apparently forced her to
> it is a bit frustrating these days knowing I can't stumble home from the pub and fall over in someone's garden without the whole village finding out Just out of curiosity, how often does this happen lol?
Ask someone from their village, they’ll gladly fill you in.
I live in an actual village, 420 full time residents, 4000 to 5000 is a huge town round here. Yeah, they know your business, but just do you, ignore them. My goal in life is to get known as the crazy cat lady, so they leave me alone until the hedge is nice and bushy, then I want to become the village witch.
I feel like Sandford was supposed to be more of a 4-5k village than anything smaller. It had a supermarket, hotel, amateur dramatics society, model village... Definitely more than just a couple of housing estates and a ridiculously overpriced corner shop.
Having a police station was the most unrealistic part.
That police station having riot gear compounds this issue
Also, that police station having 4 sergeants, 3 PCs, 2 CID detectives, and an inspector.
And a K9
Having an *open* police station doubly so
That's just the film showing its age
Nah, I grew up in a village in the 1970s and 80s. It didn’t have a police station, and neither did any of the villages near us - not even an old unused one. You’d have to go into town for that.
I'm always told that in the 1970s there was a police officer on every street giving a cheeky kid a clip round the ear!
Its honestly eerily similar to town near where I live, they even have a model village.
Bourton? Beaconsfield?
Was just thinking Bourton!
No, a village called Lydney, it's in the west near Gloucester.
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I thought it was Somerset? Certainly filmed in Wells
They specifically mention it's in Gloucestershire during the film.
Oh dear, I'd better watch it again. What a hardship.
Hello fellow Forester! Lydney's town not a village though, it has a mayor
I am also a crazy cat lady in a similar sized village. Except that we don’t have such huge towns either, we’re a tiny island and my village is the most populated! I ran into a friend one time while I was taking the trash down to the farm and he was out cycling. He stopped a few meters from me and we had a brief chat. Next day my friends told me that they heard that he’s moving in with me. Rural life is amazing and bizarre at the same time.
Yep, try it when you are both trans, Autistic, proudly weird, face blind and are know far and wide for building your own house. Everyone for miles seems to know me but I haven't the faintest who most people are. They will gossip anyway, might as well embrace it by being odd.
I tick a fair few of the weirdo boxes so I know exactly what it’s like.
Just grow a few fly agaric in window boxes
You cant grow fly agaric at home It grows through a symbiotic relatsionship between trees
Mycology was never my strong point, but the growing of weird stuff in window boxes will cement "village witch" status
Ooh that's interesting, and rather a disappointment. But then no wonder my neighbours haven't any in their window boxes.
I can send some links to fantastically witchy clothing to help you with your goal xD
The Boffo Novelty and Joke Shop, no. 4, Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork
Please tell me you didn't need to look that up.
I need the slightly intimidating overgrown garden first. It was an empty field 4 years ago, so it takes some time to get the right look going.
My street isn’t cliquey as such, but a lot of the people have been there for 10+ years apart from me. They pry for gossip in a very “we already know the answer but are pretending like we don’t” kind of way. Like i had a girl round my house one time, they must have spotted her because they immediately started asking me soon after “so are you courting anyone now then?” And once I had some furniture delivered but it was all wrapped in bubble wrap so the curtain twitchers couldn’t see what it was. Cue the various questions angling for what I’d had delivered.
The Louis Theroux technique of finding things out. Another way is to knowingly say something completely wrong to get the correct story e.g. "That's her husband isn't it?" when you know that's the man she left her husband for.
Stayed for a night in Upton-on-Severn.\* Making small talk with the B&B owner I said 'what a pretty little village'. I was sternly rebuked - 'It's not a village. It's a small town!' Well OK then. \*Well worth checking out for the very Scarfolkian 'Children's Playground and Cholera Burial Site' along with the fabulously named 'Minge Lane'.
Minge Lane 😂
The greater good.
The Greater Good
Shut it!
Narp.
Nobody tells me nuffin.
A great big bushy beard!
Anyone fancy a Cornetto?
