Bourne Diary - December 2000
by
Rex Needle
Saturday 2nd December 2000 Today is a landmark for the Diary because this is the 100th that I have written. Since it began on 28th November 1998, I have presented my personal view week by week of events in Bourne past and present, recounting items from our history and heritage, taking a look at the countryside and commenting on current matters of public interest that affect our town. I need hardly say that some of the more controversial issues that I have written about have won me no friends among those who run our affairs and although this web site is read regularly around the world and has won several prestigious awards, its existence has yet to be even acknowledged by the town council but I take this as a compliment because it demonstrates that we are being read although whether those who do so will act upon what is said here is another matter.This web site began as a hobby but has since taken on a life of its own and as the weeks go by, more photographs and more text are added and so it has gradually evolved into a living history of Bourne. The only definitive account of this town is A History of Bourne written by J D Birkbeck and published in paperback in September 1970 with a hardback reprint in December 1976 and although now out of print this excellent book can sometimes be found in second-hand bookshops although copies will cost between £15 and £20.
Douglas Birkbeck, a former history master and deputy headmaster of Bourne Grammar School, and now living in retirement in Cumbria, realised that his publication was becoming outdated and was likely to be superseded, and has generously given this project his blessing and has provided tremendous help and encouragement. He also realises that we have the added advantage of colour photographs and of modern technology to record images of Bourne for posterity in a way that he could never have imagined and we also have a new dimension to our undertaking, the added advantage of the weekly diary, a regular and contemporary commentary that will be read by future social historians as an invaluable insight into the way things actually were in our locality during this period.
The Diary now runs to more than 120,000 words and over 100 photographs, captured in the climate of the week, and so we have a continuing tale of life here in Bourne, the changing face of the town, the issues and controversies, the people involved and the way they have served us. This amounts to less than 25% of the entire web site content of text and pictures that continues to grow and our Internet Service Provider has now granted us a further 10MB of web space bringing the total to 30MB. When the project started in 1997, I had only 5MB at my disposal but a few months later I added a further 5MB and then another 10MB and the latest addition by courtesy of Which Online makes us a most sizeable undertaking that reflects the amount of information that can be found here.
There was a time when I was concerned that all of this work would disappear into cyberspace when I have gone and so I have taken the precaution of committing everything to a CD-ROM, a permanent record that is upgraded week by week. Meanwhile, my hard copy records, both text and pictures, have become so extensive and so detailed that they extend to more than 25 volumes and are still expanding and I intend to leave this archive in a suitable place in the hope that it will be consulted in the future as a guide to the way it was in Bourne in past times. However, I hope to be around for a few more years yet and look forward to writing my 200th Diary in the year 2002.
If anyone would like a copy of the web site CD-ROM, please email me for details. It will make an excellent Christmas present for anyone interested in our town. In the meantime, please stay with us and keep logging on.
The coloured lights and decorations are in place in Bourne town centre and Santa's siren call sounds forever nearer. We are now faced with three hectic weeks of shopping in preparation for this festive season that will dent our bank balances and test our credit cards to the limit. Avowals that we will not buy so much this year, fewer presents perhaps and a little less good cheer, will have gone for naught by Christmas Eve and as we walk the streets of our small town we already hear the festive jingles from the shops and see the crowds emerging with plastic bags full of things they could easily do without and will no doubt have been drunk, eaten or abandoned by the time the merrymaking is over.
It is at this time of the year that I remember times past when life was less affluent and that to be poor meant just that and not merely deprived as we call it today, subsidised by the state for our every whim, even holidays abroad, for according to our sociologists they too have become a vital part of life, as essential as a television set or even the car. Modern finance enables us to spend today and pay tomorrow and there may be some wisdom in such a policy for it keeps our nation's economy healthy and ensures that few people will actually go without.
