Brett Ellis is not going o move out the village he lives in

Despite not really meaning it, and going so far as to use the local estate agent whose time we happily waste to see how much our drum would be worth, we had a forced introspective as to how much we really enjoy living in a village.

Having resided in towns and the big smoke, villages are, if mine is a yardstick, very much ingrained in an ‘us and them’ mentality.

St Albans, which is not a million miles hence, always seems to get the funding and the ‘glory’ despite us paying the same, if not more, council tax than they do, for which we get in return not an awful lot.

Want to save a few quid? Turn out the village's streetlights at night but keep St Albans’ on. Want to dump a new unaffordable housing development in the vicinity? Go to the village, where the voter base is not so harmful to our chances of re-election.

Our local ‘big’ car park, frequented by those popping to the shops for a pint of semi-skimmed or a box of takeaway chicken, is soon to become a paid-for exercise which will add further nails into the coffins of local businesses who struggle to keep their heads above the waterline at the best of times.

Brett Ellis enjoys living in a village It is the uniqueness of a village that arouses me. There's the chap who dresses like a cowboy and, rumour has it, ‘lives in’ the roundabout. The traveller family whose horse is often left to graze on the verge in the cul-de-sac, and the local slimming club whose members never seem to lose any weight.

The online community forums are the pulse of the village life, and many now choose to post anonymously, only to be outed as we all know each other so well, so we can fathom who the poster is from the tone of the post and the inevitable spelling mistakes.

And then we have the village idiot who, I am sure, may well be me. I prefer the term ‘jester’, but either way, reputations are easily made in the village and hard to dismantle should they become embedded.

But move back to the smoke? Not on your nelly: It's nice to give your neighbours a cheery wave as you all rub along nicely, as they aren’t the enemy, are they?

That mantle lies with the local big boys, and we have our pitchforks ready in unison for when they come for us once again, as they plunge us into darkness and charge us for daring to support local businesses as we doff our caps in village style semi-complicity.

• Brett Ellis is a teacher.