Picture postcards...don't scratch and sniff though.

I’m in a fortunate position.  I walk around town and see postcard pictures everywhere.  Spring has kicked in, and flowers in bloom married with fresh green leaves and blossom transform the nature of the place.  Stroud is a curious town, and a common cross section of England, or so it feels to me.  Common in that affluence and poverty sit side by side in stark contrast; it is strikingly similar to New Zealand.

In the decade or so I lived in New Zealand, I spent the majority of my time in a town of a similar size and population to Stroud.  Oamaru, in fact, boasts a centre arguably as attractive as this Cotswold Town.  Both, too, are home to a clear demonstration of the disparity in wealth and lifestyle of their country’s population.  They could run side by side, matching boutique shop with boutique shop, coffee house with coffee house, bar with bar.  Each has a thriving and abstract arts community.  The major difference between the two is outlook: Oamaru has the sea, Stroud has the hills.

The only other town I lived in in New Zealand was Picton.  It serves as gateway to the south island, for those arriving by ferry, and is surrounded by the natural beauty of the Marlborough Sounds.  Oamaru, Picton and Stroud all wear the fissure between those that have and those that don’t on their sleeves.

Where I am now, I have the distinctive aroma of decay that comes from the malaise of a place that feels like its treading water.  I mean the country now, not simply Stroud.  Actually, that’s a misstatement, the country is thrashing itself around and bellowing at itself as it descends into madness trying to inch its way through the predicament it has got itself in.  The country laughs then snarls at itself as the million stabbings bleed it slowly into torpor.  Life in the communities of the country, though, feels different.

As I have said before, there is much that has changed since I have been away but only fractionally.  I still feel uncomfortable being here and hear the yelled reproach “why don’t you fuck back off to where you’ve come from, then!?” ringing in my ears as I write this.  Here is where I come from though and here was the place I very determinedly left.  Circumstance has brought me back and seeing these fractional changes simply serves to make stronger the stench of rot.

There’s the irony, of course.  Rot fertilises.  Rot should promote growth.  Rot should bed in the shoots of progress and give its roots nourishment and a sure foundation from which to grow.  That is nature’s way.  It’s there.  I see the small businesses and enterprises of the people of the town showing that growth and purpose and drive.  But the smell of shit still clings to the air.  The empty shops, the state of floor we have to walk or drive on, the inordinate prices for ordinary things, the demands on your time to provide your own slim-line service and then the gnashing teeth of officialdom, hidden behind the gum-shield of the letterhead, when the system goes wrong and they actually have to speak with you.  And the poverty.

New Zealand was as bad; although life did appear to function a lot better there - the “she’ll be right” attitude that built a nation.  Again, though, much like here, the underlying prejudice against the have nots and those of an ethnicity not white was startling – Taika Waititi wasn’t buggering around.

What do I know?  I’m just a sick bloke trying (“Very trying!” I hear you all yell) and still floundering around.  I know that coffee in Stroud still isn’t great – apart from Black Books Café, obv – and that the library is brilliant: I miss the sea and the stingrays.  I know that both the UK and NZ are tolerably decent places that don’t quite know how to get their act or heart in order.  I know that were I German or Greek I would be able to write exactly the same piece about there too.  I would however like the postcard pictures to smell of oregano or wurst, though, not just worse.