Money is fast disappearing from our pockets and purses, overtaken by plastic cards and electronic transactions, and so we no longer realise the worth of the coins we once carried. One of my regular Christmas presents as a child in the 1930s was a shiny new penny at a time when there were 240 of them to the £ but this bright coin still had a value and could buy some little cheer for a small boy as it did when the novelty of owning it wore off in the days after Christmas as it began to burn a hole in my pocket. Each Christmas now, I remember those pennies and the delight they brought me and I can imagine the reaction of today's children were they to be given a similar present on Christmas morning of a new penny coin, or even a pound. Such has our perception of money changed.
A philanthropist from past centuries whose money is still being used to help finance community facilities in the town is added today to the Bourne Focus section of this web site. Robert Harrington died in 1654 and his name is perpetuated in Harrington Street and although his bequest was a generous one, he could never have envisaged the way that his investments were to increase in value. His business interests were in that part of England that is now Leytonstone in London and the rapid expansion of the capital in the past two centuries has resulted in a phenomenal rise in the income that has been generated from his legacy that is now administered by Bourne United Charities. Robert is reputed to have trudged to London as a young man to seek his fortune in the early 17th century and he succeeded because we in Bourne are still enjoying the fruits of his labours 350 years later.
Quite a ruckus is bubbling up in the peaceful acres that are the South Lincolnshire fens over the proposed establishment of a wind farm just a short distance from Bourne. A company called Wind Prospect is behind the £8 million project that will involve the erection of eleven turbines on 200 acres of agricultural land, some of them 250 feet high which is much taller than most of the surrounding church spires, but early indications are that those who live in the neighbourhood will not endorse such a development without a fight. Saturday 9th December 2000
Well, you cannot please everyone but I would have thought that wind power was the way forward for a civilisation that has plundered fossil fuels from the earth over past centuries when energy could literally have been plucked from the skies. The problem here is that most people are opposed to change without really thinking about what is involved and the NIMBY syndrome is writ large in most objections no matter how they are wrapped up in concerns over property prices, health, noise, unsightliness and pollution of the environment. Windmills have been with us since time immemorial and there were 10,000 of them in England and Wales during the early 19th century yet no one has ever objected to them and indeed, if one were scheduled for demolition today there would be a public outcry and rightly so because they are part of our heritage.
How long then does a structure have to remain in our landscape before it is acknowledged as something that should be preserved as an example of the way life once was? Vast sums are being spent on preserving the Lancashire woollen mills of the 19th century, the manufactories in the Potteries, old railway lines and the tin mines in Cornwall, while anything remotely connected with water such as sluices, aqueducts and canals, is sacrosanct. If the new wind turbines that are currently causing so much concern were to become reality here in Bourne, they too would eventually become scheduled monuments. It is only a matter of time.
The electricity pylons that crisscross our countryside will eventually become defunct as power lines go underground but the prospect of dismantling these magnificent steel structures will be resisted in many areas by preservation groups who see them as examples of our island's industrial progress. One of the best examples of the changing face of conservation in recent years has occurred at Fylingdales, a remote but picturesque area of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park where in 1964, during the height of the cold war, an early warning radar station was erected at a cost of £46 million, linked with similar stations in Greenland and Alaska to give a four-minute warning of a nuclear attack.
The station consisted of a series of massive white, circular structures on the top of a hill that resembled gigantic golf balls, each nearly 150 feet in diameter, an eyesore in this place of rolling heather moorland if ever you saw one, and despite the dire state of the world on its headlong flight into Armageddon, angry voices were raised in protest at the desecration of this beautiful place. The threat from Russia has disappeared along with the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall and so the golf balls, as they became affectionately known, outlived their usefulness and were dismantled ten years ago in favour of more sophisticated but less obtrusive equipment but the outcry over their disappearance was equally vociferous as protestors insisted that they should remain as a significant part of our 20th century history.
