The commercial site in Exeter Street which has been occupied by the company Nursery Supplies is now being cleared in readiness for work to start on Sainsbury's new supermarket. This development, we are told, will create 130 new full and part-time jobs when it opens in the summer but until then we can expect traffic chaos around the site as lorries and plant shuttle to and fro on the construction project. Nursery Supplies have already moved to newly-built premises on the corner of the A151 Spalding road and Meadow Drove and the access road junction at this point has been improved to make it easier for their lorries to enter and leave the premises via the main road.

But townspeople are worried that there appear to be no restrictions on these large vehicles using Meadow Drove and Dyke village as a shortcut to the A15, a route fraught with danger for those who currently use it. These country roads are little more than cart tracks covered with tarmacadam and are totally unsuitable for heavy traffic yet while walking or cycling along them in the past, we have often been forced to jump for our lives as large vehicles have thundered past at high speed, the drivers totally oblivious of other road users, and on two occasions the culprits were Delaine coaches whose drivers should have known better. The time has come for a weight restriction to be imposed on this particular stretch of road to ensure that these lorries do not create a permanent danger to other road users.

If Meadow Drove does become a shortcut, then so too will Mill Drove which is also entirely unsuitable for heavy lorries. One stretch of this road is so narrow that is has passing places for cars while the other section runs through a residential area where old people and mothers with pushchairs are a familiar sight and children frequently play in the street. Are our councillors aware of this pending danger to our community?

Everyone seems to want to live in the country but few are willing to contribute to the life of their new community. Such a problem is facing the village of Pointon which is in danger of losing its village hall unless more people come forward to help run it. The building is not the most imposing of structures but it has become a vital part of village life and is in use most evenings of the week.

It was built almost half a century ago on land donated by a local haulage contractor and a plaque over the door records his philanthropy: "The hall was built by voluntary labour upon the site given by Mr Thomas Bates of Pointon. Erected 1954." The building has recently been modernised at a cost of £17,000 which paid for the loos to be upgraded and the electrical wiring renewed, all to the benefit of organisations such as the Women's Institute and the Good Companions, that gather there weekly but when it comes to finding volunteers to help run the hall and to raise a bit more cash for further work on a new floor and new roof, no one can be found. The fate of the hall will be decided at the annual meeting of the village hall committee next week but the writing seems to be on the wall unless there is more active support from villagers to keep it going.

There is more apathy for community projects but this time in Bourne where the Chamber of Trade and Commerce is struggling to find £10,000 towards the cost of closed circuit television cameras for the town in the fight against crime. Six cameras have been installed at various vantage points as part of a town centre surveillance system installed by South Kesteven District Council for the area at a cost of £126,000 and launched last October but only 42 out of a possible 100 local businesses have contributed and national chains operating shops and business premises are among those who have not. The money has been underwritten by Bourne Town Council but if it is not contributed by the firms that will benefit from the system, then the cost will be met by an eventual increase in the council tax. CCTV is a proven weapon in the fight against crime and all properties within its range are protected. It is therefore to be hoped that a list of those businesses that have not paid up will be published in order that the public can make its own protest by boycotting them in the future.

A metal plaque has been fixed to the wall in Budgens' car park to remind visitors that the town's cattle market once operated from this site. The weekly market was a feature of Bourne for many years until new regulations on the sale of livestock forced its closure in 1981 and after standing derelict for several years, the land was re-developed into what we see today. I have lived in the area long enough to remember the cattle market when it was a regular focal point for social and farming gossip and it was also the place to pick up Stilton cheeses at bargain prices when they were auctioned off at Christmas time. The plaque reads:

 

On this site for some 120 years stood Bourne Cattle Market until its closure in 1981. Removed from the market place where it had operated under charter from mediaeval days, it remained the hub of local business on market days and with four annual fair days it served as a centre for a wide flung agricultural community, bringing to the town and to those trading therein much in the way of commerce, social and professional benefits.

The cattle market is part of the town's history but not enough thought has been given to this plaque which is difficult to read, grammatically sloppy and historically inadequate and as it is a permanent reminder of a once prominent feature of the locality, the town council should have taken much more care before endorsing its installation.

Saturday 9th January 1999

Farmers using audio bird scarers are causing problems for home owners living in Morton village who have complained that the peace and quiet of their rural community is being ruined by the noise of these explosions during the day and there are even suggestions that they are being fired at night. This is familiar territory because the problem is an annual one and it appears that many farmers use these deterrents in complete disregard to the Code of Conduct on such devices drawn up by the National Farmers Union and issued in leaflet form by South Kesteven District Council.

