All of the villages around here have a scarecrow competition each year. Wesley is our entry. He sits along the road, cheerily waving no matter how wet he's getting or how long he's been sat in the same position. And boy, has he been getting wet this summer. it's completely unrelenting. It stops for a few minutes then comes down harder than ever. We can't believe that it's still so wet and the forecast is little better over the next week or so.
He's not exactly the height of sartorial elegance (just look at those sandals - we used to be made to wear sandals like that in the late 60s and they were definitely not fashionable even then) but he is rather special. I like him, he's a reassuring sign.
There is a certain similarity between him and the 'bench boys' as they are known, a group of elderly men who sit on the bench at the bus stop and watch the world go by. We were told that you've been accepted into the village if they wave back when you wave at them. We tentatively tried a wave today and guess what? Yes, we got a wave back. How thrilling is that? I do have to qualify that by saying that there was only one of the gents there and so he may have been feeling more generous to us than he would have been if his peers had been there. We'll have to try it with the bench full soon.....if we can pluck up the courage.
It's kind of like a scene from 'Last of the summer wine' (a UK sitcom which chronicles the lives of three old boys in a Yorkshire village). You imagine them discussing Nora Batty and her wrinkly stockings or the 'loose woman' in the next village or some such. I suspect not much escapes their notice!
We're still working on our local history and keep on uncovering little nuggets of information about the area generally, the village, road and house. Today we've learned that the house is a bit younger than we'd thought. We were puzzled by the claim it was two hundred years old because we'd also been told it was built to house miners. It turns out the latter is true but not the former. The date of building makes it one hundred and fifty years old or so, right in the middle of the mining boom so we can still claim its mining heritage. We had a very disappointing trip to the local museum which turned out to be little more than a collection of old things with little or no insight into the history of the area at all. We now know (though from an old photo in a cafe rather than the museum) that the railway ran right through our village and we think we can see its track just down the hill from our house. An old ordinance survey map should confirm that one.
One thing is certain, we have much, much more to find here and all the time in the world to make our discoveries.
