Bog Myrtle & Peat

I found a stranger in the close. He’d come to introduce himself as my new neighbour, and also to find out where the stopcock was for his water. It was good to meet him, but in truth I’m not yet done with my old neighbour who died last spring. Perhaps the odds were already stacked against me liking this man, who is a dentist from Glasgow. 

He hopes to come down to stay in his new second home at weekends, but it’ll be tricky at first while the renovation works are going on. The whole place needs a lot of modernising, he said, and I let him go on: “But there’s so much potential in the yard, and there’s five acres of grass beside the house. You could put some of your sheep in there if you like”, he told me. It would save him mowing it – an idea which made him laugh. Then he said “My wife is keen on rewilding, so I’ll ask her and we can make a plan? – have you read that book by Arabella Tree?”

The guy’s just fine, but I was struck by the fact that he never wanted to be here. His wife and he had looked at other properties in Argyll and the Borders, though when it came to the crunch only Galloway was cheap enough. He told me this as if I’d weighed up options of my own; as if place to me was choice and I’d come from somewhere else myself. Besides which Jenny (that’s his wife) said it was a good investment. It would surely hold its value, particularly if they make us into a National Park. She likes to think the kids will come and stay here sometimes too, and maybe go to the Watersports Centre.

I hear talk of a housing crisis beyond the horizon. The radio says “This country will die if it ever stops growing”, and each night I lie in bed and feel the heave of another million souls waking up to the realisation that what I have is theirs as well. Of course it’s only fair that folk should be allowed to buy themselves a piece of peace in the country, but here is how that trend is manifested – small talk with passing strangers in the close, putting soft and reasonable faces to the fashion of “bolt-hole” ownership. But it’s no great secret that second homes kill rural communities. In Wales, they’re considered to be a damnable hazard, so it’s strange that everybody who has one is able to provide a plausible, laudable reason for why they’re not part of the problem.

Yes, he’s fine by me, this man who comes here once a week and turns the lights off when he goes. But I won’t pretend that he is my new neighbour, because I do not have a neighbour now.