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Creepy Small Villages

My village is tiny. Really really small, more of a hamlet. But some nights when I get home from work I STILL have to park several hundred yards away from my house! I live in a row of four small cottages, and I and my next door neighbour are single, but on either end are two couples, who both have cars. One member of one couple drives a work van (the other car is an SUV), and the ones at the other end have just bought the most BLOODY ENORMOUS 4WD thing, that's so long it's like a minibus.

I don't mind parking up the road, but I do admit to a teeny bit of satisfaction if I can beat someone home and get to park right outside.

Yes, I know it's not creepy. But it can be bloody terrifying doing the walk from the car to the cottage in a place with no streetlights and something moving in the graveyard...
 
NomDeGuerre said:
Went for a walk on Saturday and ended up in the (fantastically named) Norton-juxta-Twycross.

It's just down the road from me so I don't find it creepy as such, but it's one of those villages where you never seem to see anybody out and about - no joggers, dog walkers or weekend gardeners. I don't think the feel of the place is much helped by an enormous church which seems to dominate half the village.
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You should drive through an American subdivision some evening after 7 pm. No one around, houses all dark. Looks completely abandoned!
 
NomDeGuerre said:
Went for a walk on Saturday and ended up in the (fantastically named) Norton-juxta-Twycross.

It's just down the road from me so I don't find it creepy as such, but it's one of those villages where you never seem to see anybody out and about - no joggers, dog walkers or weekend gardeners. I don't think the feel of the place is much helped by an enormous church which seems to dominate half the village.
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Used to drink in the now extinct pub there for many years (The Moores Arms) one of the best locals I have ever come across (I lived at the nearby Twycross Zoo at the time) and I think that the reason Norton-Juxta-Twycross is now dead (as with several local villages) is the loss of the pub which was very much its social centre.
 
catseye said:
My village is tiny. Really really small, more of a hamlet. But some nights when I get home from work I STILL have to park several hundred yards away from my house! I live in a row of four small cottages, and I and my next door neighbour are single, but on either end are two couples, who both have cars. One member of one couple drives a work van (the other car is an SUV), and the ones at the other end have just bought the most BLOODY ENORMOUS 4WD thing, that's so long it's like a minibus.

I don't mind parking up the road, but I do admit to a teeny bit of satisfaction if I can beat someone home and get to park right outside.

Yes, I know it's not creepy. But it can be bloody terrifying doing the walk from the car to the cottage in a place with no streetlights and something moving in the graveyard...
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heh, I've got another "you should drive through an average American subdivision"....the one my parents live in, a lot of the families have older kids and of course, all the kids have their own cars, so some families have 5, 6, 7 cars in their household and all of the houses have 3 car garages.

By now, you Englishers are imagining great big American driveways and giant garages filled with cars, right? OH HO HO NOT SO FAST. Garages hold all of the crap they can't fit in the house, and the driveway must be kept clear at all times for....reasons (I have no idea why) so all of their cars are lined up on the street.

Repeat 350 more times and you have The Great American Subdivision. I find it hilarious and apocalyptic at the same time.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
I'm not entirely sure, mind, but I believe most are in their basement rec rooms watching TV, although I'm sure quite a few are so boring they just sit in the dark in the living room.
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I wondered if the answer was that strangers would be noticed and possibly treated to some ventilation.
 
escargot said:
I wondered if the answer was that strangers would be noticed and possibly treated to some ventilation.
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It's funny you say that...in American subdivisions - at least the ones I've been to - everyone's a stranger. People move every 2 or 3 years and while you might have a neighbor or 2 you wave hello to, that's about all. I could go on and on about the intricacies of suburban America but frankly, I'm at a loss to understand it. Little people in little boxes 5 feet apart, street after street, mile after mile. Weird.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
heh, I've got another "you should drive through an average American subdivision"....the one my parents live in, a lot of the families have older kids and of course, all the kids have their own cars, so some families have 5, 6, 7 cars in their household and all of the houses have 3 car garages.

By now, you Englishers are imagining great big American driveways and giant garages filled with cars, right? OH HO HO NOT SO FAST. Garages hold all of the crap they can't fit in the house, and the driveway must be kept clear at all times for....reasons (I have no idea why) so all of their cars are lined up on the street.
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They're often like this here nowadays;
 

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Floyd said:
They're often like this here nowadays;
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I think that arrangement is really dangerous. Eldest son's house is somewhat bigger but the kitchen adjoins the back wall of the garage and he often complained about the exhaust fumes in the kitchen (his monstrous car would pollute the planet all by itself). This despite his old feller telling him on every occasion to drive the car in rather than reversing. He eventually got the message, but it took much lecturing and eye rolling.
 
PeteS said:
I think that arrangement is really dangerous. Eldest son's house is somewhat bigger but the kitchen adjoins the back wall of the garage and he often complained about the exhaust fumes in the kitchen (his monstrous car would pollute the planet all by itself). This despite his old feller telling him on every occasion to drive the car in rather than reversing. He eventually got the message, but it took much lecturing and eye rolling.
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What gets me as Aydee has pointed out, is the amount of superfluous crap that people keep in them.
I looked in one the other day and there was more stuff in there than I have ever owned in my life.

