The village clock...

I live in a small village in North Wales not far from the sea. It's beautiful around here and full of nature. My nearest beach is a little over a mile away and I can get to dozens of other beaches within 10 to 30 minutes in the car. It's a wild place, remote and not very sophisticated despite how the pubs and restaurants try to be trendy. There are no Chineses takeaways within 12 miles, cashpoints are few and far between, these days the phone signals are better but that's a recent thing and there's still a lot of blank spots and when the wind blows...

It's a wonderfully quiet life. We have standing stones, 6th-century churches, hillforts, extinct volcanoes, winding hidden lanes, and breathtaking views. All in all, I can live without takeaways, cashpoints and the harried hustle of the towns and cities, life is generally safer and slower and calmer here. It suits me.

Of course, the isolation and open-air environment is a godsend in these days of the Coronavirus. We don't have to go out or see anybody, and a walk up and down the garden path is exercise enough for me. I used to laugh about how some of the villagers thought that Manchester was a world away and how foreign travel was a scary idea that other people did. It turns out that it was true, it is very scary these days and I for one am staying put, besides I can go anywhere I want on the internet.

My Grandad, who was a Lincolnshire blacksmith, never went further than Scotland. His father, another Lincolnshire blacksmith, never left Lincolnshire (at least to my knowledge). Being local isn't new. Only a little more than 100 years ago each village had its own time, based on the church clock, and everybody set their pocket watches by it if they were fortunate enough to have one. Dialects changed from one village to the next, and after three villages it was a completely different language. 

I remember listening to my great grandfather speak and it sounded like Double Dutch (which it was, his parents had come across from Holland). What a different way of life. Insular, based in an area just a few miles square, simple and yet so complicated (you knew everyone and everyone's business and everyone knew yours) even a bad cold was a major event and a talking point for all (a bit like today really).

So here we are in lock-down. We are each living in our own little worlds and the big world is unattainable, no planes to jump on, and even going to the shops is both a risk and a monitored event, our business is known. Everyone is living in a village and I don't mean a global one, in fact, most of us are living in isolation in that village, small units wary of others. It makes me wonder if we aren't back to being cavemen, living our lives around the safety of the fire and fearing the dark and others.

Personally, I'm adapting quite well, no more than that, I'm enjoying the isolation, the physical distancing. Mind you I am not by nature gregarious or touchy-feely, and we are all in touch (although not touching as that could kill you) through television, radio, we can even interact with our friends through social media and electronic messaging or via our mobile phones. We don't have to send a letter or ride our horse to the next village to deliver a message. We are alone, but still in touch. It's an odd sort of life in this virtual village. It's not geographical, we don't rely on the church clock for the passing of time, and we know more about what is happening in the wider world than we do about our neighbours who are gathered around their own fires in their caves.

Anyway, my best advice is to enjoy it, learn from it, become more responsible, self-reliant, accept the situation. We have gone from being in control to having less (yet in some ways more) control of our own lives. It's all excitingly risky and we are all living on the edge of the past. 

Was that the church clock chiming?