5 March
I was thinking about the ipod generation this morning, looking out of my window at a group of teenagers mooching about on the green. They have the usual hunched shoulder, head down appearance of fifteen year olds, the give-away tribe mentality. They also seem to be kicking at the earth (the boys) and shrieking loudly at each other (the girls) in a manner which reminds me of my own teenage years. What do they find to do here, in this sleepy hamlet, I wonder? What will I do when my own children are no longer content to send every waking hour with Mum and Dad? Is it true that country life for teenagers is a nightmare, full of longings for the big city, life as a parent not much better, reduced to acting as a permanent chauffeur and worrying about 17 year old drivers and twisting country lanes? I spent my own teenage years in the London suburbs and seem to recall passing most of my time on the tube. We joked when we moved here that J would be running away to Ipswich when he’s older, and R gloomily prophesises an adolescence filled with drinking special brew and hanging around the phone box on the green for him. Will we give up, as some of our neighbours have done, and decamp to the local market town with our surly offspring?
There is a sizeable population of teenagers here, which always surprises me as I tend to think of our village as being mainly filled with the over 70’s and parents with primary-school age children. It must be because I don’t see the older children so much, given that they don’t wander hand in hand with their Mums picking daisies any more, or go the pub en famille so much. They do appear, under cover of darkness usually, lurking slyly on the corners of the lanes, texting madly, or I sometimes glimpse them early on misty mornings, bent double under the weight of groaning backpacks, waiting for the bus to take them to college or school. Will they get out as soon as possible, I wonder, and groan to their friends about their dreary rural lives, or will they always long to return to their homes, as some of you on this site have done, memories of their little patch of native land always tugging at their hearts, wherever they are? Leave they surely will, for there are no jobs and little, if any, affordable housing here. Staying would mean making a permanent home with Mum and Dad, as some have done, not really having any choice in the matter.

I see the children of the very wealthy even less, given that they would appear to have their own social lives in place, revolving around their not-very-local schools, and they are often more city-savvy too, used to staying alone in their parent’s London crash-pads. Life will offer more opportunities, more possibility of eventually owning a place back home, too. The children I watch this morning are ordinary kids, some smart, some not, some destined for bright lights and yellow brick roads, no doubt, others for a life of bobbing in the water, trying to keep afloat. They always seem younger, shyer, than city kids of a similar age, less confident and self-aware, blushing and backing away like startled fauns when an adult stops to chat. Will community for them mean only an ivillage, packed with cyber relationships (I know, I know, I’m a fine one to talk), rural life the preserve of only the very rich or the very poor? Will the countryside be half manufactured park, half vast agri-business? Or will it still be the place that they will choose to bring up their own children, still a haven for those seeking refuge or an alternative, simpler way of life?

One or two of the girls outside have babysat for us on occasion. (One in particular always answers the phone and says she can’t do it, she has a date that night, only for her mother to ring back half an hour later to say that Lucy WILL be babysitting!). They’re sweet, kind girls, good with my children, and touchingly happy to return, temporarily, to the world of early childhood. Some of the village children, girls and boys, work in the local pub, or serve at the local farmer’s markets. The kids that can look menacing in a group, are polite and self-effacing on their own. The people who run the local youth club speak warmly about them, say they share the same concerns about rural life as the adults do. Much as they may champ at the bit, they’re lucky to be nurtured here, in this small place, and I hope they find a similar community in their future lives, wherever they are.

Our neighbour, a very old man, died recently and I was surprised to see so many teenagers at his funeral. Not seemingly coerced by their parents, they were there of their own volition, because he was a community figure who they’d all known. When one of the old ladies in the village slipped on the ice in the winter and broke her ankle, it was a couple of local youths who were out salting the pavement first, and it was a couple of girls who were first round at her cottage, seeing what they could do. ilike.