Going for the walk dictated by my physician, I was struck by the friendly atmosphere of the various estates I passed through.
Why was this? I detected a certain homogeneity about the place.
The residents are mainly what we would call "middle class".
On reflection this didn't make much sense.
It had struck me that most - perhaps all - of those who live around here were "people like us" as I might say to my family.
Various descriptions came into my mind: former artisans; upwardly mobile and just about making it; bourgeoisie.
"Middle Class" or "Working Class" didn't seem to fit either.
After all my wife was Prussian aristocracy, and I know of at least one other family entered into Debrett.
Service.
I have lived here for eighteen years now, enough to get the feel of the detail.
Service rank seems a useful guideline.
"Executive" or "Managerial" is perhaps the most appropriate generality.
It serves to describe nearly all those that I know.
Honours awarded around here are usually MBE rather than OBE, most retirees who served in the armed forces left with senior rank, but not too senior - senior sergeants and warrant officers, captains and majors, flight lieutenants and squadron leaders, but not colonels, or wing commanders, generals, and above.
These latter live in the bigger houses clustered around the poshest golf course and the more expensive hotels in the neighhbourhood.
So I turned my thoughts to my family.
As a clergyman I suppose I became by definition "Middle class".
The family owned its own houses, too, making us at least in the upper tier of the artisan category.
My father's dad always said that we were "yeomen" owing our loyalty to the local Duke.
One of his cousins had something a little different to say: that we were cattle men who drifted down from a place in the Scottish Highland to settle in a wild area of the Scottish-English Border.
To me the matter of what class we have been seems fairly useless speculation.
These days, however, it is income that matters so far as politics is concerned.
The nomencalture of classification into the orders of society is meaningless except for those inclined to snobbery, real or inverted.
Times are changing and these terms are useful only for political rhetoric.
Here on the estate we live happily together in the main, helping and supportive, friendly and accepting.
We have our share of gossips and complainers...
but these crop up everywhere.
We are what we are and the people around here seem pleased to accept just that.