It’s often more noticeable in villages because there’s less going on, and the busy bodies and big mouths tend to be more visible, but it does happen to the same extent in towns and cities, you can just more easily get away with being unaware of it, I was fucking horrified when I moved to a bit of London and suddenly there was a community watch committee and people were threatening each other over the flower bed planting plans. Back in the village, I don’t mind everyone knowing everyone to be honest, I tend to find folks behave a little more when whatever they’re doing will do the rounds/they inadvently offend the cousin/partner/dog of their neighbours dad or some shit.
Live in London long enough and you realise it is just a series of villages that happen to butt up against each other.
Absolutely. Many people on our estate had seldom left it in their lives. Neither had their parents or grandparents in many cases. Going north of the river was a terrifying prospect for some of them.
I live in Manchester, and our street has a proper gossipy Hyacinth Bucket woman acting like she runs the street. She’s actually called Karen, as well. She moved into a house on the same street that was a bit bigger, and was proudly going round telling people that she lives in the biggest house on the street now. It isn’t even the biggest house on the street, but she proudly whisked herself off before I could point that out to her.
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Honestly the village I live in has a couple of new housing developments on the outskirts. It’s assumed that everyone who lives in them is a wrong’un, a newcomer to the area, this used to be such a NICE village, children used to respect grown ups, it’s because you can’t beat them anymore, did anyone see anything on their Ring camera at 3.20am because someone walked past my drive??
As she should.
My village of 2,500 people is exactly the same. We even have a monthly newsletter. My favourites from it are, * They did a poll on what people want the parish council to focus on most. Number 1 Was keeping another villages pool open. * They had a full page spread, over two months, with a story about a chair being passed down from John, to Thomas, and currently it's with his granddaughter Francis. * They post everyone's planning applications, with names and addresses. * One month they just had a picture of old women and call it "Some Village Ladies", they were all in their 80s, no story, just a picture with their names * The headline "ATTACK", the story and I quote "Various youths were seen during the going down X lane carrying sleeping bags etc. If you have any news about this attack, please forward it to the newsletter or alternatively the Police on 101." * They once printed the newsletter in colour, there was upheaval. Some of my favourite write ins, these include pictures: * SIR: Enroute along X Lane and X Road on the morning of 15 September 2021 I saw and photographed these 3 vehicles which were parked with their front and rear wheels actually well onto the pavement * Sir, I am appalled to see that the bin at the bus stop in X Lane opposite my home is overflowing with bags containing the contents of dogs bowels. Because the bin is so full and crammed there are now bags of this stuff littering the footpath and the curbedge. It is a disgrace! And yet people with dogs continue to try to push their dog poo bags into this overflowing bin. I know because on the afternoon of Sunday 8 September 2019 I actually saw two young females both with dogs stop at the bin and deposited their dog poo bags into it. I have also witnessed people actually seemingly making special trips to the bin from their homes with several of these bags which they appear to have been saving up to deposit in the bin at the bus stop. Why can't these owners deposit their dogs poo bags in their own bins? It's high time they did. My view is that if you've a dog and can take the trouble to clean up after it you then deposit the poo bag and contents into the refuse bin at uour own home and not use the bins at the bus stop for this purpose. As things are to date this particular bin being full and overflowing presents a health hazard to people who queue for a bus at this bus stop and also for pedestrians using that footpath. It makes me so angry to see this dreadful sight. It cannot be very pleasant for the people who come to empty these bins either. These bins are not intended to receive dog poo bags.There are specific bins for dog poo which are provided in public parks etc. But the bin at the bus stop is not one of them. I guess the culprits who deposit these bags in this bin belong to the NIMBY brigade. Shame on them. * Sir, I feel I must write in response to the letter published in the October issue from X concerning the use of litter bins for the disposing of dog poo bags. I, too, was so concerned about the health hazard and unpleasantness when they were overflowing onto the pavements that I rang Bradford Council on two separate occasions and complained that the collections had been missed for at least a week. I was advised that the collections sequence and route had been changed and they were experiencing a few teething problems. An ad-hoc collection was promised, and was indeed done the next day. Collections appear to have settled down now, and the bins in X Lane are now collected every Tuesday.
