78. Rural Stress

In March this year we moved out of London and into the country.  We have swapped the bustle of outer London suburbia for the seclusion of rural Buckinghamshire.  We are out-of-the-way here but not isolated.  We are just an hour from North London by car and only twenty-five minutes from Central London by rail.

It is very quiet here except at dawn when the noise from the birds is almost overwhelming.  There is one wood pigeon that really annoys me.  He (it’s probably male) is tone deaf.  He just cannot sing in tune and I find it so intolerable that once he starts, just before five o’clock every morning, I am awake and so irritated that I can never get back to sleep.  

The basic wood pigeon call – they don’t sing – consists of four notes with the fourth one dropping to be the lowest of them.   Once a wood pigeon starts to call it will repeat the sequence for up to an hour.  It can be quite soothing.

The tone-deaf pigeon that keeps me awake calls in a monotone and produces four notes of equal and yet somehow discordant pitch over and over again.  Imagine your favourite tune, a melody that you’ve heard countless times and love, being massacred by a rubbish singer.  That’s what I have been suffering every morning for the last two months.  You see?  It’s not all peace and tranquility out in the country.  There are stresses here too.

We were lucky when we lived in Winchmore Hill that we were only 72 paces away from one of the best Indian restaurants in London.  Just after we had settled in Wavendon we were driving through a neighbouring village and saw a restaurant called “Little India”.  As 'Friday Night is Curry Night' we thought we'd give "Little India" a trial and so we turned up the next evening.

“Would you like drinks while you look at the menu?” asked our waiter as he showed us to our table.

“No but could we have two poppadoms please,” I said.

“I’m sorry sir but we don’t serve poppadoms,” the waiter said, very apologetically.

“No poppadoms!  I’ve never heard of an Indian restaurant that doesn’t serve poppadoms.”

“Neither have I sir.  This is a Thai restaurant.”

Both Caroline and I always try to support local businesses.  Last Christmas we agreed that every present we bought would be from a shop within walking distance of our house.  It all worked out very well although I must say that I was surprised to be given a pair of size 6 trainers that were too small for me but luckily they were exactly the right size for Caroline.

In recent years when I called a local tradesman I usually got through to a Rumanian, a Pole or some other Eastern European who had recently arrived in the UK.  They all had several things in common:

1 They all answered their phone and if they didn’t would respond very quickly to any message I left.

2 They all turned up to give an estimate or to commence work at the time and on the day they said they would. 

3 Work done was always completed by the time they promised and was always of a high standard.

4 Their prices were always reasonable.

5 They were all reliable, pleasant and honest.

There don’t seem to be any Eastern Europeans living in North Buckinghamshire.  Now, whenever I call a local plumber, an electrician, a gardener or a carpet fitter, the phone is answered (if he can be bothered) by an Englishman or in the case of the gardener, an Englishwoman although she would probably describe herself as an English Lady.

We bought a new carpet for our living room.  The fitter who came was moaning that he only had two days work that week because people weren’t buying carpets.  “That’s like having a sixty per cent pay cut,” he told me.  I told him that I could help him out as I had a piece of carpet I’d brought with me from London that I’d like him to fit.  He agreed to do it and took my number.  A week later he still hadn’t rung.  I found someone else to do it.

Our boiler has been temperamental ever since we moved in.  Eight days ago it finally stopped working altogether.  I phoned three plumbers before one of them answered his phone and then he failed to arrive to carry out his inspection in order to provide a diagnosis. 

Eventually, after numerous further calls, a plumber came and told us that the pump had seized up.  That was three days ago and since then, despite the assurances he gave me that the work would soon be done we have heard nothing from him.

After several failed attempts this morning I suspected that he was recognising my phone when I rang him and was choosing for whatever reason, not to answer.  I tested my theory by using Caroline’s phone.  He answered straight away.  I said nothing but I hung up on him and now I’m looking for someone else.

The “Lady Gardener” whom I rang turned her nose up at the work I was asking her to do.  “That’s just garden maintenance,” she sneered, haughtily.  “I’m a horticulturalist.  Find a man.”

Those who have turned up to give an estimate don’t appear to be particularly honest either.  “Here’s my number,” a representative from a garden maintenance firm said to me, handing me a scrap of paper.  “Whatever price the company quote you, I’ll do it for twenty per cent less.”

An electrician from a local company tried the same ploy.

The country is said to be in recession.  I’m doing my bit.  I’m trying to stimulate growth and provide employment but I can’t do it without help and assistance.  I am totally disillusioned and fed up with English workers.

There are Polish plumbers but none of them are Liquid Propane Gas certified and that’s what I need because we are not on mains gas supply.  Also, after eight days I need a bath but that’s not something you really need to know about.

10:55 p.m. 5½ hours after posting.

I’ve had a comment from Fiona telling me that Wavendon is not in the country but is part of Milton Keynes.  She went on to tell me that in her town of “7,000 souls” there is a Corgi Registered plumber and two doors down is the local butcher.  Across the street is a great builder, who is related to a plumber and a plasterer. Opposite him is a roofer and at the bottom of the hill she has a really good Indian with takeaway service where I can get a curry that serves 3 (inclusive of poppadoms and pickle tray) for £11.

Well Fiona, so what?  I don't know where you live but those are the services I’d expect in a town of 7000 people but Wavendon isn’t a town.  It isn’t even a village.  As it has no services at all – no shops or a post office – it is technically a hamlet.  It has a population of about 700.  It is surrounded by farmland some five miles from Milton Keynes centre and 2 miles from the town boundary.  Our house is a mile further out of Wavendon towards Apsley Guise and a mile and a half from the nearest shop which is in Woburn Sands.  We are Milton Keynes only in as much as we have a MK post code but then so does Olney (where the annual pancake race is held) and no one would ever call Olney a part of Milton Keynes.  By her reasoning Chalfont St Peter is a part of Slough as it has a SL postcode.

But anyway that wasn’t the point of my blog.  My point is that here at least, tradesmen don’t seem to want to work.  At a time when nationally we are told that times are hard, I am finding it almost impossible to get some of the work done.  In London the recently arrived, skilled migrants were desperate to be offered work and when they were, they did it efficiently, ably and promptly.