a lunch party

Our neighbour held a lunch party today, billed as an At Home.  I have always felt that At Homes were things other people gave and went to, like dinner parties.  People like us, one or two generations away from the East End or living over the shop, don't do dinner parties, we have friends to supper, and the invitations to At Homes I've seen have generally been on my former employer's desk, or the mantelpieces of more senior members of the music society committee, who live in much more expensive houses in a smarter village than we do.  However, this invitation helpfully explained the format in detail, catering arrangements, dress code, and the times we were expected not merely to arrive but to go away.  It sounded very nice, and I was touched that he was making the effort.

I quickly gathered that the guest list for this particular party was drawn from the very local area, and began to feel rather abashed that I knew so few people, although vaguely comforted that many of the other guests confessed to exactly the same feeling.  Our nearest neighbours were there, which they often aren't, since she travels a lot on business and they also have a place in London.  She works in fashion, he runs outdoor adventures, and having Bear Grylls on the TV is great for trade.  Also one of their dogs died recently, which I didn't know.

The next neighbour down was with a friend who lives in the other part of our extremely spread-out village, and there was a moment of silent comedy as we were both introduced to a couple who turned out to own the farm that would have been turned into a quarry, if it had been included in the final list for the County plan.  They enquired how the friend from the other end of the village knew our host.  She replied with a completely straight face that they had met serving on the residents' committee fighting against the quarry.

There didn't seem to be anyone there from the next cottage after that, or the big house that is having lots of building work done, or the converted church, but the couple whose garden our tree fell on were there, and apparently held no grudge.  From an overheard conversation I got the impression that their dog had died as well.  Thinking about it, I haven't seen the dog for a while, and the last time I did it looked extremely ancient.

The beautiful Georgian former rectory which was on the market for ages, and finally sold once the quarry proposals were banged on the head, has been bought by a young couple from Fulham.  I guess a reasonable house in Fulham translates to a lot of Georgian brickwork, if you move out to the unfashionable side of Colchester.  They had two energetic small children, and seemed genuinely friendly and very young, and I realised with a shock that when we moved into our house over twenty years ago, we too must have seemed ridiculously young to be buying a whole detached house. Albeit ours is a giant shed.

A woman I last met at another party a decade ago has since suffered from breast cancer, but is currently in the clear.  The lettuce farmer's father has recently died, in fact, the funeral is tomorrow.  He had been ill for a long while first, and again I realised when I thought about it that I hadn't seen him around the farm for a long time, looking at the lettuces as he used to do.  It is humbling, the things that are going on in your neighbours' lives, that you have no inkling of. Especially dying.  The last time several of the other guests seemed to have seen each other was at a funeral.

I don't think I was the only one to leave thinking that maybe I should know my fellow residents a little better, and not only because it would be so handy to have people close by that we could ask to come and lock up the chickens or feed the cats on the odd occasion.  What stops us?  The village is very spread out with no public transport, so everybody drives everywhere, which doesn't help.  We could all go to the one remaining pub, or join the book group.  People who were in the anti-quarry campaign said that was a great way of meeting people.  The commuters are stuffed, though.  We never met anybody when we were commuting.  But perhaps choosing to live in such a non-nucleated settlement, where practically nothing communal goes on, marks us out as non-joiners.  Just because you share a taste for rural living and a disinclination to pay Constable Country house prices doesn't mean you will all have enough in common to be new best friends.