How long then before wind turbines will find a similar place in our affections? After all, their installation does not eat up the open countryside or destroy our flora and fauna. They not only have a stately grace, are practically noiseless and move only with the wind, but are also perhaps a sign that there is hope for us in a world that has become far too dependent on the internal combustion engine and nuclear power. Would it not be better to embrace them as sentinels on the road to a new and greener technology rather than trash them like the Luddites of old simply because we are offended by the sight of their sails turning when we step outside the back door? Once their use is proven here, as it already is in many parts of the world, then in fifty years' time, perhaps even less, not a voice will be raised against them and anyone who dares suggest their removal will do so at their peril.
The Christmas lights were officially switched on in Bourne last weekend but what a disappointment. Many people I have spoken to have suggested that it would have been better had they been left switched off. The reasons why need no comment from me because the criticism of this disaster has been eloquently detailed in the Bourne Forum by several contributors, among them Jayne Cliffe, a member of a prominent business family that has done much for the prosperity of this town. Jayne has suggested what might happen if shoppers miss their festive lights in the next two weeks which is usually when they embark on their biggest spending spree of the year: they are likely to head for Stamford, Peterborough or Lincoln where the illuminations are a little brighter.
"In comparison, our town centre is pathetic", she writes. "I have three children and they too commented on how boring our lights are. If a four-year-old child notices, what do our other town visitors think?" James Pask is equally vociferous in his condemnation of the illuminations which he says are "tacky and lightweight" when compared with previous years. "I have childhood memories of travelling into town from any direction and being mesmerised by the wonderful lights", he writes, "but I was very disappointed this year."
Who then is to blame? Well, we are told that the organisation of the Christmas illuminations is in the hands of the town council and its members are already squirming with embarrassment over this fiasco and are citing obscure and undefined problems over health and safety that prevented them from installing a more elaborate display. How then has this council been occupying its time all year for it has little else to do other than look after the cemetery and choose a few street names? The Christmas illuminations are usually the highlight of its discussions during the year but the past twelve months appear to have been all talk and no do. A local authority is only remembered for the mistakes it makes and in this instance it is no good promising us better illuminations next year. Jam tomorrow is the typical reaction of the politician.
The Chamber of Trade and Commerce made much of its "Buy it in Bourne" campaign during the past summer. If in the next fortnight our shops fail to do the business they expect at such an important time of the year, they will know in which direction to vent their wrath.
Thought for the week: The small retail premises in West Street, one of our main shopping thoroughfares, that has been standing empty for several months after the opticians that traded there moved to larger premises further along the street, is now back in business but I am quite surprised at what it will be used for in the future. It has become a pawnbroker's shop and I wonder if this is a sign of the times.
While memories of Armistice Day are still with us when we have been remembering those who gave their lives for their country, this is an appropriate time to thank our good fortune for the freedoms we now enjoy. As the years pass, those who lived through the two world wars become fewer and soon these conflicts will be relegated to the pages of history and yet there was hardly a single family that was not touched in some way by these wars to end all wars as each was hailed at the time. Saturday 16th December 2000
The threat to our daily life was equally real while the men folk were away fighting and although most people's perception of what it was like on the home front during the early years of the Second World War is now governed entirely by glimpses of Dad's Army on television, anyone who lived during that time can attest to the hardships suffered and the fears endured and during the early years of the war we lived daily with the threat of invasion from across the North Sea. This part of England was particularly vulnerable because of the wide expanse of Lincolnshire coastline and rumours abounded of attempted landings that would one day put this country under enemy rule that was already tyrannising much of Europe.
Pillboxes were the first line of our wartime defence against such an invasion. More than 20,000 were built and although most have been demolished since the war ended, some 10 per cent have survived, mainly in isolated rural areas, usually alongside country roads, where the Home Guard or regular army units could mount machine gun attacks against the oncoming invaders.
When war was declared in September 1939, there were frantic preparations put in place to defend the country. A German invasion was expected at any moment following the fall of France. Winston Churchill summed up the national mood when he said: "We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."
