2011 Streak 70/365: Village of the year?

2011 Streak 70/365: Cycle - 20.5 miles, Time - 1hr 34 min, Weather - clear and bright but with a sharp wind

My route today took me through Redbourn, a village that has an amazingly extensive green and a high street with many old buildings and some lingering atmosphere of a past age. I took this photo of the butchers was because it looked as it the shop hadn't changed much in 100 years. But now I am back home I think I made a mistake. I should have walked a little further up the street and taken a picture of the barbers with a red a white striped pole. In the window was a notice saying "we are now open on wednesday afternoons". If anything is a throwback to a past age it is the idea of half-day closing, when all the shops in a town shut-down. As if the the whole place let out a collective sigh and said "and now relax".

Whenever I pass through Redbourn, which I quite like to do, I always try to imagine what it would have been like if it, instead of Hemel, had become the new town. Originally it had been earmarked but the decision was changed, principally because Hemel had the better rail links. I look at the old High Street, certain it would have been preserved (as it has been at Hemel and other new towns) but I don't know if the shops would have survived. I also wonder what would have happened to the green and where the new centre would have been built.

This sort of counterfactual speculation is quite futile but difficult to resist, especially when they have a sign proclaiming themselves "Village of the Year". What a ludicrous idea! I can understand competition when it means running faster or scoring more goals but what exactly does a village have to do to move up the table? And if you win the title one year, what would have to go wrong for you to fall from grace the next?

A few 1960s housing estates and there would be no discussion.