community – Pete's Blog

We felt very lucky this week to be invited to join the local people at a bonfire night celebration.

North Uist is a sparsely populated island, and the cottage we are staying in is in one of the remotest areas – Balranald. It has a church, a few houses, quite a few cows and a bird sanctuary. In the summer it has a campsite that looks as if it would be pretty busy but at this time of year that is closed and there is no one here.

That suits us very well. Whether on Narrowboat Thuis, or at home, we are comfortable with our own company and have had a very relaxing time here. The nearest proper village is Bhaigh (Bayhead) which is four miles away. It has about 40 houses and a shop. It also has the High School for North Uist, and every day about twenty minibuses carry the children to school from all around the island.

On bonfire night they bring together the local community to eat burgers, drink Irn Bru and watch fireworks. It was a great night. Not the most impressive display I have ever seen but still a very good one, complemented by the bonfire, the full moon, and the reflections in the sea. But what really made it was a couple of hundred people from toddlers to ancients gathered to enjoy it together.

The Hebridean accent is probably the softest of all the Scottish areas and I could hear it in the excitement of the little ones, the bickering of the teens, and the conversations between farmers and other locals. They had all arrived in their pickup trucks from miles around to be together.

One thing that did amuse me was hearing a father telling his child how good it was to celebrate the foiling of a Catholic plot, five hundred years later. Until the five mile causeway was built between the islands in 1960, there was very little mixing between Catholic South Uist and Protestant North Uist. I guess some views remain pretty embedded.

It was a lovely evening and it was good to be able to join such a distant but close community. Thank you.

Last Friday we were travelling along the Grand Union canal, looking for somewhere to moor up for a few days to get through the 40°C heatwave. We came up with three options. We could stay in Tring Cutting, a deep, tree covered mile of canal, with loads of shade but no facilities. We could go to the end of the Aylesbury arm of the canal and stay in the basin there, with some shade, water available and access to the town centre. Or we could stay in the Aylesbury Canal Society (ACS) marina, with electricity, water, toilets, seats outside in the shade, and two minutes from a Lidl, but with the boat in bright sunshine. We chose that one.

From a heatwave perspective I think it was a good choice. The boat did get roasting hot in the afternoons and evenings, but we got my brother to bring a fan, so that at lest the air was moving, We had plenty to drink and bought some ice from the supermarket. And most of the time, I and the dogs sat outside, with the other boat residents, talking about canals we have visited and people we have met.

The ACS members are clearly a community. They help each other whenever there is a problem. They all get involved with society events. Everyone knows what is going on in everyone else’s lives. When we were travelling there, other non-ACS boaters told us they are a bit of a clique. They keep themselves to themselves and do not welcome outsiders. We did not find that. We found them helpful. But I can see why it would be said. They are somewhat obsessed with themselves and what they do. Does that make them a clique?

I remember before I retired that I consciously tried to avoid cliques and organisational politics. I had had too many bad experiences of people trying to become successful by walking over others. Or “in crowds” that would not let me join. But with hindsight, perhaps some of my teams must have looked a bit like cliques to others. What made us successful was that we all looked after each other and were proud of ourselves as “the best” team.

I suspect that is how it is with ACS. They are a successful community that others see as a clique.

Are you part of any great communities? Is that how others see them?

Tag: community

Can you have a community when houses are miles apart?

When is a community a clique?