In the Middle of Nowhere
When people ask “Where do you live?” I reply “Fifteen minutes drive north of Parthenay, in the middle of nowhere”. A hamlet, made up of four properties (only three of which are inhabited). If we run out of milk it's a ten minute drive to the nearest shop, which is usually shut. We used to live on a busy main road in the UK. Our windows would often rattle as a high performance vehicle cruised by with bass bins turned up to eleven; beer cans would litter the front garden; our wing mirrors were regularly kicked off and once, some charmer, took the coping stone from our gate post and dropped it on the bonnet of our car. Now, living in the middle of nowhere we occasionally see an old woman walking her old dog, a lost cyclist or an escaped cow. Annually, a farmer will sever our telephone cable with his hedge cutting machine. This year the telephone company told us they couldn't reconnect us for a week. This coincided with an electricity cut for twenty four hours. Now, I'm all ...