As the Battle of Britain raged overhead in the summer of 1940, the country's defences were growing everywhere, their construction in the hands of a workforce of hundreds of thousands of people. They transformed Britain's landscape into a vast fortress, more extensive than was often realised at the time, to hold and contain invading forces, making use of existing obstacles such as hills, railways and rivers. Vulnerable beaches were hardened with concrete and steel anti-tank devices were installed together with minefields, barbed wire entanglements, flame throwers, infantry and artillery fieldworks and of course pillboxes. Large areas suitable for German aircraft to land were blocked with improvised obstacles such as poles, wires and trenches while the streets of many towns and villages were protected by the construction of fortified settlements known as anti-tank islands at major road intersections.
By 1942, pillboxes and fixed defences were thought to be too immobile and the authorities decided to stop building them. Many in public places were demolished immediately after the war because they were judged to be unsightly but a large number of coastal and rural pillboxes survived, some being used as storerooms by farmers but most simply neglected. The estimated 2,000 that are left are the most easily recognisable relics of the 1940 anti-invasion defences, sturdily made in a variety of designs, although the most popular was the hexagonal structure of pre-cast concrete with gun slits on each side, similar to that pictured above that can be seen today about 12 miles south east of Bourne in a field by the side of B1443 in Borough Fen, between Peakirk and Thorney.
These distinctive concrete fortifications dotted around the English countryside are an important part of our recent history but there is growing concern over their vulnerability and so English Heritage has been carrying out a survey of those that still exist with the intention of giving them statutory protection for the future. To the casual passer-by, they appear to be nothing more than a concrete shelter with no apparent purpose but they have potent associations of a time when Britain stood alone and on the brink of a German invasion which, had it succeeded, would have meant a very different lifestyle from that which we enjoy today.
Village histories continue to appear in the Bourne area and the latest I have seen is among the best produced although its contents could have been better. Baston Through the Ages has been compiled by the village's environmental group with the aid of cash from the Millennium "Awards for All" organisation and the list of compilers and contributors is endless but perhaps this is the problem. It lacks cohesion and is padded out with chunks of English history rather than telling us more about Baston's individual buildings and when and why they were built. A single editor might have been more ruthless with the content but nevertheless, this publication is the busiest and most attractive local history I have seen so far with superb colour photographs and costing £10 but it has a spiral binding and glossy covers to ensure that this volume will enjoy many unspoiled years on the bookshelves of those who buy it.
A second history has also come my way this time from Witham-on-the-Hill and this too is a very impressive work in local publishing aided by the Millennium Fund. The authors of A Piece Of The Puzzle are the village historical society and they have also opted for a softback edition but stringed and bound instead of spiral and although this does, unlike others in the same format, open easily, the printing is light especially for the body text and a bolder font would have made it more presentable and easier to read. The price is £9.99, but why oh why do they not say £10 and make life easier for purchasers, although the information gathered here is well worth the outlay despite this niggling annoyance. The authors have also fallen into the trap of quoting the fictionalised accounts of Bourne's traditional hero Hereward the Wake, whereas a little more scepticism would not have gone amiss especially as this publication purports to have learned origins.
Details of how to buy both of these publications can be found in the Notice Board section of this web site.
Gale force winds swept through Bourne during the early hours of Wednesday morning and many awoke to the noise of the storm thinking that their house was about to be blown away. There was some damage around the town, mainly tiles and guttering, but the biggest casualty was the large Christmas tree that had been erected in the car park behind the Town Hall that is no more for it was toppled by the high winds. The illuminations that were meant to add to our seasonal cheer have already been condemned as being a disaster and now the tree has gone but I feel that it will take more than the shortcomings of the town council and the extremes of Mother Nature to prevent people from enjoying their shopping expeditions during this festive season.