The Code of Conduct for the operation of these auditory scarers lays down specific instructions to avoid causing a nuisance to the public and last year a number of residents in Stephenson Way, which is within earshot of bird scarers in the countryside around Morton and Dyke, complained to the council that it was being totally ignored by some farmers. They were specifically concerned about the contravention of two clauses which decree that they should not be fired during the hours of darkness or more than four times in any one hour during daytime, but we were experiencing explosions at the rate of more than 120 an hour and sometimes they sounded off throughout the night at ten minute intervals, yet the council's Environmental Health Department insisted that the complaints were not justified.

A lady official came down one morning, stopped and listened, but interviewed no one and visited no farmers, and then pronounced that there was no case to answer. Despite the fact that farmers were contravening the very rules and regulations they endorsed, the council did not want to know. Too much paper work perhaps? The N F U is equally disinterested and when asked about the present complaints, Derek Creasey of the South Holland branch said: "I spend most of my time outdoors around this area and I must say I haven't heard too many bird scarers go off". But then he would say that, wouldn't he. The people who live in this locality, particularly the old and infirm, have been deeply distressed by this anti-social behaviour by farmers who know that they can fire off their bird scarers indiscriminately without fear of retribution and they are cocking a snook, not only at those home owners who have complained, but also at the council for they know this authority will not intervene. The council tax bills will soon be dropping through our letter boxes and we who pay must then consider whether we are really getting value for our money if we cannot depend on this authority to act in our interests.

Heavy rain over the weekend has waterlogged acres of agricultural land in the Bourne area and halted the sugar beet harvest in many places. Some fields have been left with half of the crop waiting to be lifted and it will be several days before the soil is sufficiently dry to allow heavy machinery to operate. But cereals sown during the autumn are looking extremely healthy and here in this part of South Lincolnshire we are now experiencing that farming phenomenon of green fields in winter as the young shoots break through and the cold weeks of January and February will ensure that the crop is sufficiently hardy to survive pests and disease until it is harvested in July. This field was photographed soon after New Year at the end of Barnes Drove near Dyke and it shows a very healthy crop indeed.

Mr Robert Wilkinson, an American who has strong family links with Dyke village, has emailed me from Newton, Massachusetts, USA, asking me to solve a puzzle his father used to pose when he was a child and although he could not remember the place names involved, it went like this: there are two and twenty railway stations between X and Y although they are only nine miles apart. I was able to tell him that his father was referring to the nine-mile stretch of line between Bourne and Spalding, opened in August 1866 with three intermediate stations at Twenty, Counter Drain and North Drove. The hey day of rail travel has long since gone but now, forty years after the last passenger trains steamed out of Bourne railway station, proposals have been put forward that could once again make the town part of the country's rail network with services to and from Spalding, Stamford and Peterborough.

The proposals are part of a scheme by the Wash Railway Users and Promoters Association, a grandly-named organisation dedicated to re-opening railway lines and services in the region, and although the possible benefits of a public rail transport system are undoubted, if only to relieve the growing traffic congestion on our roads, their report to South Kesteven District Council is more of a pipe dream than a practicality. Such a scheme seems doomed to failure because the public is far too dedicated to the freedom of car ownership to forsake it in favour of the train and we should not forget that it was a burgeoning car industry that sounded the death knell for many rural and branch lines under the Beeching axe in 1963. Walk down any street in Bourne today and you will see one, two and even three cars parked outside many houses and there you have the answer for however commendable these proposals are, you will never persuade the average car owner to let the train take the strain.

The Mayor of Bourne, Councillor Don Fisher, has taken exception to my remarks about overflowing bins in the various recycling centres around the town. He has told one of the local newspapers: "Sometimes there have been problems with rubbish building up but this is only at certain times like the Christmas period when the collections haven't taken place as regularly as they normally would." Councillor Fisher is proud of his town and is often to be seen walking around and admiring it, rather like a king of the castle but it is to be hoped that his head is not too high in the clouds to see what is happening on the ground. He should start taking a look at this Internet web site which has highlighted the eyesores created by these containers at times other than Christmas, specifically at the beginning of December when we carried photographs showing the mess and forecast even more disorder over the festive season. I have lots more pictures on file if he would like to call round and see them as have my readers in Bourne and around the world. Wake up Mr Mayor!