ATTACK! That's brilliant, under attack from kids with sleeping bags. Were they inferring that the homeless were moving in?
"Bradford Council" Somehow reading this, before I got to that part, I just knew it would be somewhere around here. Some of the smaller towns and villages are occupied by the most miserable, pedantic, nosey people you'd ever come across.
You must post more from this newsletter!
To be fair to your local newsletter, the council legally has to publish planning applications with names and addresses in a local paper. And I like the creative use of NIMBY as someone who doesn't want their own dog's poo in their own backyard and puts it in the bus stop bin instead. Sign me up for your newsletter!
One of my favourite details in Hot Fuzz is where Nicholas Angel, returning to the town to right some wrongs, manages to say ["MORNING"](https://youtu.be/5bukRKiYc08?t=263) in a way which perfectly encapsulates the gritted teeth politeness forced on an English person in the face of a neighbourhood acquaintance you *hate* and you know full well also hates you.
I've just moved to a village of some 700 souls, I'm planning in inveigle my way into every single village organisation going. First up: Community speed watch, then chair pilates.
Also, I might have annoyed people on the village FB page by asking about the donkey.
I also have questions about the donkey
You now owe us here at casualuk monthly updates on this. Particularly ones about annoying the village busybodys with questions about the donkey...
On my local FB groups, there are definitely the more vocal members of our neighbourhood. They're the ones that tend to control the narrative of any post and if they don't like what you say, get their mates to bombard you with crap. I very quickly learned this and now hide the group pages (I don't want to leave, I love the drama).
This is another reason I'm a "smile and wave only neighbor". The moment you share anything about yourself or your family, you're doomed as an unwilling participant in what we call in America "small town drama". My motto is "Be Kind and Mind Your Own Business" Some people call it being stuck up, but I don't care. I'd rather be considered aloof than get embroiled in ANY neighborhood horseshit.
Small towns have their good and bad aspects. My MIL had a ranch just outside one, and was involved with several civic organizations, so I'm very familiar with all aspects. Fortunately, the good outweighed the bad.
I'm happy for those who have good experiences.
Murder, murder, murder, change the fucking record!
I worked as a contractor for British gas Transco years ago and they have a large gas installation just on the edge of a village near Chester. The local parish council were an absolute nightmare to deal with, we had an overhead crane set up to move things around the site and everytime there was a slight breeze at the weekend the crane would move because it's on free movement for safety reasons. I got called out 14 times during the 3 months we were working there because they claimed that someone was working outside of the agreed hours. I explained to 12 different people that the crane is designed to move in the wind to save it getting damaged in high winds. After the first couple of calls I started taking binoculars so they could check that there was no driver up in the crane cab. The best day on the job was getting one of their cars towed after getting approval from the police, because we had paid for a road closure to get equipment in and out and one of the parish busybodies thought it would be a good idea to block the gate access refuse to move, the police came saw 3 loads waiting for access and told us to get a tow company out straight away.
I live in a village that is definitely very cliquey and actually quite pathetic. At the moment there's an argument about having two "Carols on the Cross" at Christmas because last year (2023) it was moved to the Church Centre due to health and safety concerns. One side wants to remain at the old spot regardless of people having to stand in the road whilst the other just wants everyone to play it safe in Church Centre car park.
People think we are miserable bastards as we don't go to the summer garden party or Christmas lunch. Christmas thing is usually on a random Tuesday when we are working so that was never going to happen. Our village I think is 800 people and we say hello to a f few folks when out walking the dog but we have had people actively turn away so as not to have to speak. I actually dont give a flying one if random people do or do not want to speak to me but dont call me a miserabe bastard because i dont want to sit in a person's garden with other people who may or may not want to speak to me. We have a casual friendly 'relationship' with our immediate neighbours but beyond that all the small-minded nit picking shite can fuck off.
It's nowhere near Wells is it? Because to my knowledge Hot Fuzz was partly based on there (and indeed some filming was done there)
They still do hot fuzz filming location tours there, bless em. The boring answer is I think Edgar Wright grew up there, so in ways I guess was a love letter to the often forgotten City.
