In 2003 we sold our large family home in London. With the proceeds we bought a smaller house close by and, a year later a cottage in France. In these two homes I have spent years learning French and developing the wherewithal to write my blogs. And there has been another acquisition – since my retirement I have becoming increasingly part of, and identified with the two communities in which I live – the one in Richmond, a busy London suburb, the other in Tréguennec, a quiet village in Brittany.

Richmond, where we now spend almost seven months of the year, is very special with its beautiful walks and vistas, and its umpteen facilities – shops, theatres, restaurants, cinemas. But despite these features, Richmond as a whole is not what I see as ‘mine’. I actually identify more with the tiny corner of Richmond in which we live – a quasi private, pedestrian-only cul-de-sac in which there is a U-shaped pathway along which are set eight houses. Moreover, while each house has a different arrangement at the back, at the front we all share a garden with trees and shrubs. 

This community, which has thirteen people of whom the majority are retired, has become a haven, indeed, almost a family. Our closeness is very much coupled with a respect for each other’s privacy, and with this arrangement we provided one another with invaluable support during the Covid shutdowns – a warmth that has persisted.  So, while in Richmond my community resides in a quiet, hidden-away enclave, in Tréguennec I define my community very differently. It is an event in this community that is the subject of this blog.

Tréguennec has just over 300 inhabitants who, in the main, live in houses strung along a narrow, forked, ‘high’ street. No shops, no cafes, no cash points just a ‘town’ hall with its elected councillors, a small primary school, a tarmac-covered play area and two chapels – one now de-consecrated. The oldest part of the village dates from the 13th century although nothing remains of that period nor of an earlier Neolithic settlement. On the mound where there was once a church is a now a ‘new’ chapel – built in 1878. We live in a house just opposite in a part called the ‘The Old Town’.

Our house has its back to the road with its windows on the opposite side facing south over our garden. In the house, there is a calm that we love; if cars go by we hear nothing – tractors and the like perhaps a little. If there is noise, most often it comes from the waves of the sea churning around a mile away. 

With this isolation, what makes up my community in Tréguennec, which for me is as strong as the one in Richmond, are the people who live or work at our end of the village or in villages nearby with whom I have developed a closeness and a shared understanding. And oddly, as well as with the people I now very much identify with the village itself – I feel I am now a ‘Tréguennecois’.

It was in this vein that I was surprised and delighted, even rejoiced, when I discovered that the town hall had decided to spend money on painting a rainbow-coloured ‘zebra’ crossing across the main street. 

One morning last week I had gone early to the baker in an adjoining village then on to see a friend. When I returned, on one side of the road a couple of high-viz men were just finishing painting two separate, brightly-coloured panels – one red, one yellow – over one end of a once-faded pedestrian crossing. I asked what the other colours would be and after referring to his instruction manual one of the men said that by the evening the traditional crossing would be repainted in the colours of the rainbow (see illustration). It was, I later learned, a colourful distraction that would serve as part of the Mayor’s traffic calming project.

It was not just the brashness that I liked but I was so proud that those who run ‘my’ tiny community in far-off Brittany had felt it worthwhile embracing the gay and lesbian (GLBTQ+) community. Interestingly, when I asked twenty or so locals and passers-by what they felt, with warm smiles all welcomed its prettiness while only two had any notion of, and celebrated, its possible link with equality issues. However, such a link will not have escaped the local council which will know that a similar crossing in Quimper, a city nearby, had twice been defaced by people who saw the rainbow theme as an affront.

In terms of community, while I was interested when a rainbow crossing was painted in Richmond, when the same occurred in ‘my’ Tréguennec, I rejoiced. 

The illustration is a photo of the rainbow coloured pedestrian crossing taken a few hours after it had been painted across the main street in Tréguennec.

For helping me write this blog I would like to thank Dominic, Rohan and Vivien.