ABERNYTE HERITAGE GROUP – ORAL HISTORY 1950-2010
TRICIA NEVILLE, BALFOUR COTTAGE, ABERNYTE. 19 MARCH 2010
OK - IT'S CAROLINE BEATON HERE ON THE 19 MARCH 2010 - INTERVIEWING - TRICIA NEVILLE
CB: Um, I want to start with an easy question - That's when did you come to Abernyte?
TN: We moved in on the 9 October 2007, so about two and a half years ago
CB: Hmm Hmm thank you - and where did you come from immediately before?
TN: We were in ..ah...Broughty Ferry in Dundee - umm a very nice area but very suburban ahh lots of privet hedges and tall walls (laughs)....
CB: What brought you here?
TN: Well we had been looking for a while and thinking for a while that we really wanted to move to the countryside, in fact we had been thinking probably for 20 years that at some point we wanted to move to the countryside. Decided that we would let the children complete their schooling errrm and as our younger child began to approach the end of her schooling we started to look around errrm have lots of cycle rides all over the place we decided we would rule out across the water errm and we decided that we wanted Perthshire and we looked at one or two houses in this area we looked at one in Knapp and one somewhere else and we were just very very fortunate that we saw this house in Abernyte. We came up we immediately came to see it fell in love with the house didn’t know anything about the community or the village at all. Purely on the basis of the house we decided we would move here to Abernyte.
CB: So the next question I think slightly is going to make you be yourself it was either your only choice of option or was it one of a few?
TN: It was very much one of a few I mean I think we thought we wanted to us getting the house right was the big thing we wanted a much bigger garden than we had had and we wanted umm to be within a small community not isolated ahhm but we did want to be in a small community and eerrm we wanted it to be in Perthshire, so it wasn’t specifically Abernyte that we were looking.
CB: Can you tell me anymore about why you wanted to be within a small community what what do you think small communities are .....?
TN: I think in a way we felt errm whilst we were very happy all the years we lived in Dundee aahhhm and we were very involved, you know, I worked in the local school and the children went to the brownies and the guides and the scouts and we did all the things you do I never felt there was a strong sense of community. You know people could go we could go for weeks, months without seeing neighbours ahh but we were particularly friendly with a couple of people very close by which you know that that was not because we were neighbours particularly and I just felt that we kind of lost the way a wee bit as a society and that we weren’t looking out for one another we weren’t ummm aware of who who our neighbours were, who was living close by erhm who could help us who we could help and and I think also something I was certainly very aware of when we lived at Broughty Ferry all our friends in Broughty Ferry were a similar age group, similar income bracket, it was just really boring in fact that you know, I was looking to to to know people through multi-generational in my friendship base and income brackets didn’t interest me in any shape or form. Errmm and that’s one of the things that we love about here we have friends who have children who come round and talk to us and we have friends right up to Neen down the road who is 97. It’s wonderful! It’s really really marvellous.
CB: That brings us to the next question – which is how you feel you integrated into the village assuming you sought to do that? How do you feel after two plus years, how do you feel?
TN: I feel, I feel we have integrated well, but the real reason we have integrated well is because the village has been so welcoming erm you know the first week when we moved in people weren’t in your face but there would be maybe a bag of scones left at the door or there would be somebody with ??????? of Abernyte or somebody else would pop round just to say just to let you know that I’m just a couple of doors down pop in for coffee when you are settled in. Just lovely, you know. So I think I think, yes, we have integrated we are rally quite involved in a lot of things in the village now and it’s it’s not so much..ohh.. I think you have to show willing as a newcomer, as an incomer, but err if the village hadn’t been as welcoming as it has been it would have been a different kettle of fish altogether. I can’t fault the village in any way.
CB: So, in essence you were keen to integrate you were looking exactly at that and the village was keen to pull you in?
TN: Yes, yes.
CB: Was there anything that hindered integration, was there ever any sort of anxiety in your mind about living in such a small community?
TN: I don’t think so eerrr no I don’t think that there has been any problem ahhhmm
CB: Did anything surprise you then? Did anything ?????? surprise you, did anything subvert your expectations?
TN: No, I think we were surprised as I mentioned earlier when we decided to move to Abernyte it was based very much on the house and the garden and we had no particular expectations of what we were coming into in terms of the village. We had hoped people would be friendly as most people when they do move to a small place like this it’s what they hope, but we were overwhelmed by how friendly people were. Err it’s it’s amazing just how welcoming everyone’s been and errm they have been very keen that we do get involved in things and our neighbour you know right away said, you have to come along and join the garden club and then somebody said, you must come to the wine club you can come as my guest.....and somebody else said you know you can join us...there were always people there trying to encourage us to become errr part of the community. Yes.
