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Insular towns and villages

259 replies

Cactus1982 · 20/04/2021 19:23

Has anyone else ever lived or worked on of these places? By insular I mean fearful, mistrustful and in some cases down right hostile to ‘outsiders’? There’s a large village about fifteen minutes outside of the town I live in that has always had a reputation for being like this. Apparently, in non Covid times if you as an outsider walked into a pub there it would go quiet and everyone would stare at you. I always took this with a pinch of salt until I started working there this last week. I swear that as I walk from my car down the street people slow down and stare intently at me as though I’ve got three heads. I know we are living in strange times, but this is very unnerving. I was also asked by someone how far I’d traveled to get there and when I told them they said ‘oooooh that’s a long way’ as though I’d come from Mars or somewhere. It’s not a long way, it’s a fifteen minute drive! I’d never actually have believed it had it not experienced it with my own eyes!

Are there any other places like this in the UK?

OP posts:
shuuush · 25/04/2021 08:52

Kippax Leeds

Spudlet · 25/04/2021 09:14

The Facebook page hysteria about white vans driving through is real... I long to say that we’re in the middle of a pandemic and it’s probably a bloody delivery van, Doris, so calm the fuck down...! But I’m too wimpy 🤣

Arrowheart · 25/04/2021 09:22

@Spudlet

The Facebook page hysteria about white vans driving through is real... I long to say that we’re in the middle of a pandemic and it’s probably a bloody delivery van, Doris, so calm the fuck down...! But I’m too wimpy 🤣
😂
DesMartinsPetCat · 25/04/2021 09:44

@Lunaballoon

That exact walking into a pub and everyone going quiet and staring happened to us at Corfe Castle in Dorset. It had a real Hot Fuzz feel about it!
I live in a large city and a nearby pub is like that. It’s very much “the local” for a particular demographic and you’re eyed up and down if you enter to determine what you’re doing there, and if you’re a cop, basically.

I’ve never been in but my sister was staying at my house once while I was away and she went in. A few of the regulars kind of rounded on her and asked what she was doing there. She didn’t really twig the tone and said she was staying in the area because her sister lived nearby. Then they asked where she was staying and the idiot actually said “at my sister’s place, the yellow house at the corner between the church and Main St. just until tomorrow night then she’s back from holiday next week”. I freaked when she told me and was fully expecting to be robbed.

Would happily swap that for an insular village pub Grin

To be fair, though, apart from the major criminal element, it’s on a very old working class street in what’s become a very gentrified area so I think most of the local pub-goers (who aren’t wannabe Krays) are just protective of their pub and don’t want to see it turned into yet another gastro-bar.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 25/04/2021 13:21

And similarly I don't think anyone suggested all Welsh speakers in Wales are rude in this way.

Maybe not all Welsh speakers, but the numbers widely reported are very far beyond what might be believable imho. Enough are regularly accused of it to stigmatise the demographic as a whole - or at least to bring them all under 'suspicion'.

RaptorInaPorkPieHat · 25/04/2021 15:15

Ahhh rural Lincolnshire.... I grew up in a small town (don't, for gods sake, call it a village). You couldn't fart on a Friday without the whole place knowing about it by Saturday.

My Dad was an incomer in the late 1960's and has only recently been accepted (because they've all died). Bloody awful place. I made a run for it at 18 (went to a uni that had twice as many people on campus as there was in my whole town) and only briefly returned when I graduated. We always used to joke about it being Roysten Vasey (who incidentally, also lives in Lincolnshire), quite often the local paper will report a 'suspicious car' or the theft of a decent coat in the pub. And then there's the local characters (the Bloke who lived as a gnome just as one example).

I didn't move far away but I'm in a bigger town where I can still be slightly anonymous. I go back to see Dad, but I only visit the house and I'm straight back out again. The whole place gives me the heebee jeebies.

The coastal parts of Lincolnshire aren't like this at all (mainly because they make their living off tourism).

Zancah · 01/05/2021 09:22

I saw this in the paper this morning and immediately thought of this thread Grin

Insular towns and villages
longwayoff · 01/05/2021 11:11

, empty apart from a couple of locals. No servers, no landlord around. Shrugged and left. Landlord appeared from nowhere as we walked away and shouted at us to 'come back, please, I only went out for a minute'. I promise this was just as unnerving as The Slaughtered Lamb reception experienced by others.

longwayoff · 01/05/2021 11:16

Oh buggering hell. This was in an area where 'they come from The Forest ', accompanied by a Knowing Look, has a meaning all of it's own.

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