Serving your community with legitimacy

Countryside Column for 18 April.

I have before me a sheaf of forms to complete.  They’re nomination papers for the forthcoming Parish Council elections and are, frankly, a bit intimidating.

There’s a seven page Guidance for Candidates.  Part 1 says: “before starting the process … potential candidates need to …  meet all the requirements for standing for election.  You should therefore read Part 1 of our guidance.” 

But I thought I WAS reading Part 1.  And there’s nothing about eligibility here. However on the Consent to Nomination form it says you need to be a commonwealth or EU citizen, over 18, and to have worked in the parish or lived in or close by it for the past year.

Another seven page form gives you myriad reasons why you might be disqualified from standing.   Most common seem to be working for the local authority or having been in jail within the past 5 years.

Anyway I wont go on about the bureaucracy.  It’s irksome but can be dealt with. The important thing is to encourage people to participate on their own local council.  And it’s not that onerous. You only NEED to attend 10 meetings a year. Though it gets more interesting if you are more active and join a committee or two.

You’ll discover a great deal about your community and about the other tiers of local government above you – the District and County Councils.  Some of the work is fairly mundane – ensuring the bus shelter and public toilets are kept clean – but you do have a say on local planning applications and there’s usually a small budget which members can decide how to spend.

Naturally you get moaned at a bit. But that’s sort of why you are there: to help others with their problems or concerns.

The biggest problem is getting enough people involved.  Our parish has struggled to maintain its full complement of nine councillors.  If fewer than ten nominations are received for the May elections, we’ll be elected without a vote.  That saves the council a chunk of money, but arguably gives us rather less legitimacy.  I think it’s better for residents actively to vote for specific people.

  Though to be honest I’m not that keen on campaigning. There’s three pages of guidance on what I’d be allowed to spend.  I don’t want to find I’m being castigated over my expenses.  No.  I don’t have a duck house.

The benefit of a man of wise counsel

Countryside Column for 11^th April

The evening light was fading outside the church’s leaded windows.

Inside, the bulbs were low, the rector was informal in a pullover and the Lady Chapel was full to overflowing.

Residents had gathered on the news of the death of a village doyen.  Anthony Beattie had been taken ill abroad. His wife rushed out from England and reported he seemed to be recovering.  But then came the shocking news that he had died.

He was a tall man with a wry smile who could be spotted daily walking his dog along the lanes. He’d retired ten years back and thrown himself into village life. Early on he agreed to help our community orchard. He was instrumental in re-writing the constitution and seeing through our change to charitable status.  It was he who dealt with the Charity Commission and advised us neophyte trustees how to proceed. 

Then he involved himself in the Parish Plan, organising and collating questionnaires about future directions for the village, advising on the many charities within its boundaries and gently steering various committees forward. He seemed to love minutiae and have inexhaustible patience for drafting complex sub-clauses. On each and every issue he proffered sage advice.

I’d known vaguely he’d been in the diplomatic service but had no idea until he died just how important a player he’d been, and on how wide a stage he’d operated.

Anthony hadn’t travelled much since his last posting as British Ambassador to a UN agency in Rome.  But before that he’d flown the globe in senior management roles for the World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the UK’s Department for International Development. He’d begun his public service career as a development economist in Africa.

And it was in Africa he died.  A few weeks ago he went off to Kenya and Tanzania to do a short job for the World Bank. But still he emailed us all back home in Kent about projects in which we were jointly involved.  He was taken ill in Dar es Salaam and flown to Johannesburg for treatment which failed to save him.

As we left the church and gathered at the lychgate to exchange memories, I reflected on how much rural villages need the expertise of such men and how lucky we were to have had his wise counsel.  We will miss it.  And him.

Ditching the culvert

Countryside Column for 4^th April

            I looked out of the bedroom window the other morning to see the front garden covered in a sheen of water. Given the recent weather this might not seem exactly front-page news. More on the par with Claud Cockburn’s famously boring headline: “small earthquake in Chile, not many dead".

            But the point is that it hadn’t actually been raining for a few days, so how and why did the lawn resemble a little lake? Donning wellies, I ventured forth to find out. It was as I suspected. The roadside culvert was blocked and water coming down the hill was actually bubbling up out of a drain and flowing into my garden.

            My surprise was limited because this happens with predictable regularity.  In fact it’s been happening, off and on, ever since they filled in the ditches some 40 years ago.