I don't mind if someone has turned it into a workshop or has bikes/mowers/children's toys etc neatly stored, but when it's just rammed so full that they can't get to anything easily, they can't be using much/most of it.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
heh, I've got another "you should drive through an average American subdivision"....the one my parents live in, a lot of the families have older kids and of course, all the kids have their own cars, so some families have 5, 6, 7 cars in their household and all of the houses have 3 car garages.

By now, you Englishers are imagining great big American driveways and giant garages filled with cars, right? OH HO HO NOT SO FAST. Garages hold all of the crap they can't fit in the house, and the driveway must be kept clear at all times for....reasons (I have no idea why) so all of their cars are lined up on the street.

Repeat 350 more times and you have The Great American Subdivision. I find it hilarious and apocalyptic at the same time.
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I'll say one thing that they should bring in here that you guys have- enforced removal of vehicles once every two weeks, or even once a month, for street cleaning.

The amount of leaves/mud/litter that collect between cars' wheels and the kerb that never gets cleaned up because the roadsweeper can't get in is an eyesore.

It's amazing how much better an area looks when the road next to the kerb has been cleaned.
 
escargot said:
Why is that?
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Around 6 years ago my wife and I drove from Maine, through New Hampshire and into Vermont. One afternoon, we drove through the most picturesque village in New Hampshire (name now forgotten), still light, houses immaculate, flags flying from each one, cars parked in driveways, lawns mowed...
But not a single person to be seen. It was as though we were driving through a movie set. Weird and at the same time slightly unsettling.
 
Lord Lucan said:
Around 6 years ago my wife and I drove from Maine, through New Hampshire and into Vermont. One afternoon, we drove through the most picturesque village in New Hampshire (name now forgotten), still light, houses immaculate, flags flying from each one, cars parked in driveways, lawns mowed...
But not a single person to be seen. It was as though we were driving through a movie set. Weird and at the same time slightly unsettling.
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Yup, exactly! It's like Life after People!
 
escargot said:
British villages can be like this in the daytime where there are no paths to walk on as the roads are dangerous.
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Also very common in the US. A few years ago, in a bid to save money, the school districts in my city changed busing rules to exclude any child in a 2 mile radius of the school.

Never mind the schools are all on very busy roads with absolutely no sidewalks and in some cases, no shoulder and for most of the year, children have to walk on pitch dark streets with no streetlights.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
Also very common in the US. A few years ago, in a bid to save money, the school districts in my city changed busing rules to exclude any child in a 2 mile radius of the school.

Never mind the schools are all on very busy roads with absolutely no sidewalks and in some cases, no shoulder and for most of the year, children have to walk on pitch dark streets with no streetlights.
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That's horrific. :mad:
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
Also very common in the US. A few years ago, in a bid to save money, the school districts in my city changed busing rules to exclude any child in a 2 mile radius of the school.

Never mind the schools are all on very busy roads with absolutely no sidewalks and in some cases, no shoulder and for most of the year, children have to walk on pitch dark streets with no streetlights.
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A bit like that in Scotland, where the statutory duty is 2 miles for primary pupils and 3 miles for secondary (although not every council enforces this). However, where there is no safe walking route transport must be provided.
 
escargot said:
I wondered if the answer was that strangers would be noticed and possibly treated to some ventilation.
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I agree that most Americans in many American suburbs are strangers to each other, even if they grew up in that particular area. People don't stay in the same neighborhood they grew up in. They chase jobs and there's also a strong cultural pressure to be "independent," which can often just mean being isolated. So now we have an "epidemic of loneliness" on top of everything else.

Many people here have long commutes to the jobs that pay them enough to own the houses, and the houses are farther and farther away from where the jobs are, because we've based our infrastructure on traveling in cars and owning as much crap as possible. Areas get too plugged up with single family units, which take a lot of money to buy, to fill up with furniture and to maintain. It takes so much time to commute, people are tired, and they don't have much time to spend with their kids or do much outside of work, eat, veg in front of a screen and sleep. It also takes a gob of time and energy just to mow a lawn and clean a whole house. But when people here don't own their own homes, they can end up homeless once they can't work any more, and more and more often, even while they're still working.
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
Also very common in the US. A few years ago, in a bid to save money, the school districts in my city changed busing rules to exclude any child in a 2 mile radius of the school.

Never mind the schools are all on very busy roads with absolutely no sidewalks and in some cases, no shoulder and for most of the year, children have to walk on pitch dark streets with no streetlights.
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I recently heard a news story about truancy in school kids living inside the two mile radius. Parents who were interviewed didn't have reliable transit and couldn't afford to pay for transit to get their kids to school regularly. They had to rely on neighbors or family members or their job schedules being coordinated with school schedules to get their kids to school, since it was impossible for the kids to walk, bike or take a bus.
The post WW II "city of the future" in the US was a dream of everyone having "freedom" thorough cars, which was good for creating jobs for returning soldiers. At this point it's a pretty gross reality though. The vase amounts of pavement required by cars are grotesque and trap heat, the air is polluted and the traffic noise is everywhere, even in rural areas. People here are very reluctant to try public transit, even where it's decent. I've so often felt looked down on, pitied or not trusted because I wasn't using a car to get around. Not having a car equals poverty, and here being poor is supposedly a sign that something's wrong with you.
Hence, all the crap in people's garages, because if you can't afford all that stuff, you're a loser.
 
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