I was running with Percy on the bridge over the A27 and the window man drove past in the opposite direction.  I waved at him and he waved back.  And it was AMAZING!

Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it did feel blimin’ good 😁

If you’ve been around here a while you might have read my words about trying to meet people and fit in to places.  It’s a tricky thing to become part of a community when you don’t have kids. And you work from home.  I moved to Beachville seven years ago and I’ve done sooooo many things to try to be part of this place (not helped by Covid, thank you very much, you global pandemic, you) but nothing really worked.  But it turns out that the fitting in was sneaking up on me really, really slowly.

I *did* start passing the time of day with the man over the road when we are both out dog walking.  He’s not a people person (I’m not actually sure I am either) so it’s short and sweet, but we are at the stage now where I occasionally borrow his lawnmower and get advice on fish from him, as you do.

And the family up the road who have a Percy look alike kindly fed Norman when we went away a few times, so we chat to them when we see them too.

And their neighbour works for the company that fitted our windows and he’s into gardening and offers tomato plants and cucumbers that he grows in the growing season, which is lovely.

And of course there is Beryl up the road (93) who always has a word to share about the weather when we pass dog walking, and Derrick (83) who walks his dog past our house and indicates his pleasure or displeasure over how clean or dirty Mr Rs car is.

Then there are our actual neighbours.  One side our actual neighbours don’t talk to us (it’s a long story) but the ones on the other are the best. We got to know them because when Mr R and I were away in Manchester, I got a text to say our Ocado order would be arriving in the next hour. I called Lovely Neighbours in desperation, and despite the fact we’d only swapped numbers for emergency ‘your house is on fire’ type messages, they took our entire shop in like it was a totally normal thing to do for some weirdo who cant work out which day is which.  And obviously that’s the basis of an actual friendship… including everything from meeting up in Morocco (obviously) to the most gorgeous bunch of roses when Norman left us.

And then last week morning, I waved at the window man – the one with the cucumber and tomato plants.  And is there anything that tells you you’re part of a community more than being waved at from a van as you wheeze your way towards the Downs looking rather beetroot like ?

It’s taken seven years, but I finally, finally, feel like I am part of a real community.  And that feels good. 🙂