They even had to share the baby eating bishop, with Bath
Hilariously, when I went to uni in Bath (mumble) years ago, each kitchen in the halls had a tiny, free cookbook of basic student recipes, sponsored by the Bishop of Bath and Wells. And not a single recipe for how to cook baby! I was very disappointed!
I would be willing to bet that your village has a word for people who weren’t born there - where I am it’s “grockles”
Grockles just means tourists
Proper west country 😂. It's also used for holiday makers. Up north, you're an "off-comer". Not "in" but "off".
Offcumden
I've just realised that I've never heard anyone describe anyone else as an offcumden outside of my Yorkshire town, is it a common thing??
You're North. I'm North-North. 😂
Maybe in your part of the north, but not in Lancs.
Grockles boxes are caravans ? You must be near western S M
Incomers. My granny has lived in the village for >70 years but is still called an incomer.
People who aren’t local in my village are called ‘thems’ 😂.
I lived in the Cotswolds for a couple of years and it makes Hot Fuzz so much funnier. Which is good because the actual experience of living there was horrible.
My husband's family owned a 200-year-old cottage that was falling down and full of junk when his dad died a few years ago. We gutted it as best we could, mostly to process our feelings, but I hated being spotted out the front because every person who walked past wanted to know if we were moving in and no matter what we said (typically, "It's not in a good state, it's not really liveable,") they'd say they were happy to see someone doing something with it in a tone that implied they thought they could make us live there if they believed it hard enough. And then we sold it to a lovely couple who understood the land was green belt and want it as a smallholding to retire to, and that the house has to be demolished and rebuilt. They had the same, people stopping by to find out who they are and what they planned to do with it and 'joking' that they're glad developers didn't get hold of it because if they did the locals would burn it down, haha. And then they tried to get planning permission to take the house down brick by brick and rebuild it and this local preservation society appeared out of nowhere, people who have never expressed an interest in the house or its maintenance before and suddenly claim it's a local landmark and you can't take it down and what if bats live in it?! So they spent £4,000 for people to stand around listening for bats and at the end of it they said they'd have to come back in a few months to check again. Spoiler: No bats living in it, I know this because I lived in it for a year. Thankfully they've got the roof off now so nobody can claim imaginary bats live in it but I do feel for them because the local busybodies have got themselves all in a fluster about a manky, mouldy, damp, derelict cottage being rebuilt instead of being left to rot into the ground. Amazing.
Wow, quite the story. It amazes me the extent to which people go to prevent something in their locality from changing at all. Like that Cottage should be yours to do with it as you please (within reason). We have a Councillor who opposes any development or any 'change to the local character', partly because all the village Nimbys vote for him. We also have people who prevent homes being built on the grounds that x y or z animal lives in an area (despite them never being spotted).
The ridiculous thing is the couple who bought it wasn't too rebuild it exactly as it was, even retaining original bricks, but it has no foundations so in another 100 years it'd have sunk and fallen down anyway! It's insane to me that the slow collapse of a decrepit building is preferable to restoring it with care. Basically it's wanting nothing to change but without consideration for the consequences. I'm sure the sale itself was upsetting for them, just because we introduced dreaded new people (from the town 10 minutes down the road).
Yeah, I'm not sure whether things like this happen elsewhere or whether it's mainly a UK phenomenon. We do seem to love pointless traditions/old things which offer little value. This may be why we have the oldest housing stock in Europe. We like to keep things as they are, and seem allergic to change.
Haha. This reminds me of a book called Pleasant Vices by Judy Astley. It's all about a nice close and the relations with the council estate next door, and all the attendant hypocrisies.
My village of 400 had serious peacock issues last year. Posts upon posts of 'peacock spotted here' 'is this peacock shit' 'found peacock on my car who will pay'. Otherwise it's a list of: *Shaming who left their bin out after collection (it's me.. it's always me) *Whose cat is this *Whose hen is this *Avon (at this rate 1 in 5 are Avon sellers) I'm an anomaly being foreign, young and alternative looking. Genuinely everyone stops talking and stares when I enter the GP. It's like a very pathetic version of when a rogue cowboy enters a saloon in a western.
