major_clanger requested: Moving to the West Midlands. What's it like becoming a (near) Brummie? How do you find Birmingham/Worcestershire?
We’ve been here (rural Worcestershire) for slightly over a year. Since I don’t commute to London every day like I did when we were living in Cambridge, I’ve actually had a chance to get to know the area and our neighbours. In fact, this is an especially timely post because we had supper at a neighbour’s last night.
We live in a hamlet. Our postcode encompasses half a dozen houses and a pub. Nothing else. Our nearest village is about a mile away and the nearest town about two miles away. The University of Birmingham, where the bloke works, is over ten miles away. London is a hundred miles away. It is the most rural place I’ve ever lived. If I didn’t go to London for two days a week, I think I’d feel a lot more lost and isolated than I do.
The area we live in is stunning for its natural beauty and bedded-in cultivated areas, which feel like they’ve been the same for centuries. We’re in a cottage next to the Worcester to Birmingham canal. Pastoral and picturesque are the words that spring to mind when I look out over the fields surrounding us - in fact, it can sometimes seem slightly unreal, as if someone had painted the scenery on the windows.
There’s a split between our neighbours, as far as I can tell. I don’t believe it’s a deliberate schism, but the three sets of people we’ve gotten to know are not originally from here. Even the couple that could be called the king and queen of the village (in whose house we ate a roast dinner last night) moved to the area forty years ago and don’t have Brummie accents. Our immediate neighbours are a fabulous elderly woman whom I adore, a Londoner by birth and by choice until she retired and came to settle in her husband’s cottage, and one of her sons. The young couple over the road are from southern England and Iran. They have two sweet children and we don’t see them often enough. Though all of us have good intentions, they too work full time.
We have met the neighbours who were born and bred here, but we don’t know them very well. They have their own community, in which the older non-locals participate to a certain extent because they’ve been here for decades. I don’t think we’d be unwelcome in it, although I’m sure we’d have to try hard to be accepted and neither of us can put the necessary effort into it since we both work full-time (and not locally).
Because the neighbours we know and the friends we made through NCT (National Childbirth Trust) class are not originally Brummies, I don’t feel like I’ve got a deep understanding of the local culture. I know it seems quite different from London. It’s friendlier, but also flashier. When we go to the pub, I don’t think I can get away with jeans/boots/jumper like I do in London, or at least if I am going to be dressed relatively casually, I need to fix my hair and put on make-up. They make a real effort to look their best when they’re out, even just to put out the bins or post a letter. The decor of public spaces and house interiors also tends to be loud and/or blingy. The bloke’s taste is even more conservative than mine, so both of us found this a bit of a shock. I like it though - because they’re so good-humoured in general, it feels welcoming rather than off-putting.
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I know what you mean about how pretty it can be; however convenient it is living 5 minutes by bus from Birmingham city centre we do like the idea of a nicer view than some old factories. But yes, I can see how you can go to the other extreme and end up feeling very remote and isolated.
Interesting observation about dressing up to go out; I wonder if it's the effect of being in a small community where you (even subconsciously) feel that everyone who sees you will be someone who knows you rather than a stranger?
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I'm not sure why rural villages should be worse affected though; perhaps it's some sort of collective madness, like tulip speculation.
*She has a touching and very optimistic idea of what barristers earn.
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I think (from experience of living in London and in various bits of the North) that these are related. In London, you're invisible unless observed by somebody you actually know - so you can wear whatever you like and look however you like. In the Midlands and the North, you're visible to strangers, so how you look is more likely to matter.
Does that make sense?
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My theory is that it's not as imaginary as that: where there are fewer people, they can notice each other whether they're strangers or not, whereas in London people ignore each other because noticing everybody would be information overload.
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