Outside of swimming or having a bath, on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017, I got wetter than I think I've ever got in my life. I made the almost fatal mistake of going to the annual Wigtown Show in a flimsy summer jacket, jeans and trainers. By the time I walked home - 1 mile - I could hear my feet squelching in my saturated footwear.
So, this year, I opted not to go, despite the 'weather forecast' saying that any rain would hold off until at least 4pm. The long range weather had said it would rain on August 1st, three weeks ago, but then it mysteriously was replaced by an assortment of optimistic forecasts, which I believed as much as I do in the Tooth Fairy. At 1.40pm, forty minutes after the wife and chums set off, it started spitting, by 1.55pm it was chucking it down like it had forgotten how to rain - which it had for almost three months. It was grim, windy and the rain began to get a bit horizontal and I felt vindicated and not light of £8 for what would have been about two hours of dodging rain and sheep shit.
This is pretty much the most consistent thing wrong with living here, although 'wrong' is the wrong word...
When the weather is bad, it is worse than most people who live on the mainland/main body of the UK can imagine. The landscape here is very much moulded by the elements, but when it's blowing a hoolie you can't imagine the damage it might do in leafy suburban Northampton or Bedford. Where we are is very south-western Scotland; we're not the furthest west you can get, but we're a little left of Plymouth if you draw a straight line down the map. That line pretty much goes through the right side of the Isle of Man (yes!).
We get the Atlantic, via Ireland, before most and I've said to various people that this is a place where you can actually see the wind. The rain tends to be fine and drenching or torrential and drenching and the bottom line is if it's really raining you ain't doing anything outside. Even walking the dogs on awful days becomes a chore. Rain you can cope with. Wind is actually more annoying. Wind and Rain can turn even mild days into an uncomfortable, unpleasant and seemingly endless trudge. But hey, it's not where I used to have to trudge.
However, when the sun comes out; when the thermometer gets into double figures, it becomes more like the reason we moved here. Yet, on freezing cold days, snow sitting on top of the mountains warms you up, because you don't see that kind of thing in the flatlands of East Anglia. There are enough things to be seen and enjoyed to make the sometimes fierce weather something you simply have to put up with.
I also learned about living in a rural environment. There are times when the place stinks. I mean like a thousand dead rats in a vat of shit and chilli powder stink. Slurry, which is poured on the field like shit from a cow's arse, helps the grass grow and they need to grow lots of grass for the ruminating beasts in the winter. This year has been awful; for someone who worries about breathing more than others, the stench is so great sometimes I've thought I was going to suffocate. This is a really bad thing about the place, but apparently because it has been so dry it hasn't happened as much as it usually does in the summer. Oh extreme joy...
And, I am only talking about 3 minutes a day for however many days it stinks. It doesn't really happen near town, but is often somewhere along our journeys.
I talk about the lack of availability in my vlogs, but there is also the lack of variety. Unless you want to travel (or get someone to drive or, heaven forbid, hire a taxi), we're pretty limited in our drinking establishments. The Craft is our destination of preference; it is 130 paces from door to door and it serves enough reasonable beer to make it a place to drink; the staff make it our local. The Galloway Bar is for locals and lager (lagger) drinkers, I've been in once. 1.2 miles from our house is the Bladnoch Inn; it sells a variety of real ale (singular) on a rotating basis; sometimes I've seen Bitter & Twisted others Greene King IPA. I've not been in the place since the winter.
Drive and inside a 25 mile radius you will find about four good pubs, but that's a lot of square mileage. There's the Clachan in New Galloway, which we haven't been to, which is about 30 miles away; the Steampacket in the Isle of Whithorn, about 17 miles away; The Hoose O'Hill in Glentrool about 18 miles away and, um... A couple of others that we haven't discovered.
The same applies to food and as a vegetarian of many years it's not easy to find an interesting variety. If we ate fish we'd be laughing, but we're proper vegetarians that don't eat things that were sentient or something like that. There are places that do actually cater for veggies, but I'm a food snob and I think they lack imagination and why would I want to go and pay for something I could most probably cook myself and for cheaper?
Forget supermarket variety as well and you see a place where there are areas where you have to 'make do' and suddenly the south-west of Scotland looks like a great example of what Brexit Britain might look like as a whole.