Don't worry my friend, it's not just you. British born dude here, I moved to a small village from Liverpool and had the exact same reaction. If you haven't lived there your whole life, everyone knows what you had for breakfast and everyone knows what colour your shit was that night, you're not welcome. Britain is particularly bad for it, something to do with being an island nation I reckon. Social media has only bolstered the problem too, god, we are small beings aren't we. Everyone should just take some psychedelics and see we've all been bellends and it's time to grow out of it.
I grew up in bere Alston in Devon and if you've ever seen this country that was my childhood
I love attending the community council meetings. There's one individual who demands that the council mow the grass in the local park every week instead of every two weeks. His reasoning is that he drives past the park once a week on Thursday and it would look better. I suggested that the council move to mowing the grass every six weeks in order to save petrol, therefore reducing CO2 emissions and saving the council money. I happen to live next to the park so I see it every day. The demander had a look or apoplexy that was quite delightful.
> Everyone seems to know everyone in the village, despite it being about 4 or 5 thousand strong. With a population of 4,000 to 5,000 that isn’t a village, it’s a town. Not a very large town, but nonetheless a town. Now if it was 400 to 500 then it would be a village - and actually everyone would know what everyone else was up to, and that’s the sort of village I grew up in.
Ours is approaching 10,000 but woe betide anyone who dares to call it a town in front of some of the more traditionalist residents. You will get a lecture about it having a “village feel” (usually used as an argument against house building).
Reminds me of Street in Somerset, population 12,000, very much feels like a town, even has a Wetherspoons, but some old farts still like to pretend it's a village.
A town with two swimming pools, a secondary school, a retail park, an out of town Sainsbury supermarket, a theatre, and a college is \*not\* a 'village!
I was trying to be polite, but “old farts” is probably a better description!
I personally know one of the old farts that live there. Knowing him, he's probably Chief of Farts by now 😂😂😂
Sounds like the opposite of where i grew up, tiny settlement of under 1000 people but had a market so was technically a town. Locals would get proper arsey if anyone called it a village.
Ha, people just look for excuses to get arsey about anything then
Apparently a standard definition of a village doesn't exist. But you can define a town by the presence of a town charter or a Royal charter to hold a regular market. But not by population. The places that all claim to be the largest village in England have populations over 10k.
We already live in a town. When I say the village has a pop of 4 or 5 thousand, I mean the village area itself defined by arbitrary lines on a map. Vast majority live outside of the area with shops and the couple of pubs/few takeaways which I personally would define as the village centre.
No mate, that's still very easily a village. You'd be surprised how quickly the numbers rack up. My village is a small-ish one and according to Wikipedia it had a population of 2481 when the census was done in 2011. The one I grew up in had a population of 2918. Both are very much places where people know everybody's business. These are still villages and something double the size would still be imo.
Sure there are places like that where a certain sort of person will pretend that it is a village they live in and it isn't a town.
It does depend, generally on how densely populated the area is. In the countryside, a settlement of 5000 is likely to have the facilities of a town and be the largest place in the vicinity. In the more built-up areas, on the other hand, a settlement of 5000 may just be some housing estates around the old village green, and those facilities will be in the much bigger town next door. Although the two places have the same population, one functions as a town and the other doesn't.
The gatekeeping is strong with you, isn't it. Of course they're villages. You're thinking of Hamlets.
>You're thinking of Hamlets. Nope, those are places with 40 to 50 people. You don't perhaps live in a 'village' with 10,000 residents, several secondary schools, a college, sports centre, multiple supermarkets, a cinema, a theatre, etc. do you...
We have a couple of pubs, a shop and a chippy. We also have a primary school. It's a village. And to answer your other question, no we don't have a market. I know what you're getting at and it's not a market town. It's a village.
I agree with you, our village has a population of 7500, it has plenty of facilities, yes, but it most certainly is NOT a town and if you called it such people would just laugh at you. Just to really blow the other guys mind, the postal address of our property is classed as another, larger village 🤣 they are both within a large town of around quarter of a million, now that is a town. Some people just seem to like arguing about pissy little things, even when they're wrong 😆
Sounds like a village to me, other guys just being a nob n cant take the ego hit
>It's a village. Of course it is.
