Village people

There are many good reasons to read Dickens.  His novels are a tremendous source of fabulous names, any of which are useful as an alias during that tricky time at the start of a relationship when you don’t want to commit too much, like giving your real name, such a period usually lasting between three weeks and five years.  Ironically, given the names Dickens usually ascribed his characters, if you do find a girl who is apparently willing to hook up with you and chance going through life as ‘Mrs Fizzyclotter’, then that gal’s a keeper.
Another reason is to see the changes that have happened to England, for instance the description of a walk from the centre of London, across some fields, to reach the village of Camden.  My understanding is that there are now no fields between the centre of London and Camden now, although there are apparently a shedload of 4x4s, despite that lack of agriculture.
The march towards modernity has seen suburbs swell to encapsulate villages and it’s a curious phenomenon when new neighbourhoods flow around an established village, leaving it untouched.
A standard issue village comes with a church, pub, post office and an idiot.  Ducking stool and pond are optional, but essential is the villager mentality, typified by rightly despising anyone who lives beyond the speed limit and ‘Britain in bloom’ signs that mark the village borders.  This is a mind-set that, if we’re being generous, we could say originated in the age of the Plague, when anyone from outside the village was treated with suspicion and a stranger with a cough was stoned to death on the spot, with disinfected rocks.
Villagers jealously guard their status, which is why the latest missive from the Post Office, or post office inc. or post office ltd. or whatever the hell it’s now called, was an interesting and provocaative proposal to grant the name of the village to the wider area.  We are assured that this will not have any effect on post codes or the actual postal address, it’s just that we can all, officially, add another line to our address, but that line is the name of the local village.
Mainly, those that don’t live in the village view this as a good thing as it means a couple of things; a posher address and a couple of grand on your house value. 
For the villagers, it’s most probably seen as the dilution of identity. 
For anyone who lives outside the village who has aspirations of one day living in the village itself, it’s nothing short of an outrage, as the correct way to obtain a village address is to, you know, actually move there, rather than tick a box.
I’ve lived in villages, proper villages, they have a pub at each end, a church in the middle, a small store with a post office counter at the back and a green.  (Never saw an idiot though, although my neighbours at the time did mention one).  They also have fields at the end of the road between you and a farm and the next village, which you never visit, because those plague-carrying bastards can’t be trusted.
There are also hamlets.  Typically a few houses that have sort of huddled together for company, these are communities that once simultaneously aspired to village status but didn’t want to spoil the ‘character’ of the place but now, like everyone, just want broadband.
The vote will most probably swing in the direction of granting the name of the village to the surrounding postal area, through the simple mechanics that one only takes action, that is, fills out a form, if one objects. 
It’s one thing to object, it’s another to act on that objection, and it’s another thing entirely to, as is required, put that objection in words.  The only people with the confidence to scrawl ‘they’re just not our sort!’ on a post card and send it off are the villagers, who are of course outnumbered by those who want to be villagers, or who can’t be arsed.
By the way, if you can’t be arsed about the name of where you live, you’re not a villager.