            We used to have a charming humpback bridge over the little river next to my house. It had attractive brick arches and was sufficiently narrow to afford passage to just one car at a time. This had the very considerable advantage of slowing down drivers fearful of meeting oncoming vehicles. And, anyway, if you drove too fast over the hump you were in danger of taking off like those cars in James Bond films.

            Unfortunately boy racers (as my mother dubbed them) often failed to heed the ‘narrow bridge’ sign and then had to slam on the anchors at the last moment. My sister and I, playing in the garden, would place small bets on whether the squeal of tyres would be followed by the exciting crash of glass and metal. Once a car came right through the hedge and ended up on the lawn with mother scurrying to bring cups of tea to the startled occupants.

            Eventually the council decided to replace the bridge with an ugly concrete structure wide enough for two lorries. For a blessed six months during construction no traffic at all ventured down our lane. But when it re-opened, the wider bridge had the effect of encouraging all drivers to behave like boy racers and roar down the hill at excessive speeds.

            At the same time the local authority filled in the ditches and installed the roadside drains. Which always get blocked. And spew out water onto my front lawn. There are times when even I wonder at ‘progress’.

Salacious Local in Nursery Rhyme Shock!

Countryside Column for 28 March

The Courtesan Casanova Turned Down 

 

You remember the old nursery rhyme: “Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher Found it”? Well there are many in my village hoping that our Lucy doesn’t lose a packet or at any rate isn’t out of pocket on her latest venture.

Now before you start complaining about strained metaphors, there’s a reason why I introduced the 18^th century doggerel. Lucy is the landlady of our village pub. And she and husband Mark have just taken over the second inn in the village, the old William IV.

Opinion is divided as to whether this is a cunning ploy to remove their main competition, or an unconventional business model, inevitably taking custom away from their current, successful establishment. Either way, along with a revamp, they’ve given the William a new name.

Normally I’m not keen on renaming pubs. And this one seems to me to be a particularly high-risk strategy. It’s to be called the Kitty Fisher.

A little delving will disclose that Ms Fisher was a high class courtesan and mistress to the sixth Earl of Coventry. It seems that Lucy Locket was in the same line of work, and the ‘pocket’ she lost was in fact a client who Kitty took on, only to find he was broke. (There are other interpretations of the rhyme, particularly a double meaning for the word ‘pocket’ but this being a respectable publication it’s perhaps best we don’t dwell on it.)

Now what, you may well ask, is our Lucy doing naming her new pub after a woman who, as Casanova rather ungallantly said, one could have for ten guineas? Moreover, is this the sort of association that a rectitudinous village like ours would wish for?

The trouble is it’s a bit late for moral scruples because Kitty Fisher is apparently buried in our churchyard. After publicly eating a £100 note, sitting for portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and having open spats with Lady Coventry, Kitty renounced her ways, settled down and married the son of the MP for Rye. He was John Norris who lived at Hempsted, today the home of the girls’ school famously attended by Princess Anne.

Kitty was apparently generous to the poor and thus well liked in the village but, sadly, she died in 1767, only a matter of months after her marriage.

I suppose if nothing else, the name will provide patrons of Lucy’s new pub plenty to talk about.

Of Mowers and Men

Countryside Column for 21 March

 Letting the grass grow under your feet

It’s the same every year.  The sun peeps out. The grass springs up. The mower is retrieved from the back of the shed.  You check the oil, add some petrol, and give the starting rope a long confident pull.  Nothing happens.  You push the choke fully on and tug again. Nothing.  You ease back on the throttle and … well you know the result. 

Shortly afterwards you are to be found at the service shop armed with your second mortgage and asking the nice man how long it’s likely to take.  And it’s always the same answer.  “Well, we’re really busy now.  The sun brings them all out. If you’d just brought it in a couple of months ago…”

Oh, come on! Who ever thinks of servicing their mower in January?

So this year I thought I’d circumvent all that.  My trusty old Stoic Landmaster that’s given sterling service for a quarter of a century was playing up last summer.  So I decided to grasp the nettle and go for a replacement. Google soon found the machine I wanted. The price was eye-watering, but then if (and I accept it’s a big IF) it lasts for 25 years, it will only cost a tad more than 50p a week. (Please don’t remind me that, for at least half the year, it will be doing absolutely nothing in the back of the shed.)

Since no local store sells it, I order online. Then I get the call. “Sorry it’s out of stock.  And the manufacturer says there’s a four week wait.” No problem there are other suppliers.  But it’s the same story. Out of stock. Month delay.  Minimum. (Please tell me how on earth can a mower manufacturer not have stock ready for the start of the mowing season!!!)