CB: Can you tell me anymore about that .....Well you have told me already about how you interact with the village so you maybe don’t need to tell me anymore about that, unless you want to. Has it changed over the past couple of years have you ...you have maybe not been here very long for it to have changed, but you know have ..
TN: Ahhh...
CB: Maybe you just ....
TN: I think I’m still at a stage of learning there are people who I don’t really know yet ahh not so much in the village but in the outlying farms. Names are mentioned to me ‘Oh you know so and so’s been doing this..’ and I don’t still know who they are you know, but I think that takes time to get to know, to get to know everybody, errrmm .
CB: This is ..I find this hard to think about this question, to give me your thoughts on positive and maybe negative sides to village life although you might not feel there are any...that’s kind of.. why do you think?
TN: Ahh... positive, errm I think everybody looks out for everyone else. Shortly after we moved in ..this is a wee bit anecdotal...I hope that’s okay. Shortly after we moved in eerr there was an incident which we weren’t really aware of ..err..where a cow in the field came over the fence into the garden (laughs) and I think we had been out at work actually we hadn’t been aware at the time and I think it was only about six weeks later we found we realised that some of the fence posts had been replaced, so we thought ..I don’t think...what’s going on here? It turned out that somebody had seen this, who phoned someone else who phoned someone else and some people had got together and had come round and they managed to get the beast back into the field again, they had got some fence posts that somebody had left in their garage and some wire they rebuilt the fence for us. No fuss made about it no sort of thanks even expected you know, it was just done that was it and I was astonished. (laughs) Absolutely astonished that somebody would do that for us you know, eerrrmmm. And another time I remember, it was a day like this actually where it was extremely windy, I had a washing out and went off to work and I came back and was extremely puzzled to find my washing all neatly folded at the front door. And it had blown into the field – someone had crossed the field, got it out of the muddy grass taken it home, washed it, dried it and folded it and put it in our drive and again no notes, nothing, it’s just what you do in village life, you look out for one another and I would like to think that I would do the same for anyone in the village you know err so I mean that is very much positive. Negative....I suppose you don’t have many secrets in a village and and that hasn’t been any sort of a problem to date. Errm but you know people do say.... ‘Oh, I saw you going off a bit early did you work yesterday? (laughs) And also I think when we moved in and we thought ‘ This is a really interesting situation everybody seems to get on so well with everybody else. And to a large extent that’s true, but two and a half years down the line we realise that there are actually underlying currents as there are in any community..ahhh and sometimes it goes back several generations you know with things that happened to their former years and things that haven’t been forgotten. So I suppose some people might like to sit on that negative aspect of village life.
CB: That’s interesting.....This is virtually the final question...can you speak to me any more about your life here? Or anything else that hasn’t been covered in these brief questions, anything else that you think is important in relation to yourself and your life here, how do you feel about it?
TN: I think, I think both my husband and myself feel that we have found where we truly want to be and that’s not an easy thing to be able to say, but I don’t think we have ever been as happy as we are here and we just love it we love everything about living in Abernyte, we really do. We love the fact that you can leave your door and go for fantastic walks without having to get into your car and we love the fact that you open the curtains and look out and see the sheep in the morning you know grazing beside us with wonderful sunrises errr great neighbours, we couldn’t have better neighbours, we are very very lucky ehhm my husband’s actually closer to his work here than he was in Broughty Ferry, so that’s a plus for him, he is sometimes able to nip home at lunchtime which he likes. Errrmm interesting though when we moved here, the same week we moved here, very good friends of ours moved here erm these were friends of ours that we had had in Broughty Ferry, we played tennis with them every Friday night we played doubles for years and they decided much later than ourselves that they wanted to move from Broughty Ferry and two weeks after we bought here they bought North Pinkindie which of course is out of the village a little bit, but it has been quite interesting seeing how they have integrated because they are not within the village the main part of the village. And I think for them it has been more difficult, possibly because they have erm I don’t know whether being part of the community was as big a thing to them as it was for us and so they have maybe been slower at joining things and getting involved. But certainly living outside the village has taken them longer to get to know people and I think they are getting there now but for quite a time they were quite reliant on us introducing them to people I think. Umm.. but no, I have to say that Ron and I really feel that we won’t move from here now, not unless something horrible happened we do not intend to move we love it here and our children, both the girls were really quite opposed to us moving here we were living where they had grown up but our son was much more philosophical and laid back but our girls really were quite upset at the idea of us moving here....and now they can’t get enough of it, you know, they are here at weekends whenever they can and they have been totally won over by Abernyte’s magic (laughs).
CB: I think we will stop there. Thank you very much.