The village where I live reached its tipping point years ago. Every shop has gone because people stopped shopping there. Four of the eight houses I call my immediate neighbours are only used at weekends, and not every weekend at that.
The pub was bought by people who told anyone who came in that they’d bought it for the land it came with so they could build four houses and sell them, so they didn’t need any customers. They got the second part of their wish but as the land included the village pond the planning permission never happened. If you like quiet pubs you’d like this one. There is still a garage in the village, selling petrol at 5p a litre more than anywhere else in fuel-hungry and expensive Suffolk, because there aren’t many customers.
The bus to the nearest town runs twice a day and a trip to Woodbridge and back, just eighteen miles, would take over three and a half hours. True, the garage also sells a surprisingly large range of porn DVDs, especially odd considering the age of most of residents. The 1980s hairstyles on the covers probably give a guide to the date of the Last Big One in the village. In years to come maybe a post-apocalyptic Time Team presenter will sift through piles of twisted plastic in a field. Hold up “Fantastic Ferrari Babes” to the camera. Say “According to Carina, the Farah Flick motion this actress does with her hair dates this artefact to summer 1980. This is really exciting! Not (pause while thick-sounding-but-hugely-qualified-academic-archeologist guffaws in background on cue) because of the content! (laughter). We can now date this site to within a few years.”
But that might be all in the future. Last night I got home from visiting friends in time to go along to the midnight service on Christmas Eve. I stopped watching Holiday Inn, put down my drink and pulled a coat on at ten to twelve. I put the last few Christmas cards through the doors of the neighbours who were there and walked up the unlit street. We have massive Council Tax bills but we don’t have street lights here.
The church was unlit and empty. Then I remembered a couple of years ago the last time I went to church we’d had a note in the village newsletter saying that the midnight service was bit late for the old people who were the only ones who used the church, so maybe the Midnight Carols would be better at say just after teatime, no later than half past six.
It’s never going to go back to being a living village. No-one is going to open a shop or provide any jobs or raise many children here. Whatever happens in the future in rural East Suffolk, none of that will be part of it. It’s over.
I turned and walked alone along the road from the church and turned down the medieval alley that leads to my house, went through the gate and across the lawn for one last check of the Chicken Tree. We have eleven chickens most days and twelve when the old hen reappears. Where she goes we never know.
Ten of the chickens lead by the cunning Light Sussex hen who hatched them and the tiny Polish cockerel who guarded them while they grew to four times his size decamped from the old coop and decided to live in a tree. The leylandii they chose looks a bit the worse for wear now, especially since the chickens have been joined by a flock of wild doves.
We have a story in my family. My mother and father visited my uncle Ken’s farm one Christmas before I was born. Just before midnight they went to the barn to see if the old tale was true, that the animals speak at midnight, remembering the stable they shared in Bethlehem.
I shone a torch on the chickens I could see. You can never see all ten of them in the tree, but they’re there. Some of them had their heads curled under their wings but most looked steadily back at the torch beam, eyes wide open and unblinking.
I shone the beam away so as not to dazzle them but one or two began to shuffle on the branches they were perched on. One or two others began a curious clicking sound. Or something did. It wasn’t a noise I’ve ever heard chickens make before. Then one of the cockerels woke up properly, raised his head and crowed, just a few minutes into Christmas morning.
When I went to feed them at eight there was my Christmas gift under the tree, two small eggs for breakfast. Do the animals speak on Christmas night? What sort of question is that? Of course they do. No-one ever said they have to speak with a human voice.
An enjoyable read