This was an exercise to describe somewhere very familiar to me through the eyes of someone who’d never seen it before. (For the record, in reference to the image, I’ve yet to see a village green with mowing lines on the grass)

Walking along the high street, Debra took a left turn into a short, one-way road lined with shops and old houses. At the end, she could see a large chestnut tree, on what looked like a bit of green space.

As she got closer she realised, it wasn’t just green space, it was an honest-to-goodness, straight-out-of-a-storybook village green.

It was a good size, surprisingly large, although what did she know about that sort of thing? The chestnut she’d spotted marked a corner, and the start of a long row of trees, marking the divide between road and grass along one side. There were a few other trees dotted about, mostly in the quarter to her right, but it really was just a wide stretch of green grass, with a few paths, and benches, and a pond in the middle.

People walked their dogs, children chased brightly coloured balls, teenagers lounged and chatted on the grass, and older people sat and chatted on the benches. On the pond, ducks paddled and avoided two swans. There were actual swans on the pond, and no one even blinked.

Debra felt as if she’d walked into a different world, either a story, or a theme park – a bit like Disneyland’s Main Street, but this was English Village™. And it went further. Behind the oak and another chestnut, and a cluster of three trees she wasn’t sure of, was woodland. That must be the Common. She’d been imagining that all wrong too. She thought it would look more like the Green, but this was forest, maybe not old growth, but proper trees and trails and it looked like it went a fair way.

And all of this in the middle of London. Well, maybe not the middle, middle, but not that far out. It was astounding.

Then the world of English Village™ added the final cherry. A clop of hooves behind, and five horses, the riders mostly older ladies in jodhpurs and knee-high riding boots, crossed the road next to her, and began ambling up the side of the Green, towards the shaded paths of the Common. They had a riding stable here? How?