Country Boy

I've never been a huge fan of the hot summers. I've always preferred the winter. I love snuggling up under a duvet on a cold night, listening to the wind and rain outside whilst I watch a good horror film, there's just something not as satisfying about doing it during the hot summer, and this summer has indeed been a hot one, far to hot for my liking, and now we're about to hit another heat wave, with most of the country being on an amber weather alert for heat. 

The constant heat has been a nightmare at times and I've been having several cold showers a day just to feel vaguely human. This heat has had a knock on effect for a lot of people I know in the area. Lincolnshire was and always will be a farming county, it's vast size dominated by acres of fields, containing all sorts of crops and animals and it's been hard work, crops have failed for the majority of farmers this year due to the lack of rain. It gets me a little annoyed when the news goes on about rich farmers and how wealthy they all are, they don't see the effects these sorts of things have on not only them but society in general. If crops fail then prices have to go up to cover the imports costs of things, it's simple economics really isn't it? The problem is that the majority of people in this country has never really experienced real rural life before.

I remember trying to tell people at university what it was like where I grew up, a small village called Langrick (or Langriville depending on how posh you considered yourself) they didn't believe me when I told them that my house had fields all around it and we only had two buses go through every day, that the nearest shop was a mile and a half away. They were so used to having everything on there doorsteps, with access to local amenities a given. When I told them about having cows in the field next to me and how they kept me awake, or the local piggery, which was about half a mile away from my house and on a good day you could hear the pigs oinking away.

They couldn't grasp the concept of rural life, it got even weirder for them when I told them about the size of my primary school. When I left the amazing Gipsey Bridge school had a grand total of 92 students. That's not my year, that was the entire school, my year consisted of eight students, Lucy, Carly, Graham, David, Luke, Shaun, George and myself. It got even weirder when I tried to explain the concept of the 11+ to them. Which I do believe Lincolnshire is one of the rare counties still to do this process. The simplest explanation is back then they made us sit three exams on consecutive Monday mornings and if you scored over 330 point combined you got to go to the local Grammar schools and if you didn't you went to the local comprehensive. What really blew there mind was when I told them I passed and went to the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Horncastle, or QEGS for short. Which was only a short 20 or so miles from my house and I had to be on the bus at 7.30am every morning, which gave me plenty of time to do homework on the bus, that's my excuse for why my writing was so messy!

It wasn't just school life that surprised them, even simple things like a cinema. Boston for years only had a one screen cinema at not so aptly named Regal cinema, which randomly got changed into a nightclub called Flame which ended up burning down in suspicious circumstances.....it's like something from a soap isn't it? It's a little bit better these days with a nice five screen one, that I frequent on a regular basis but it's nothing like other parts of the country with midnight screenings. I used to tell them of the markets we had, twice a week and how packed they were with fresh local produce and how each one was an event in itself, it pains me a little to walk through the market place these days and see maybe 20 stalls when there used to be a hundred plus. I told them of how within a ten minute drive you could be miles from another human being, alone with just your thoughts to keep you company. It also blew there mind a little bit to tell them how close to the coast Boston was, and how at one point in time it was one of the biggest ports in the country and a valuable link to mainland Europe. From where I currently am sitting and writing this I am about 4 miles as the crow flies from being out in the North Sea, something which even I forget about sometimes.

I've done a lot of walking throughout the countryside in the past couple of years, re-discovering what a beautiful place it is, how it changes appearances with the seasons. I've come to appreciate the special way of life that is around here, yes it's changing, is it for the better, I'm not sure. The small local communities that this country thrived upon in decades gone by have long gone, that's for sure. The advent of the internet was a big change, well known local stores suddenly stopped seeing the customers and without them they went the way of the dodo. I hold my hands up here and can say I'm not blameless, over the years I buy a lot more stuff on the internet, unlike my cousin, Callum who only uses local businesses and refuses to buy anything off the internet. Some of the 'Shire folk were sitting around talking the other day about shops that defined our childhood, Beatties, Tandy, Woolworths, The Regal, all long gone and sadly missed, would they have survived in this day and age, probably not, but when I was 10 years old and being let loose in Woolies with £20 in my pocket was heaven at the time.

I've always been proud of my adopted homeland and still say it's a beautiful area of the world to live in, has it got it's faults, of course it does but it'll always be where I call home.