Saturday 16th January 1999

The remaining sugar beet was lifted from a field behind Stephenson Way this week and home owners were alerted to the operation by the sound of heavy machinery rumbling down their road early on Tuesday morning. It is a constant wonderment to me how the council planners ever allowed this farm access in a residential area when these houses were built in 1976 because the lives of residents are disrupted several times a year as harvesters and tractors come trundling by to work the field and after periods of heavy rain they invariably leave a trail of mud and dirt in their wake. The current conditions on the land are very wet and muddy which is why lifting was called off shortly before Christmas and it was inevitable that after a day of harvesting, the road between there and Mill Drove would suffer and by evening it was covered in mud and extremely dangerous for traffic. But home owners were pleasantly surprised to look outside soon after 5 p m that evening and see a couple of chaps with shovels and a wheelbarrow moving slowly down the road and clearing up the mud as they went. What a pleasant surprise to find a farmer who considers the neighbours but for every one that does, there are a dozen that do not.

There is hardly a country road in the locality that is not affected by this perilous situation at this time of the year and the tell-tale trail of dirt and fallen clods from tractor and trailer wheels can even be seen on some main roads, creating a serious risk to cars and other vehicles. Leaving mud on the public highway is not only dangerous but it is also a criminal offence although too many farmers think they are above the law and that tatty notices of painted lettering on pieces of old wood warning of "Mud on the road" are a sufficient safeguard against prosecution but they are not and any motorist who encounters such a hazard should report it to the police immediately. Whether or not they will respond is a matter for conjecture but if sufficient complaints are logged at police headquarters, they must surely take some action to stop this annual inconvenience.

One of my favourite poets is Laurence Binyon whose poem "For the Fallen", written in September 1914, has a special meaning for those who have served in the forces or who have lost relatives and friends in conflict.
 

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

These words must be the most evocative ever written for anyone who has worn a uniform and served with comrades who died in battle. It is therefore heartening to discover that we are to hear the stories of almost 100 soldiers from Bourne who were killed during World War One. A local man, Tony Stubbs, a 63-year-old retired packaging manager who lives in Saxon Way, has spent the past three years researching their service records and he has been busy travelling to the war cemeteries of France and Belgium, rifling through public archives, newspaper files and talking to relatives. He has collected information on all but ten of the 97 men whose names are inscribed on the cenotaph in the War Memorial Gardens and he is hoping to complete his quest within the next two years and publish a book on his findings.

Mr Stubbs' father served with the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War and this is the reason why he started his search. It began as a hobby but has now become an obsession and what worthier cause could there be than to remember those who died for their country in the cause of peace. There is much antagonism in the world today to such dedicated patriotism that is frequently regarded with disdain especially by the young who have found their freedoms already established and few give a thought to how they were won.

If there is anyone out there who recognises these names, then please contact me and I will pass on any information you have to Mr Stubbs:
 

J E Clark, A E Clark, J A Clare, C A Green, J C Hudson,
C Mills, J Parry, F J N Smith, A Thompson, G A Woodward.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

I imagine that everyone would agree that Christmas is over by now. Certainly all signs of the festive season have disappeared and Bourne is back to normal. Even the illuminations were taken down from the town hall by volunteers from Bourne Lions last Sunday morning and so I think we can assume that everyone knows Christmas has gone for another year. Yet the recycling bins in the Rainbow car park were still overflowing this week and causing a health hazard, a situation that I described in detail in early December but the Mayor, Councillor Don Fisher, denied that this ever happened "except at certain times like the Christmas period when the collections haven't taken place as regularly as they normally would."

This picture is my New Year gift to his worship. It was taken on Monday January 11th and the entire area was covered with broken glass making it extremely dangerous for old age pensioners like myself, not to mention children attending Bourne Abbey Primary School whose parents often use this car park. Please Mr Mayor, use the civic powers we citizens gave you and do something about it.