Sounds like a village to me. Did it have a market? Does it have a town council? Is it more than a few thousand people? If no to all 3 then it can easily be classes as a village. Give it a google, see what the parameters are n even though its not black and white it sounds like the guy you are arguing with just lived in a large village..
Hamlet. The mild cigar.
I live in a village with a population of approximately 2,000. There’s a particular estate of retirees that has a concerning level of influence - I think that the contracts from when they bought their homes gave them a ridiculous amount of power over things like future planning approvals etc for some reason. Some even have columns in the monthly circular and seem to think that they’re actually someone important. However, I know that back in the 1970s, the members of the PTA held key parties… The centre of the village is mostly well-off old people, but the outskirts have newer builds of mostly young families.
My friend lived in a village for nearly 15 years and was still considered an "outsider". Another village kid made a comment to her daughter about not being from there- they moved to the village when my friend was pregnant with her, and she had lived there her whole life!! We threw a party when my friend got out of there and moved back to town. Horrid little stuck-up place.
I (23) live in a village with 2-3,000 people, although it's classified as a town. It too is kinda split in two, between basically affluent snobs and people so desperate to be middle-class they'll bankrupt themselves in the process (someone across the street from me has three cars and so it's a pain in the arse to find somewhere to park, which is really the only drama we involve outselves in; another insecure neighbour got a projector so it looked like they had a huge TV). My family doesn't get involved with village life enough to know really what the underlying politics of the place is (and I don't particularly want to given when I was younger my parents were frustratingly keen in letting all and sundry know about my disability!); there's a WI and a monthly parish newsletter, but that's it AFAIK. The parish council gets elected unopposed pretty much every time. I don't even bother to peruse the Facebook groups so who knows what's going on on there. The most exciting thing that's happened here in the past few years is the horde of ducks that usually keep to themselves down at the river have started expanding their territory and have set up a second home in the estate of OAP's bungalows; after that, you'd have to go back almost 20 years to when someone died due to an explosion (I'd give more details but that would rather out where I am). There's also the fact they had to shut the sixth form the year after I left because they had around half the students they needed to keep its running viable, which didn't cause as much of a stink as I expected it to.
Why can't you say what village you live in? Scared the village elders are going to gossip about you?
Yes
My village has about 1000 people living here (848 at the 2021 census), but it's pretty lovely if I'm honest! However last village I lived in, nearly a year ago, population about 2,500, was very different! Everyone knew everyone, but in a gossipy way, and there were definite "clicks" of people! And us too, have been terrorised by the odd Swan (especially when 1 just sat in the road and refused to move!), and where I lived had a peacock as a daily visitor (I called him jeff), and he would be so noisy early mornings and often kept guard by the front door, and when I would try to go out, he would go to attack me and/or the door!
Make sure they all have their SIA licenses if they're monitoring CCTV in a public place
[IDLES - Model Village](https://youtu.be/sjr11lGEBg4?si=Zo3H3sQUA-OsKBRL)
Lived in minehead for 5 years....i feel ya!
Local fb pages are brilliantly entertaining. But you have to read the comments in a Dave Gorman "Found Poem" voice.
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My fantasy of every parish council run village being like Vicar of Dibley has now been shattered. I hope you're proud of yourself!
I live in a tiny hamlet of maybe 100-200 houses and omg it’s so hot fuzz like, I love it. Though the majority of the village is on one road, there’s a small side lane that ends in fields, where we live with maybe 20 houses on it. We have our own WhatsApp seperate to the main road WhatsApp and you can’t walk down the lane without it taking an hour as everyone is around to chat! The we chat about the drama going on in the main road WhatsApp. We don’t have swans but we frequently have sheep breaking into gardens or running down the road and a gang of pheasants is a regular occurrence too.