But the sun’s shining.  The grass is growing. The trusty Landmaster is retrieved from the shed. Levels are checked. A long, confident pull on the starting cord elicits …. nothing.

I know everyone is entitled to a living.  And I wouldn’t want to be a mower mechanic.  But really.  How can they sleep at night with their charges? If I’d had the Stoic serviced every year of its life I’d have paid seven times its purchase price.  But then I suppose if I’d had it serviced every year I wouldn’t be watching the grass grow, waiting for the distant call of the mower man.

Ovine Ultrasound

Countryside Column for 14 March 2014

A monitor to show ewe the spring lamb

Spring seems to have sprung and I’m not happy.

Usually I can’t wait for winter to end.  I love seeing snowdrops poking their noses up on verges. I venerate bunches of primroses and clumps of daffodils.  And  early pink and white blossom gives me hope of things to come.

But not this year.  It’s all too early.  Plus we haven’t really had winter yet.  I can only think of a couple of mornings when there’s been frost on the ground as I take Myrtle for her early run.  And she so loves the snow I feel somehow I’ve deprived her of her annual treat.

A good hard freeze would certainly help sort the fields.  The Land Rover will slip and slither on ice, but that’s better than being bogged down in mud.  And at least I’d be able to drive down to the bottom orchard to attend to the trees there.

That’s my problem with the early spring.  I’ve just not had enough decent days to do the pruning.  And the mild weather has brought the apple buds on, so as the blossom opens the pruning window will close

But the new season won’t wait for me. It’s certainly not waiting for the orchard sheep. Two-thirds have already gone back to the farm to lamb.  They’re the ones expecting twins or triplets.  The rest will be going soon.  It’s rather poignant. Most remaining ewes have green marks sprayed on their back to show they’re carrying singletons. Quite a few though have a red dot.  They’re the barren ones destined for slaughter.  There’s no sentimentality in sheep farming.  No lamb, no future.  And it’s all the fault of modern technology.

The same ultrasound that shows us a baby in the womb is now employed to find the fertility of a flock. The conditions are a little different though. The monitor and machine are run off a Land Rover battery via an inverter. The sheep are pushed through the pens in a line and the probe is held briefly against their woolen bellies.  The operator shouts the result and they are sprayed with the appropriate colour before being segregated into separate holding areas. There’s much baa-ing and bleating and pushing and pulling and hooves churning up the mud.

Next thing the lambs will be returning to gambol beneath the trees. Then we’ll know the new season really has started.

Hop Pickers Line

Countryside Column 7 March.

Walking along the tracks

Myrtle and I visited North London recently and tried a new walk along a disused railway track from Highgate to Finsbury Park.  It was excellent. For four-and-a-half miles the city disappeared and you felt you were almost in the country. In fact the Parkland Walk is now the longest Local Nature Reserve in the capital and is enthusiastically used by joggers, cyclists, walkers and schoolchildren.

It made me wonder just what was happening to the quaintly named Hop Pickers’ Line from Paddock Wood to Hawkhurst.  This too was supposed to have re-opened as a ‘leisure pathway’ but things have gone extraordinarily quiet on the project.

The eleven mile branch line was conceived by the Weald of Kent Railway Company in 1864 and went through many travails before the final section was opened in 1893. The original plan to extend it to Tenterden and Hythe was abandoned, and the service struggled to survive. Goods were the mainstay, including moving  a million potted plants  a year for branches of Woolworths. The hopping traffic helped, with 26 special trains a day each bringing in two hundred pickers.  But outside harvest time the line wanted for customers.

One of its passengers was my father who, in 1945, arrived home after five years in the army. I can just imagine the scene on the platform at Hawkhurst with my grandparents waiting anxiously for his train to appear.

Anyway, despite the patronage of various east enders and occasional relatives, it closed in 1961, cleverly avoiding the Beeching axe which would surely have fallen a few years later.  But, tragically, the land was sold off to private owners and amalgamated into farms and gardens.

In 2008 the Hawkhurst Parish Council and local business proposed re-opening it as a walk and cycleway. To launch the project dignitaries were photographed at the abandoned station. Lottery funds were sought. There was a bit of a row when the signal box there was sold off to the Kent and East Sussex railway to be re-erected at Robertsbridge, but apart from that little seems to have happened.

Apparently the County Council’s Public Rights of Way team have been negotiating with landowners for access, and two tunnels have been assessed for safety and lighting.  But no one at KCC seems able to tell me if it’s actually going to happen.

It’s a pity because Myrtle and I would like a new walk along the tracks.