Thought for the week: Amid the widespread concern over the disappearance of policemen from our streets, I notice that the sign over the door of Bourne Police Station, which is already closed in the evenings and at weekends, has been changed to Bourne Police Office. This indicates a downgrading in status for this building but does it also mean an even greater decline in the police presence in our town?
This picture of the market place in Bourne was taken 130 years ago by Joseph Tye Flatters, a local photographer who worked in the photography department of Rodgers & Hester, whose shop premises can be seen on the right of the town hall on the site now occupied by the National Westminster Bank. Flatters was married to Mr Hester's daughter Frances and they were planning a new life in another country but he wanted a memento of home and so he took this photograph to remind him not only of the town where he grew up but also of the place where he worked. Saturday 23rd December 2000
In the summer of 1871, he sailed for Canada with his wife and three children, intending to set up in business as a photographer but the early settlers had little money to spend on having their portraits taken and so he sought other employment and the events that followed are a gripping tale in the grand manner. I have managed to piece together what happened to him with the help of his descendants who live there and who still possess this evocative photograph of Bourne in times past, a reminder of an unhurried existence before heavy traffic through the centre of the town forced the removal of the Ostler memorial fountain that has now been relocated in the town cemetery.
You can read about the life of Joseph Tye Flatters, a stirring tale of adventure and death that has been added today to the Bourne Focus.
While everyone was out buying presents this week, the Bourne web site received a small and unexpected one, gift-wrapped in glowing terms because we have been given another accolade for our labours, the sixth since we started in 1997. This recognition is of particular significance because it comes from Which Online, the Internet Service Provider administered by the Which Organisation, Britain's leading institution on consumer affairs that is respected nationwide for its integrity and trustworthiness. We have been named as a winner of their Web Site Wonders award for December 2000 and are duly grateful for such acknowledgement that will spur us on to even greater effort.
When I was a boy in the 1930s, a tramp often called at our house asking for food. Not all visitors to our street were welcome. The road which ran along the top of our cul-de-sac was the main route from the Great North Road into town and was regularly used by tramps heading for the Spike, a dosshouse run by the Board of Guardians to provide a night's bed and board for these gentlemen of the road before they were shown the door next morning and told to move on to the next parish.
The houses in our street were among the first they would see after leaving the Great North Road and some would call in asking for hot water to make tea but their wild and unkempt appearance frightened many housewives who either refused to answer their doors or turned them away. My mother was more charitable and after helping one tramp we called Jimmy, he arrived regularly every December although he never came into the house and would wait respectfully outside the back door until his billycan was filled with boiling water and mother had cut him thick slices of bread and margarine or dripping which she carefully wrapped in an old newspaper.
Jimmy was dirty and scruffy and he carried his few possessions in a battered oilskin bag that was slung over his shoulder and supported by a leather strap. His shoes were bound up with string and cloth, his trousers torn and his overcoat secured round the waist with a cord and the old trilby hat on his head had a chicken feather stuck in the band, a souvenir perhaps of his previous night's lodgings. The skin on his face was as brown and gnarled as a walnut shell and much of it was covered by a straggly brown beard above which glinted a pair of steel blue eyes that had a haunted look and he would avert his gaze, look down and shuffle uncomfortably when anyone spoke to him. He never said a word but indicated his wants with signs and grunts and when my mother gave him food and water he would bow and nod his head and jabber incoherently but the combination of these sounds and movements were an obvious indication of his gratitude.
We never knew who he was or where he came from but my mother speculated that he was either an army veteran who had taken to the road because he could no longer face society after the horrors of trench warfare on the Somme or at Ypres during the First World War or that he had become disillusioned with life after losing his job during the depression years of the previous decade when there had been hunger marches, a rising crime rate, rioting in the streets and clashes with the police as the unemployment total passed the two million mark, the effects of which were still being felt in business and industry. Either theory was a plausible explanation for many beggars and itinerants could be seen on the roads between the wars, wandering aimlessly from town to town and then turning back and re-tracing their steps, their only purpose in life to keep moving.
