Small town living

Going back to your home town is always full of mixed emotions. I grew up in a market town in Suffolk, a few square miles of, to the casual observer, just a simple 50/50 mix of houses and factories. To those of us who grew up there the housing estates were fabulous, intricate mazes of places to hide and cycle at speed, and the factories were like giant airfresheners which could carpet the entire town with the smell of bubblegum one day, and strawberry the next.

I live in an old market town now so you would think there’s very little difference. But whilst my home town was the birthplace of ‘off-the-peg’ clothing, my new home is the birthplace of JK Rowling.

I’m often guilty of being harsh in my attitude to my hometown. Afterall, my mother’s side of the family can be traced back many generations there, and they obviously saw no reason to leave. However, as an illustrated example, take this Headline I saw advertising the local paper:

This is supposed to entice the passers-by to buy the paper, but what is it trying to say? ‘Even less’? How much is that? Was the town once some comic-book style den of crime, twinned with the vision of Detroit painted in the Robocop films? Is it painting the town as some idyllic Dixon of Dock Green type affair, and it is amazing that there could be any less crime in the town? Has the crime simply done as many of the shops appear to have done and move to out-of-town developments, therefore there is no crime in the town?

I think it sums the town and the people who live there nicely. You can read it in one of two ways – 1) It’s a lovely, quiet, peaceful little Suffolk town where nothing bad happens, or 2) It’s dull and uneventful, with a strange lethargy which prevents it ever striving to be more than it currently is.

I’m sure to most people this comment on my town will be largely irrelevant, but I bet there’s something in common with your own home town…