Their experiences, like yours, are personal and not everyone's.

Mary

It's square pegs and round holes or round pegs and square holes, each needs
to be in the right place.
For us, living in the middle of nowhere is marvellous, we are happy with our
own company with barely another soul to talk to. Some city loving Brits come
here and foolishly buy a house in rural France and then long for the hustle
and bustle of city life. Each to their own :-)

I used to hate the morning / evening commutes to and from Nottingham city
centre, rush hour on the A52(?) and ring road. It only took one traffic
accident on the M1 and it could take two hours to drive in to work. Public
transport was too disjointed and always took two hours to get in to work
anyway with a 20 minute walk, train, then bus to get to work. It was
somewhat better when I got a motorbike and could drive down the middle of
the road through the stationery traffic :-)

The local supermarket used to be Asda and the car park full with people
shuffling round and round waiting for a space to appear. Tempers used to
flare and people got quite aggressive. The spaces were too narrow too - I
used to get irritated at the number of people who just flung their car doors
open straight into my car.

Sitting in traffic jams used to be a way of life for me in England. While
there are apparently traffic jams here, we've haven't been in one since
moving here two years ago. Probably because of our rural location. Oddly we
did have one minor mishap last year - I parked our van in the Intermarche
supermarket one quiet day leaving the space empty between mine and someone
else's vehicle. There were only around 10 cars in the entire car park
capable of holding 100's. We were just walking into the store and a driver
attempted to reverse into the space between mine and the other vehicle and
crashed straight into mine damaging the bumper. Why park there? The car park
was virtually empty - so why reverse into the only narrow space in the
entire car park?

David.