Saturday 23 ^rd January 1999

A few days ago I found myself on a country road near Bulby, five miles north west of Bourne, and ahead of me was an old oak tree growing in the hedgerow, silhouetted against a darkening sky, and I stopped to take a photograph. Every picture tells a story, we are told, but so does every tree and I sent a copy of mine off to the Woodland Trust seeking more information and was delighted to receive the following reply:

This is a very nice picture of a pedunculate oak which has become stag headed, either due to age, changes in the water table and/or root damage due to ploughing in the adjacent field and/or ground works associated with road. The former is a natural process of retrenchment from which oaks re-grow and is a strategy for long life. The tree is already starting to form a new crown and has copious growth of epicormic shoots arising from the trunk. In all likelihood it could have the ability to grow for many hundreds of years to come if people do not react to the sight of deadwood and chop it down unnecessarily for tree safety reasons. If left to its own devices it will form a new crown and then retrench once more and continue to cycle in this way.

I find it quite amazing that such a mine of information should be available from one picture and it has prompted me to think that perhaps we should all start taking a much closer interest in the trees around us. Britain's ancient forests once stretched from coast to coast but today woodland cover in the United Kingdom is only 10% of the total land area, compared to France which has 27% and Morocco which has 19%. In the last fifty years, more than half of Britain's ancient woodland has been lost because of storms, disease, development and neglect and so the planting of new trees is of increasing importance.

There is much talk of a new 25-acre woodland to be planted on the outskirts of Bourne to celebrate the millennium and money is currently being raised towards the project. It is envisaged that a naturalised woodland of around 11,000 trees, one for each person in the town, will be planted along a long strip of fenland on the banked sides of the Bourne Eau and accessed by car from Milking Nook Drove to the east of the town. The Woodland Trust is organising the £100,000 scheme as part of their "Woods on your Doorstep" project and large grants have already been promised to help foot the bill but £12,000 must be raised locally and contributors will be involved in the design, planting and naming of the new wood. This is a commendable civic undertaking because any scheme that adds trees to our landscape is most welcome. But it is deplorable that there are so many people who do not care a fig for trees.

We already have 400 acres of the most beautiful ancient woodland on our doorstep but the paths of Bourne Woods are often deserted while hundreds more trees adorning our modest urban landscape are at constant risk from vandals. In recent months an ornamental tree on the pavement in Queen's Road was cut down and uprooted one Saturday night, no doubt by youngsters returning home from the town's taverns after a heavy session on Carlsberg Special. Farmers are grubbing out hedges at an alarming rate and last year one of the most beautiful stretches in the vicinity along the fen end of Mill Drove, once a springtime haunt of hundreds of yellowhammers, was ripped down by a farmer's flails in the very middle of the nesting season and so the damage was immense to both trees and birds.

We would expect the churches to set an example to those who do not appreciate the beauty of our trees but that is not so. Last year, I reported that a massive beech tree which had dominated the churchyard at Thurlby for over a century had been cut down and sliced up for firewood. High winds had ripped off one of its branches during a storm, damaging several gravestones as it fell, and church officials decided that this stately tree was a potential danger and should be removed but there were rumblings of discontent in the parish that it was quite safe and having withstood extremes of weather since it was planted around 1888, it would have stood for another 100 years.

Now a similar dispute is raging at Castle Bytham where the vicar, the Rev Bryan Bennett, and the parochial church council want to chop down eighteen trees in the churchyard on the grounds that they are poor specimens and a potential danger but angry villagers are fighting back. They claim that there is nothing wrong with the trees which make a perfect natural setting for the churchyard and have become a haven for wildlife, particularly bats, owls and wrens that have made their homes in the branches.

Trees are a very sensitive issue because once planted they become part of the landscape and their removal should not be undertaken lightly. I visited the churchyard this week and it is quite obvious that the trees are not in the least bit dangerous. A solution to this problem does not need the wisdom of Solomon but it does need the understanding of the parson and a way out of the impasse has already been suggested by the villagers campaigning against the trees being felled: that an independent tree surgeon should be called in for a detailed survey and his findings accepted by both sides but there appears to be some reluctance on the part of the vicar to agree to this. If the verdict were in favour of keeping the trees, which it most surely would, then the money earmarked for their destruction might be spent on tidying up the churchyard, which is in a very neglected state indeed, and this appears to have escaped the attention of both sides. Perhaps the energy devoted by them to the current dispute might be combined to produce a churchyard worthy of being one of God's acres which are among the most endearing features of the English rural landscape but they must be properly cared for.

Saturday 30^th January 1999

Traffic flows through Bourne are becoming so intense that we now face the possibility of gridlock at peak times such as Thursday market days and Saturdays. North Street is often a continuous stream of vehicles, many of them heavy articulated and container lorries that have no place in the middle of a small market town, but by far the most hazardous thoroughfares are Meadowgate and Burghley Street which should have been made one-way streets long ago.

