I recently moved back from the English coast to London after three years.
Before that, but after Covid, we rented a barn conversion nestled along some ancient woodland. I couldn’t wait to leave the city behind for some bucolic countryside. It was so beautiful. Carpets of bluebells heralded our arrival. We awoke to birdsong and watched deer tiptoe through the trees, while horses, in the neighbouring field, ran with the breeze.
One of my favourite things to do was walk down the country lanes to the local farm who sold eggs at their gate with an honesty box for payment. We fell in love with the area.
Our initial three month contract rolled over for nearly a year until it was time to leave.
I can’t go back to London, I yelled at my husband. I need space, birdsong, trees.
I stomped over the hilltop like a three year old (one of my talents) while he reasoned with me.
I am never going back. Never!
We could go the sea, he said.
The tenants are moving out of my old flat. It needs a… tiny refurb but..
The sea, you say?
He’d caught me off guard.
I thought about it for a couple of seconds.
I love the sea!
Be prepared, the town isn’t quite what it seems, he said.
Don’t be silly. The town is on the up. Don’t we always say this town is is gonna pop?!
So off we went to the coast.
Does it need much work? I asked in the van on the way down.
The living room is huge, he replied.
My understanding of tiny refurb means one new rug and some cushion covers. This, I reasoned, would take no time at all. I planned to lie around on the beach, or in the HUGE front room, and contemplate my navel.
I also intended to eat delicious, fresh seafood straight off the boat. Mussels mostly.
In the small town near the barn conversion there was an enormous health food store and refill shop. The supermarket was good enough but I missed the availability of - I know this will sound bizarre - fresh food that we had in the city. Because I live in an area that is populated with weekend farmer’s markets and high-end food shops. I am very privileged. I am also that person who schleps miles for the perfect bottle of peppery olive oil, bitter Italian coffee or fresh curry leaves, even on a Friday when it’s raining, and I never go out on a Friday when it’s raining.
My husband’s version of tiny refurb took six months.
But I did love living by the sea. Twenty yards from our third floor apartment, lay the beach. On a clear day France would hove into view along with the tankers and cruise ships that fill the English Channel - the second busiest shipping lane in the world. I watched them from our not-as-huge-as-my-husband-made-out, front room windows.
I’m never moving from the sea, I said.
I posted reels from the beach and ocean shots. It’s like living in the Mediterranean. I told anyone who’d listen, mostly strangers I met on walks. Who needs a navel when you live by the sea! I kept that one to myself.
Slowly as the seasons passed and we felt, well, local, the cracks began to appear. The rubbish left on the beach which we tried to clear. The 3am arguments in the car park after a Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you get the picture, night. The rat population in the nearby park. So many that when the park keepers were cutting back the bushes one disturbed a nest and several rats ran up the keeper’s trousers. I couldn’t go into the park for weeks. And why didn’t anyone look after the dying palm trees along our street?
Reliable sustainable infrastructure that works makes people feel better and life easier.
My original narrative - this town is gonna pop became this town kinda stutters, never quite seems to get going.
I did warn you, said my husband.
You did indeed, I replied.
But my biggest bug bear by far was the food. Or the lack of decent food. The seafood (which was minimal) went to London. Not a mussel in sight.
There were no food shops in town. None! Not even on the cutesy high street. Crying, I said, crying out for a green-grocer. I said this to anyone who would listen mostly to other shop owners. We were living in the county called the Garden Of England ffs.
Where was the affordable, nourishing (we grow carrots in this country) food?
I’ll spare you my rant about the food industry apart from:
Make fresh food affordable (especially when grown within a 25 mile radius)
Pay the growers properly.
Of course there’s a place for supermarkets, absolutely but stop pretending to sell food that isn’t food and trade profit for sustainable change.
From someone who spent years not eating, or bingeing and then throwing up or limiting food groups in extreme or punishing exercise regimes to burn the food I hadn’t eaten - I am, it turns out, a lover of food. Who knew?
I spent those three years buying veg from the delivery box scheme and lugging bags from our local shop in London back down on the train.
So much wasted opportunity in that town.
Well… not for everyone, not for the crack gang who ensconced themselves in the flat below us to work 24/7 on behalf of their local community. I have to say that helped us move out fast. Once we’d helped get rid of them.
But what I really came back to the city for is THE FOOD.
But then my husband left me…