{"id":16503,"date":"2024-03-22T14:13:20","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T14:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/village-yard\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T14:13:20","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T14:13:20","slug":"village-yard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/village-yard\/","title":{"rendered":"Village Yard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16499\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1685\" height=\"1123\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a.jpg 1685w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-600x400.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-441x294.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-768x512.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/8c55a334836da8b35446de51f419ac1a-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1685px) 100vw, 1685px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Village Yard<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>by Vivien Freeman<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Good afternoon, my name&#8217;s Octavia. I welcome all new residents,<br \/>help you to settle in. I know that I can trust you to respect<br \/>this property, care for it and keep it clean. It&#8217;s also <br \/>an historic building, part of our heritage. Yours too now,<br \/>as you will be staying here. Yes, you will. Have no fear.<\/p>\n<p>Some of you will know that when my party came to power,<br \/>we outlawed oligarchs, absentee landlords and second homes \u2013<br \/>houses standing empty for most of the year, as this one did. <br \/>In all the time that I&#8217;ve lived in this village, I&#8217;ve only seen <br \/>the previous owner once \u2013 the day he had to come from London<br \/>to sign the papers. That portrait on the staircase is of him. Yes,<br \/>I know what you&#8217;re saying, he looks a perfectly pleasant<br \/>white-haired gentleman, and not at all the fascist bastard <br \/>which in reality he is. That&#8217;s how they got away with it &#8211; <br \/>the other lot and their financial backers in fossil fuels &#8211; conning <br \/>the politically naive, encouraging xenophobic bigots. You&#8217;ll learn <br \/>these words soon enough, forgive me for digressing.<br \/>Let&#8217;s just say, that as a native who isn&#8217;t intolerant or on the make, <br \/>but one who cherishes our past, just as I cherish you, our present<br \/>and our future, I wish you all total joy living here, and I rest <br \/>assured you will always do the best for your antique new home.<\/p>\n<p>And now let&#8217;s go and have a chat, so we can get to know <br \/>each other properly, and you can ask me any questions.<br \/>This way, please, to the drawing room, where your fellow villagers<br \/>are waiting for you. They&#8217;ve laid on tea and Welsh cakes which<br \/>some of them have made especially. They&#8217;re very keen to meet you.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Village Yard by Vivien Freeman Good afternoon, my name&#8217;s Octavia. I welcome all new residents,help you to settle in. I know that I can trust you to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":693,"featured_media":16499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/693"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}