Meadowgate has become a nightmare because it is the access road to Budgens' supermarket and the car park and it is quite beyond comprehension why the local authority did not iron out this traffic problem when the shopping development was opened ten years ago. Instead, pedestrians are at risk on the pavements and motorists face the continual danger of collision as they try to negotiate a narrow road originally intended only for horses and carts while cars are always parked along one side of the entire length of the street yet on busy days there is never a policeman in sight to provide some sort of order. The junction with Harrington Street is a particular bottleneck and the situation becomes perilous at busy times when heavy traffic coincides with the lunch hour at the Robert Manning School as dozens of children head into town with their heads full of things other than road safety.

A similar problem exists in Burghley Street which contains a blind bend and here too the roadway is not wide enough for passing traffic and should also be restricted to a one-way operation.

These problems are apparent to all who use these roads but what are our local councillors doing about it? Why do we have a parish council unless it gives voice to difficulties such as this? Our councillors should have been pacing the corridors of power at the district and county council offices in Grantham and Lincoln long ago to rid this town of the dangerous conditions in these two streets but it would appear that they are sitting on their hands while the flow of vehicles increases annually. It took a road accident to finally move the weekly market out of the town centre. Do we have to wait for a fatality before traffic using these two streets is regulated?

The villages around Bourne represent a way of life that conjures up images of plodding ploughmen, winsome milkmaids and brawny blacksmiths but these perceptions have been drastically changed in recent years by the mechanisation of agriculture and the attraction of life in the towns has forced the villages to adapt to new ways in order to survive. Farm labourers moved to better paid employment in the industrial areas while car ownership made village life a possibility for those who worked in the city with rustic cottages and barns in idyllic locations being bought and converted by the townies and this influx from the urban area has often created a sad new division of "them and us" between the newcomers and the natives. The village hall has been the great leveller for it is here that everyone can meet for social activities such as bingo, a weekly whist drive, a bring and buy sale or the traditional Saturday night dance and a Christmas pantomime, and most village halls are occupied every night of the week with activities that embrace the entire community both old and new.

Some weeks ago (2nd January 1999) I reported that the village hall at Pointon was in danger of closing down because the old guard who had run it so efficiently in past years wanted a rest and volunteers were slow in coming forward to shoulder the burden of office but a new enthusiasm is abroad in the village and a replacement committee has been elected to take over the reins. The hall is not much to look at, in fact it has an extremely drab outside appearance, but it has plenty of space inside and excellent modern facilities and with fresh faces around the table, the committee is already tossing around new ideas to keep this vital community facility alive and to ensure that the hall will continue to play a major role in the social life in Pointon as we approach the millennium.

Meanwhile, a new village hall is going up at Swayfield at a cost of £118,000 and it is hoped that work will be completed in the spring. The old village hall was a former army hut which stood on the same site and was demolished before construction work began but its replacement will be much bigger with modern facilities for communal events including a kitchen, a committee room and toilets and, later on, perhaps a stage for theatrical productions with lighting and a sound system. Contributions towards the cost have come in from various organisations but support from local people is essential and they are being asked to buy a brick for £10 each and their donations will be recorded for posterity. This community participation is a test of the strength of village life today and the success of this building venture should augur well for the hall's enduring appeal for community events in the future.

Finally, it is with some reluctance that I return to the subject of the recycling containers in the town but something must be done to regulate their use. These containers are a necessary evil because they are required for the deposit of our empty bottles and tins and waste paper but their essential use should not be overshadowed by their inadequate supervision. The containers in the Rainbow car park were overflowing again for much of the week because they had not been emptied, turning the area around them into a ghastly mess, while in the car park behind the Post Office another problem has arisen. The last time the huge blue metal container for waste paper was emptied, it was dumped into a most inconvenient position effectively putting four car-parking spaces out of action. This car park is the busiest in Bourne and every space is a valuable one, especially at peak periods, and we can ill afford to lose four of them on the whim of a lorry driver who cannot be bothered to lower the container back into a more suitable position when he has made his collection. Please Mr Mayor, we the citizens are appealing to you yet again to use your powers and intervene with the companies that control these recycling facilities to either maintain them in a correct and orderly manner or hand them over to someone who will.

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