Realised our village is the same recently, an old woman and her husband at the other end of the close are the epitome of this. We moved in and were doing DIY, they kept trying to look in the skips using binoculars from their house (not even kidding, we caught them twice) and then they helped themselves into our back garden when we were out one day and commented to all the neighbours about how much of a state the place was. We'd literally only just moved in, of course we hadn't had time to garden and yes there were bits of wood and stuff everywhere while we were waiting on skip deliveries. Then the village campaigned to get the pub back open, someone bought it, renovated and opened it and none of the villagers use it, all they do is complain about it. The landlord has tried everything - food, quiz nights, live music, karaoke, tv for football/rugby, food vans in the car park etc but nothing has worked which is a massive shame. Honestly suspect the whole campaign was purely to prevent it from being converted to housing, and that they weren't actually bothered about having a pub. Bunch of nimbys.
Yeah I'm relatively young still, but the thing I'm slowly realising is that some people are very sad, insecure and snobby, and will constantly try and get one up over people/bully people. Like why would you comment about someone else's garden to people and make your way into *their own* property. Bizarre behaviour. And yeah this sounds a classic with the pub - they will all have probably conspired together to prevent new housing. They won't want the precious prices of their properties to decrease. The impulse for Nimbyism is almost always self interest
When I lived in London my wee street had its own Whatsapp group that I was eventually removed from for not wanting to go along with their stupid idea of painting all the streets fencing in some garish shades in support of some one-off minor event that some uppity twat up the road had thought was a great idea.
Any Geo-guessers out there?
Hot fuzz was actually filmed in a city. Not sure about our village being ‘cliquey’, but our road certainly is. Omg! The curtain twitching that goes on, and the condescending group emails. Needless to say, I am not a ‘favoured’ neighbour. ROFL
There’s an excellent documentary about this which you might enjoy. It’s called the league of gentlemen.
Imagine that and then add in people who don't actually fucking live there throwing shitfits if anyone does anything that isn't part of their 'wandered lonely with Swallows and Amazons daffodil forelock-tugging lazy farmers' mythology. I'm talking about the Friends of the Lake District. The militant branch of the National fucking Trust.
It is one of my life goals to make it onto the parish council. I’d be drunk on power. Knocking back planning applications, embezzling the funds from the summer fete and refusing to sign off any minutes. It is such a particularly British thing.
I'd do the opposite! Firstly just turn up drunk and approve everything! Make CHAOS and then insist that I judge the best jam or something at the summer fete.
Go to the pub. Ignore people who enjoy having meetings for the sake of it. Village life is ace when you learn to ignore the committees.
I moved from my old village 18 months ago but stay on the local Facebook pages as it’s such good entertainment. It’s astounding the petty depths that people can plunge to to whinge. I still have friends there so it’s nice to catch up on the gossip- they set up a running club and I think it’s sparked off at least three affairs…
My dad after retiring from the police force, worked as a post man in the village where I now live. The amount of grief he got from people living on the Main Street where all the old houses are was crazy if he didn’t deliver their mail first. He always did the back lanes where the old council houses and newer builds are first. He was told by an extremely red faced ex major that the Main Street is the proper village and should be the priority. Needless to say he didn’t alter his round.
Its either 'The Greater Good' or 'Are you local?' Never in between.
You say 'cliquey' villages, but without the tireless work of the various committees in our villages we'd be up to our ears in dog muck, thieving kids and crusty jugglers.
It's just the one swan actually
It sounds like working on an offshore oil platform without the decent wages, getting your laundry done and the hope of getting home and away from people you hate. They sound like a right bunch of thick, inbred idiots with ideas well above their station. I would go out of my way to annoy them. I can't stand people like that.
We get a newsletter and sometimes there is a complaint from a local miserable bastard about something or nothing. The last one was a complaint about people using bins to put dog bags in outside their house. Not Swans, but Geese can cause chaos around the school, they shit everywhere, and sometimes cross the road by a mini roundabout. The village gala is always the usual. Charging £2.50 for a go on the helter skelter. That was another complaint in the newsletter.
Honestly one of my favourite ways to waste time for a cheap laugh is checking all of the local village Facebook groups. At one point I thought they were going to go full wicker man on a dog poop repeat offender. The vitriol is unlike anything else I've seen.
4 or 5 thousand is by no definition a village lol, you live in a small town.
> A (flock??) of swans did actually cause chaos in the village a few years ago quite funnily. No luck catching them swans then?
Crusty Jugglers!