Today I’ve been blogging for twelve years - and like last year I’m not sure where the time has gone, though I’m grateful to you for being here, and for being part of my online space and community.

Usually as part of my blog birthday tradition I indulge my other passion - and that’s for a list. This year though it’s taken me a fair while to work out what that list should be, and I guess as the number gets higher that’s always likely to be the case!

Looking back over the years and those three cupcakes to celebrate my third year was looking very promising, but even for me twelve cakes is a lot - so it needed to be something else…

Last year I looked at what had changed for me since I started blogging, this year I’m going to try to capture the differences between city and country life - and trust me, I don’t have a list of twelve as I start to write this post - so once again it could be interesting!

But here goes:

Mud. There’s a lot of it here, and obviously way more than in London. I’m not a huge fan of mud, especially walking - or slipping - across it, but walking boots definitely help, which leads onto…
The countryside is on our doorstep. Sometimes quite literally. But we can walk for less than 10 minutes in any direction and be surrounded by fields, that’s a big plus and vastly different from before where even if we drove for 10 minutes we wouldn’t have reached much countryside - though there are clearly pockets of green and wooded areas in and on the outskirts of London
Transport. We still live on a bus route, as we did in London - in fact there are three different routes which pass us here, rather than the two previously. It’s just they’re much less frequent, one route only runs four times a day and the other two twice an hour - but within minutes of each other both times, so if we’re using the bus it takes planning.
Greengrocers. Now this is an odd one, there are no greengrocer shops in Newark. Yes, there’s plenty of farm shops around, but the nearest actual greengrocers is either eight or eleven miles away, depending if you’re heading towards Bingham or Bottesford. There are generally more markets though, and the best veg I’ve found is from (what I call) the muddy veg stall in Newark, but they’re only there on a Friday and Saturday. Their veg though is fresh and has that feeling that it’s just been picked (most likely because it probably has) but often it’s still covered in mud.
Takeaways. Our takeaway consumption has dramatically lowered. We had fish and chips last week for Valentines, and before that our last takeaway was fish and chips in September. We’ve had a takeaway Chinese and Indian but I think they were probably before that. There are plenty of options in Newark and around, and we were clearly spoilt before just being able to walk around the corner to pick one up, having to get the car out and drive the four or so miles doesn’t happen that often.
Milk. This also takes more planning - I now buy two four pints of milk regularly, rather than just picking some up when we needed some. Our local farm shop only sells milk in glass bottles, which takes a level of planning which I just don’t have or aspire too. I also have an ‘emergency’ two pints of milk in the freezer, something that I wouldn’t even have considered whilst living around the corner from an M&S Simply Food.
Farmers & Tractors. Not unsurprisingly we see a lot more of these in our rural village, though I suspect if you’ve been in Westminster lately you’ll have seen a fair few more than usual too. Being a Londoner I don’t think I ever realised how much work farmers put in, but here we see just part of that first hand as they make multiple journeys a day past our house, almost always with a friendly wave for anyone they see as they do.
Washing vegetables. Yes I know you’re supposed to wash all the veg, even the ones that come in those sterile gas-filled bags from the supermarkets, but I rarely did as a rule. Now though, buying as much of our veg from farm shops and markets I routinely wash more of our veg, apart from MOH is called in to scrub some of the more muddier veg!
Eating out past 8:30pm. It’s not all bad, far from it, as there are plenty of fab places to eat but we have readjusted the times we book tables for. They’re mostly timed to coincide with the time the bus arrives, and are often much earlier than we would even consider booking for in London. We’re off to London this week and are heading out to dinner before our almost last train home - and we’ve booked that for 6pm too, so we have enough time to have a relaxed meal, and not have to dash to Kings Cross for the train.
Living in a 30mph zone. On the face of it this hasn’t changed, but in London there was so much traffic that it could rarely reach the speed limit, whereas here there’s so few traffic that it’s rare (but not completely unheard of) for traffic to bother to slow down to actually 30mph from the 60mph zones which buffer the village. Sometimes there’s an effort, sometimes a car does and a trail of four or so cars follow, but often some just don’t even bother.
Exterior house lights. Country people are obsessed with lighting up their houses, and I’m not sure why. We have lights on the front and back of ours, and they’re handy to have, but they don’t go on every night. Maybe I’m missing something?
People talk to you. Now this probably should have been higher up the list, and probably isn’t a surprise. In London people rarely talk to you, unless perhaps you might have passed each other on the street for say six months or a year, and never on public transport. Here though, that’s not the case. The first time we got the bus to Nottingham - it was a mini bus at the time, since upgraded to a single decker - it was like the whole bus was part of the conversation. And many of them had watched as our house was built, seeing progress as they whizzed past on their twice daily journey and were pleased to have met the new owners, reassuring us that the house had been well built. I’m getting more used to it, but occasionally do have to remind people that I’m from London and so not used to all this chat, and they often sympathise with me!

Actually the list came together more easily than I expected, though it was helped by a brief pause while I headed out to Zumba, which relates to another one that could have made the list - the number of village halls - but didn’t. I’ve been to many of the village halls local to me for various activities and classes, but I don’t think I ever went into a church hall back in Blackheath, or if I did not regularly.

So life is different, but not in a bad way at all.

Here’s to another year, I hope you’ll stay around.