Feeling Like a Local

Shaftesbury, Dorset – Morning

I am making my way through Bill Bryson’s classic, In a Sunburned Country . It’s the one where he travels through Australia through a period of several years. I am enjoying it so far but I haven’t even gotten through the first one hundred pages. I found something that I particularly enjoyed and wanted to share:

“I bought a morning newspaper and found my way into a cafe. It always amazes me how seldom visitors bother with local papers. Personally, I can think of nothing more exciting… than to read newspapers form a part of the world that you know almost nothing about. What comfort it is to find a nation preoccupied by matters of no possible consequence to one’s self. I love reading about scandals about minister of whom I have never heard… I love above all to venture in to the color supplements and see what’s fashionable for the beach and this part of the world, what’s new for the kitchen, what I might get for my money if I had A$400,000 and a reason to live in Dubbo for Woolloomooloo. There is something about all of this that feel privillaged, almost illicit, like going through a stranger’s drawers. Where else can you get this much pleasure for a handful of coins?”

The reason I highlight this selection is because I now know that I am not alone in the world. I love nothing more than to read the English newspaper of the local village that I am in or small American town I am visiting.

I am a news junkie and I always have been, and I love being a temporary local; which is the point of traveling. I generally rank how much I like a place based upon how much I would like to live there. I like it when the places I travel to make that big of an impression on me.

Reading this passage brought back fond memories of getting up at sunrise in my favorite village in England, Shaftesbury, Dorset, and walking over to the news agent’s and purchasing the local newspaper – The Daily Echo. I love nothing more than to know who is opening the new local pool, or to see how much the charming cottage on Bell Street is going for. Bill Bryson is right. All it takes is £1 to feel like I live there for just a moment.

And that’s rather nice.