I’m sitting at a table outside my favourite breakfast café in Windermere. We moved from London to Cumbria only 24 hours earlier. It’s sunny and the place is crowded; there’s a queue of people waiting for somewhere to sit. “Don’t look up or catch anyone’s eye,” I hiss at my husband, Simon. “Someone might ask to share our table.”
Simon loves talking to new people; he’s one of the few people I know who rubs his hands
with glee when an invitation to a networking event arrives. I can’t think of anything worse. I’ve reached the age where I’m not especially excited to meet anyone new; it’s hard enough to find the time to see the people I know and love already. When you spend most of your week working in an open-plan office of 800 people, the weekends become a short, sweet break from niceties. By the time Saturday rolls in, I’m all small-talked out, and running low on kindness.
Of course, Simon can’t help look up and smile at the couple standing next to our table and, inevitably, I hear him utter: “There’s room for two more on here. We can move along.” They take up his offer. I’m fuming. They sit down and our breakfast order arrives. I now have to tuck into a greedily-sized eggs Benedict and hash browns in close proximity to the strangers who have yet to order; the fact that I have food and they don’t makes me a little uncomfortable. It feels like an odd dinner party where only half the guests get served a meal. I start a hushed, domestic-themed conversation with Simon to ward off any attempt at conversation from the strangers. But to no avail.
“Are you here for the weekend or local?” asks the stranger husband. My shoulders slump. Here we go... polite chit-chat when all I want to do is stuff my face with food. In the middle of this, the nice lady who owns the café comes to give Simon a hug. It turns out they were at school together. Of course they were. “And you must be Jeremy! I’m so excited to meet you. Give me a hug!” I quickly try to swallow the hash brown and wipe some ketchup from my lips before standing up for my hug. Afterwards, I’m slightly mortified to note that some of the ketchup managed to make it onto the side of her hair. I don’t know her well enough to mention it.
The conversation with the café owner and the couple sharing our table moves on to other good places to eat in the Lake District. The rest of my breakfast remains untouched as I can’t eat and talk to strangers at the same time. The woman with three young children at the next table joins in the conversation too, as it turns out her husband is the chef at one of the restaurants mentioned. Simon swaps numbers with her as he wants to eat there and it’s hard to get a table. I’m exhausted from all this bonhomie before 11am.
This, it seems, is my new life up North. After 34 years of living in London, we moved to the Lake District because it’s where Simon hails from and where his family and many of his friends still reside. He wanted to move back. Seduced by the lakes, mountains and peace, I happily went along with the idea and managed to arrange my work schedule so that I only spend three days a week in my London office. But it will clearly take some time to adapt. One minute I’m living in Kilburn where at one end of our street you’re likely to get caught up in a gang fight outside Greggs, at the other end you’re likely to get mown down by a yummy mummy armed with a pram determined to beat you to the queue at Gail’s. If someone I don’t know approaches me on the street in London, I assume they’re either after my iPhone or about to tell me a fabricated story about potentially missing their daughter’s school play because someone stole their wallet and they don’t have the bus fare to get there.
After the exhaustingly chatty breakfast, we return home to spend the day carting crates from the barn into the house and unpacking them. I’m determined to get as much done before returning to London on the Monday morning. Except at regular intervals strange cars trundle down the driveway and people I don’t know get out of them. My first instinct is to get ready to sign for an Amazon delivery, but the strangers are carrying cakes, or dishes of shepherd’s pie, or flowers. “You must be Jeremy,” they say, “Welcome to the Lakes.” After a few of these visits — each one involves me interrupting my unpacking and having a cup of tea with them — I ask Simon if anyone else is due to pop by.
“I don’t know,” he replies cheerily.
“Well, don’t they text or call first to see if we’re busy?” Apparently not. Early on Sunday morning, when Simon has popped out to the shops, and I’m soaking in the bath, I hear a voice call up from below: “Hello, hello. Anyone here? We thought we’d pop by on our way back from church.” Jesus. It’s Simon’s dad.
The reality is that everyone here is nice and friendly, and they don’t necessarily live lives governed 24/7 by Microsoft Outlook diaries and zealous PAs. When you literally have more space around you, you become less protective of your own space. If spontaneously popping over to someone’s house is more likely to involve a 15-minute drive and a couple of potholes rather than a 45-minute bus ride sitting next to someone in a K-hole, the idea makes a lot more sense. If you can stand on the street and talk to someone without being run over by pedestrians glued to their iPhones, the casual encounter seems less onerous. If you can spend time with your family without having to spend the night, it seems more treat than task.
I just have to renormalise, to feel free to engage in a conversation that isn’t laced with caustic one-liners, to embrace the everyday, to not check my pockets when someone approaches me, to not climb a fell with the same manic determination I attack the escalators at Oxford Circus, nor stress about the kitchen being messy (or being in the bath) if someone comes to the house without an “appointment”. Until I’m able to tackle these, the reality is the only stranger danger around up here is probably me.
Jeremy Langmead is a writer, editor and the author of Vain Glorious: A Shameless Guide for Men Who Want to Look Their Best, out now. This article appeared in the May-June 2020 issue of Esquire.