We're also in about the 2nd worst place in the country for Freeview. If we didn't have a booster box (giving us 28 channels), we'd have about 8. We could invest in FreeSat, but not having much choice on the telly means there should be time for other things. Besides, on the upside, internet speeds are among the rural country's top 10%.
The thing is, I can't count on one finger the number of times in the last year I've wished I was back in Northampton. I can't count on one hand the number of times I've thought variations of 'Oh shit, I can't get that here'. I have sometimes regretted coming here for the bad luck that seems to have befallen the dogs. Doug, when he isn't running into barbed wire or tree stumps, is constantly lacerated by Ness (who has rediscovered her insecurity recently in a big way). Lexy had her stroke and is now beginning to look her age and Marley had her accident, which kept her on the lead for 6 weeks.
I've missed a pub quiz that has a cash prize. I've missed not being so close to Leicester. Most of the other materialistic things, I've grown to accept that I might not see certain things again, or once in a blood moon. I've missed my mates, but the vast majority I have as much interaction as I did before, but without the face-to-face aspect. Hopefully, that will change in the coming months with visits from folk planned.
Something I've neglected mention anywhere is the fact that I may have inspired my older brother to follow in my footsteps. Our dad was always one for moving on. I don't think he had itchy feet, he just looked for the next challenge and moving to new places was something he did with our mum frequently. Their children have all become static and sedate with our lives and for me this was going to be and is my last great adventure. For Steve, moving to Wisbech is his. You probably couldn't get two more polar opposites in rural terms than there and here, I just hope he knows what he's doing.
We had an inkling and to be honest it has turned out better than we would have been happy with. The lack of (part time) work for 'incomers' has become a bit of a concern, but we're trying our hand at something quite unorthodox for us and if it works then we might try our hands at doing some more (he says intriguingly).
I have to admit that one of my worries was something my brother-in-law Neil said, half-jokingly. "How long before you fall out with everybody?" ...
I made some 'resolutions' when I moved here. I've kept some of them, but I procrastinate so much I'm actually a bit of an expert at it. I have also slipped back into some older habits, while not keeping up with more recent additions to my lifestyle. I don't walk enough, despite having all these woods and beaches. I drink far too much, but many of the new or old bad habits are often offset by the amount of smiling and laughing we've done. We've not made a huge amount of friends, but that might be down to the fact that the majority of the people we do socialise with are fantastic company, so we've not had to do much. The thing is, one of the things that makes this place so special from towns and cities; people will stop and chat to you, wherever you are, like they've known you for years. They're genuinely interested in you, especially when they know you live there.
I've fallen out with one person - a mad woman from Lewisham.
A special mention for the great dichotomy. The Tourist. You have the locals and you have the 'grockles'. The same species, yet two completely different things. Galloway needs the Tourist, but the Tourist is something I now have a completely different perspective of. I've been here a year; I've adapted incredibly well to the pace of life and I'm gradually erasing most of my time-based OCDs and as a result, this summer in particular, I'm getting irritated at there being an extra DOZEN cars on the road, pootling along, admiring my bloody countryside... Yet, the place needs to double its tourists, at least, in the coming years, because it needs to counter the loss of other money and that requires the locals to be more accommodating - not that they aren't, far from it - and that means more options for a new kind of holidaymaker.
There are always things I can moan about, but fortunately the lack of variety is more than made up by the weather; in which we have been truly blessed this summer with a longer summer than I can remember and while I expect the rest of it to be more akin to this part of Scotland, that means you're the ones, down there, stifling in the 21st Century's first revisit of 1976. Usually though, I whinge about the lack of accuracy in forecasting up here than the actual weather.
The truth is, what we've lost, we've more than made up for it in other ways. Yes, we can't live on fresh air and scenery, but we'll cross that bridge when it becomes an issue. I expect there are going to be some tough times ahead, but that's going to be for everyone else as well.
There is something on the horizon that I'm both looking forward to and dreading at the same time. Going back to England at the beginning of November. The occasion will be a great one, but I haven't had a single tug to come back south of the border, not a jot (well, apart from when an old friend of mine lost - as in he ran off - her dog on Bradlaugh Fields and I'd just about convinced myself if I was there I could have found him). Unfortunately for friends hoping we'll drop in, we're going to be a long way from Shoesville, mixing it large with da fam, innit.
I've realised that in many ways I'm easily pleased, but I kind of think this is the place I've been yearning for all my life.
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