Home Town Worship.

I was until recently living in the village where I was brought up. It is a pleasant place with a section of Hadrian's Wall running through it, a couple of pubs some small shops and a filling station. A village like many others, a dormitory for some, their whole existence for others with the majority of the residents falling somewhere in between.
I lived there for the first 19 years of my life before moving away to the South East of England to work. I was away for 9 years and for all of that time there wasn't a day where I didn't wish to be back 'home'. This attitude really did me no favours, I was always agitating to travel back up North for short and long breaks and never missed an opportunity to say how much I hated where I was and wished to be somewhere else. It cost me my first marriage, this attitude and also held me back at work because I was never fully committed to my job, I always had part of my mind on how to 'escape'.
When I did finally get back to the North, I found that the old place I called home had changed, my school friends had moved on, if not physically then mentally and I found myself out on a limb which I didn't climb off for nearly 25 years. I spent most of that time claiming to be happy, back at the old homestead, 'I'll leave this house feet first' was my mantra. How wrong I was. It took the loss of a second marriage, careless I know, to lift the scales from my eyes and realise that my blind dedication to my home village was a cause of many of my problems. I wanted to be a part of a life that had long gone, it wasn't 'my village' any more, if it ever had been. I was forced to sell up and move due to my divorce and start looking for a new place to live and new people to interact with. That move has been a huge benefit to me, my mood has improved and my optimism has finally been allowed to rise to the surface. Things will never be perfect, that is never possible where life is involved but at least the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't have to be a train coming towards me.
I am happy with my choice, albeit originally made under protest which has freed me from the shackles of Home Town Worship and has allowed me to move forward.
Thanks to The Brother for his support and to Madame for forcing my hand I now look at life from a lighter perspective.
Per Ardua Ad Astra and TTFN.