... or are the locals really rude?

[pfft]

Have just moved to country village outside somewhat la-di-da town where we work.

Went to the local shop. Am now too scared to ever go there again.

Picked up the milk from the shelf, it had a spare label round the handle, which was wet with condensation - it slipped out of my hand and smashed onto the floor, spilling milk everywhere. I moved the vegetables away from the advancing tide of milk, and went to the counter to say I was terribly sorry but I'd just spilt milk and did they have anything to clean it up with. Woman appeared out of the back of the shop
and shoved me aside and said impatiently "Get out the f*ing way, SOMEONE'S going to have to clean that up", and the man at the counter said "oh you're TERRIBLY sorry [posh sing-song accent] are you. Well there's a Waitrose [posh accent] on the other side of [la-di-da town] for people like you, why don't you go there and spill milk and rearrange the shop how you like it, next time."

I said nothing and paid for 2 lots of milk. The man snatched the money out of my hand and scowled at me. The shop full of people all stared at me.

I thought "heavens I'm getting paranoid", looked up from staring at the floor, and realised they were all still staring/scowling at me.

How often do people spill milk in Sainsburys?
Is it such a crime?

ooh I bet it's shelford or possibly granchester? Am I near?

Undoubtedly this is Wales

I went to Cambridgeshire once, to do a skydive. They were absolute twats. It was too cloudy to jump and when asking what time it got dark (you'd expect them to know, given that they're outside every day), their oh-so-witty answer was "dark o clock" (to be said in a yokelish accent). They had a kind of 'I'm an inbred yokel but I'm still considerably better than yow' air about them.

No Victoria, do keep up, the OP is talking about Cambridgeshire.

I've lived in three villages around cambridge before settling in the 'big town' itself, but grew up in them so never really had too much bovver from the yokels. Linton was in fact one of them.

ooh could be Ashdon, Horningsea or Hadstock?

Some people really don't crawl that far out of the fens. Probably still at the primordial stage.

Why would middle aged strangers call you a posh c* while cycling?!?!?

The actions of these local people is indefensible, but think about it a bit.

Cambridge, wealth, overrun with plummy-voiced folk, contrasting with areas of great deprivation (it ain't all pretty countryside and rosy cottages).

Ely has a waitrose too, and the villages around there are a bit - um - 'funny'..

There's also a hell of a lot of hidden deprivation in Cambdridge itself you know..

Let me guess, Letworth? Bar Hill? Arbury? There's a Waitrose in Trumpington but as far as I know, it's okay there.

Sorry that should be Letchworth. I thought of another one, Oxmoor?

Errm, St Neots, (thinking Great Paxton) ?

Was it in the Fens? They are notoriously inbred - the customers in the shop were probably all closely related to the shop owners.

I don't think the OP will give us the name of the village, but she is definitely not being unreasonable. It's shocking behaviour from people who should know better.

...and, victoria, I hope you're referring to North Wales. It's lovely here in South Wales. Even in the yucky parts of the big towns people are usually nice enough. The valley-dwellers are brilliant people!

I think this is what is known as inverse snobbery.

Gosh I must be a in bred, ill mannered yobbo as my mother comes from March, right in the middle of the fens...that would count for the six toes on each foot then

It's somewhere north of Cambridge, isn't it?

But more seriously, there is a lot of deprivation in East Anglia, and I do feel sorry for some of the young people growing up there - Cambridge offers a constant stream of clever, apparently posh and rich people going off to high paid jobs, while a lot of young people from the region don't have the educational skills to take on any kind of decent employment. There are jobs for biotech engineers, and jobs for strawberry pickers, and very little in between. Meanwhile, the biotech engineers and strawberry pickers are pushing house prices up.

Not that that in any way excuses bad behaviour, but I think it probably does explain it to some extent.

and to think I wanted to move BACK to Cambridge. Perhaps that says more about me than the place itself

Do you live in Royston Vasey (sp?)....
oh dear....definitely don't shop there again....

hehe...now that I read Cambridgeshire...it is not really Royston (not the Vasey kind, is it ....although that counts as Hertfordshire, iirc...

Fens is def odd. It's that low, low, wide, wide sky that seems to flatten the landscape - it's anxiety-inducing. That, and the fact that for a long time there was only one road out, which encouraged a diminishing gene pool (always check for more fingers than strictly necessary).

I was thinking somewhere in East Anglia when I started reading your post, so I wasn't too far off! Rural deprivation and a large international population (migrant farmworkers).

Don't mess with the Fens. I find the fenlands a scary, scary place. Disorienting, and you lose your bearings because there aren't any hills to navigate by, so you'd think the roads would run more or less straight from village to village, but they constantly make 90 degree turns because of all the ditches and dykes.

I think it's deliberate!

(no offence intended. I still find it a scary place, though.)