Welcome to the modern village describes most of the villages I have lived in. Eglwys Fach in particular, where the hub of social life was a nasty layby, where we used to play Elvis on a portable record player and 'THRILLS' watch the traffic!-though it id have a waterfall and in the woods behind ant's nests of astonishing size. That was before the days of Pizza. Whitebrook, near Monmouth, where they would hire coaches to go across the Severn Bridge to spend the day at Carrefour and we would drive 40 miles to Cardiff to buy garlic and the only recreation was to spend Saturday afternoon with the Flymo mowing mud! Middle Barton, lurking between Steeple Barton and Sandford St. Martin-such charming names- where there was such an absence of transport that there were people who went to Woodstock once a year and squashed council housing was surrounded by swathes of estates owned by bankers and tobacco magnates families.