SYNTAGMA » Saturday Ramble: Is there a perfect place to live?

Saturday Ramble: Is there a perfect place to live?

Posted in Big Society, Devon, Exeter, Holidays, John Evans, Localism, Politics on July 31st, 2010
By John Evans - leave a comment!

Rose Tinted Spectacles I’ve been totting up all the places in Britain I’ve resided in. The list does not include holidays or short stays, only genuine residency. I’m staggered.

Here they are: London, Edinburgh, Farnham (Surrey), Oxford, Melton Mowbray (Leics), Bournemouth, Poole (Dorset), Exeter, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Swansea, Borth (Mid-Wales), Penzance and Cheltenham. I may well have missed out one or two.

This does not include foreign climes: Spain (Benalmadena and Estepona), Paris, Perth (Australia), Kaiserslautern (Germany) and a myriad of short stays here and there. I could claim to be an expert in answering the question in the title of this piece.

What makes someone extend their gap year for the rest of their life? Restlessness, perhaps? Inability to settle in one spot? That’s not true, since I’ve been over a decade in my current city in Devon.

It’s a mystery, especially as I’ve known for a long time that most locations have their faults and are much the same once you are familiar with them. Your own viewpoint is always present wherever you go. If you allow it, it will flatten all differences and enhance dullness.

One spot will always stand out though.

For me, Devon is the pitch-perfect place to be, across a wide range of variables. It has everything. Solitude, crowds if you want them, sensible cities, intriguing towns and chocolate box villages, beaches to north and south, and the greatest moor of them all — Dartmoor. Not to mention cream teas and great fish. It never fails to amaze or surprise.

It’s also relatively peaceful by today’s standards, and is thankfully insulated from most of the big political questions of the day. Even union leaders are more benign in Devon than elsewhere.

The big society is a reality here. Take a look at Northlew on Dartmoor, the tiny village that set up its own wireless broadband service, undercutting BT and all other providers feeding off the internet backbone. Devonians are nothing if not enterprising. They have to be. Big Society writ large.

While Cornwall can at times seem like the Wild West, Devon is for ever civilized and tidy. It’s the perfect county for a writer, even better for a contemplative, superb for a conservationist.

This is not a hagiography, nor a billet-doux to a patch of red soil. It is nothing but the unadulterated truth.

The Royal Mail, it is said, intends to abolish counties for delivery purposes. Those upcountry folk just don’t get it, do they?

John Evans