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Published: October 5th 2014
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England. It’s like putting on a pair of slippers, a favourite jumper and an old pair of track pants which are too comfy to throw out although the elastic’s gone. It just feels cosy, sensible and easy to live in. I must add we had really good weather this time with only one day of showers - not counting a bit of expected and acceptable mistle in Scotland.
Such a shame I could never come back here to live – I still have my British passport but we simply couldn’t afford to. There are many places I’d love to live, like the little village in Norfolk we stayed in for a few days on the way back from Scotland. It was unromantically called Trunch… not Winterton-next-the-Sea, where we saw seals close to shore and found a nice café right on the beach after trying to get lunch in the hell-hole that is Great Yarmouth.
Not Swanton Abbot or Little Piddling but Trunch, probably Norse in derivation as this whole part of England was controlled by the Danes around the 10
th century.
However it was still a cute little village with a lovely
church, village store, pub and… well, mot much more really.
We like staying in these little villages that provide the necessities of life (i.e. a pub) but are quiet and peaceful while giving us a hub to do day trips in a spoke-like fashion.
Why were we in Norfolk? Why not? It’s not exactly on the main tourist trail and gets a bad rap from the rest of England for being flat, agricultural and boring. But it has an interesting coastline, the man-made waterways of the Norfolk Broads and it was the only county in England we haven’t been to.
Mainly we needed a stop on the way down from Scotland that wasn’t too far to drive to London where we were dropping off the hire car before saying goodbye to Moya and Jackson (sniff).
We’d taken them on a road trip up to Scotland to stay at Loch Ness (Moya’s choice) not to look for monsters but to experience the grandeur of the Highlands and see the largest and most famous body of water in the United Kingdom. What we hadn’t planned but was an excellent bonus,
was to be in Scotland during the referendum on whether or not to stay United.
We’d cast our special vote at New Zealand House in London a few days earlier, so it was a political week. Soon after crossing the Scottish border the campaign signs started – huge white and blue YES or No’s in fields, on buildings, in windows or even mown into lawns. In Edinburgh for two days on the way up the streets were buzzing with campaigners, people sporting Aye or No buttons, it was all over the news, Westminster politicians were panicking and offering the Scots all sorts of things; more money, more power, less taxes, less mocking of their accents and eating habits.
The outpouring of fear of the impending breakup of the last vestiges of the British Empire, thinly disguised as love for their Scottish brothers and a desire to remain ‘one family’ was quite unseemly compared to the noble desire of the Scottish for self-determination and fairness.
The fact that 87% of the population voted on the day illustrated their level of thought and commitment on the issue. In our little Antipodean enclave in
a beautifully converted apartment in an 18
th C Abbey on the shores of Loch Ness we were undecided - although the 20-something’s were inspired by the Braveheart nature of it all and wanted a Yes result.
Some of the later polls made it too close to call, which did get the level of anticipation up, but in the end the prudent Scots went with their heads rather than their hearts – a vote to stay living at home for now and put up with having to help with the dishes and come home early in return for the protection of a bigger next door neighbour.
Or maybe they just couldn’t bear the thought of years of bureaucracy that would come with the change…or the independently minded Scots realised they’d still be controlled by politicians no matter which way they voted, so better the devil you know.
Now the question is whether or not David Cameron, Gordon Brown et al will keep their words…more likely…how extensively they will break them.
We’d met up with Moya and Jackson in Copenhagen before staying at their flat in fashionable Clapham, reacquainting ourselves
with the best city in the universe and being taken to wonderful restaurants including a slap-up birthday lunch (thank you London Media Maven Moya).
Denmark wasn’t initially on the travel itinerary but in an attempt to reduce the frightening cost of airfares we’d booked to fly from Athens with Scandinavian Airlines – hence the stop-over in Copenhagen. And indeed it was Wonderful, Wonderful.
Moya had booked us a flat in the uber-trendy ‘meat packing’ district, close to the centre of town where the previous carnivorous businesses have made way for organic vegan cafes, packing-case furniture pizza restaurants and Thai takeaways.
Hipster doesn’t even begin to describe the coolness of Copenhagians. They swoosh past on their retro bicycles at breakneck speed – far more dangerous than the larger, more visible vehicular traffic, especially as the transition from footpath to cycle lane is not always obvious and the cyclists are generally cloaked in a variety of organic vegan clothing of fashionably neutral colours.
I particularly admired the women of a certain age (i.e. mine) who elegantly mounted and dismounted their carbon fibre steeds without ruffling a hair of their sophisticated
grey bobs or needing to hitch up their full length cashmere coats.
Cycling was just what everybody did and the city was quieter, cleaner and stylishly modern for it. We popped over to Sweden for the day, mainly because Rhys wanted to go over the 12km long Oresund Bridge, the longest road/rail bridge in Europe joining Copenhagen to Malmo. And of course just to say we’d been there. If anything it was even more pleasant, chic and urbane…and slightly cheaper because of the Swedish euro exchange rate. Cheap is one thing Copenhagen is not.
So we have two Scandinavian countries we can tick off our list and a few visual clues for Rhys when he’s reading his Swedish crime novels. No Swedish stamp on the passport though, whereas Moya and Jackson needed their passports to fly back to London from Scotland. The vote should have been yes – it’s a separate country in language, customs and attitude, they’re just kept in the Union for the sake of pride, taxation, golf and Wimbledon champions.
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Such names!
I love those Brit names--Trunch, Little Piddling--really! And they make fun of Scottish accents and food (too bad about the vote)! But what a lovely holiday--windmills and canals, staying in an abbey on Loch Ness--it really doesn't get much more romantic than that, and all those organic vegans in Copenhagen. And too bad you/we can't live in England--there's so much to love, though the prices sent me tee-toteling when I was there. Glad you were able to sample the beer!