Our wayfarer continued to call every year at the onset of winter until the outbreak of war in 1939. He came that year on Christmas Eve and my mother fed and watered him as had become her habit, even though we had little enough for ourselves, and she even gave him an apple because it was Christmas and his eyes filled with tears as he took it, cradling it in his hands as though it were a golden orb before rubbing the skin against his coat to give it a sheen and then stowing it away in one of his capacious pockets as a future delight. We never saw him again and although I hoped that he had found a permanent home, somewhere to live out his old age with a little comfort, I feared that he had died cold and alone, under a hedge or in a roadside ditch, during the arctic conditions that enveloped Britain during the January of 1940 when temperatures dropped so low that the River Thames froze over for the first time since 1888.
My mother did not believe in God and hardly went into a church after her wedding yet she put great store in goodness and thought charity more important than worship and Jimmy was one of her small but regular acts of kindness and one that I remember every Christmas. The world has since moved on and were Jimmy to be found roaming the highways of Britain today, he would be shuttled into a home where his immediate material wants would be provided for by the state but would he receive the kindness that he found on his annual call to our humble working class home each year?
Kindness is a consideration towards other people, showing them a friendly nature or attitude, being courteous and cordial, pleasant, amiable, generous of spirit, gracious and neighbourly, sympathetic and understanding. How strange these words have become in recent years when headlines scream of man's inhumanity and many people regard the world out there as an aggressively cruel and unfriendly place. The young seem less bothered about the problem because they live in it but we who are old remember when times were less desperate and although the memory tends to be distorted by the passage of time, and certainly they were not always the good old days, it does seem that compassion was then a more frequent commodity in our daily lives.
While the world sings its praises this weekend to a god beyond our grasp, think of those in the here and now and if there is someone in need near you, perhaps a little kindness might not go amiss. It will be far more beneficial than a whole host of hallelujahs.
The happiest of Christmas greetings to everyone out there and please log on to our web site if you get a spare moment away from the turkey and the trimmings over the festive season.
Thought for the Week: I sat in my car outside the Rainbow supermarket car park in Bourne at lunchtime on Thursday while my wife popped inside to make a couple of quick purchases. Many children had already started their Christmas holidays from school and two of them came out with their mother who had been shopping. The eldest, aged about ten, tossed something away towards one of the drains and walked on but the object missed its target and I got out and picked it up. It was a one-penny coin.
Saturday 30th December 2000
There has been some dismay over Bourne Town Council’s solution to the fiasco over this year’s Christmas lights by throwing more money after them in the hope of getting bigger and better illuminations next year. The assumption that cash can solve all problems is not a new one but is greatly favoured in local government whenever there is a dearth of ideas around the committee room table but in this instance, it is our money that is at stake and it is worth remembering that although the town council handles an annual budget in excess of £92,000, some of its members have little or no experience of financial management on this scale.
It does then seem a cavalier act on their part to decide suddenly that the public will pay the extra money for these fripperies and I for one question the prudence of this decision because the compulsory levy will push the parish precept of the council tax up during the coming year from £13.50 to £15.46, an increase in excess of 12%. There will also be other increases on the amount of council tax we have to pay because the district and county councils and the police authority will all demand their own pound of flesh and there is every indication that come next April, our total bill will also be well above the rate of inflation.
The power to levy a rate is an important one for a parish council, in this case the town council, and one that should be used wisely and in this instance there is a suspicion that the money so raised will be used for commercial gain. The Christmas lights are there for one purpose only and that is to attract shoppers and to put them in a suitable frame of mind to buy goods in the shops over the festive season and particularly during the late night shopping event that has become the highlight of the town's retailing year. The shopkeepers cannot lose. The lights are paid for by the very shoppers they attract to buy the goods they sell. It is tantamount to asking customers help pay for their advertising.
If the cost of these lights is to come from local taxes then it should come from the shopkeepers. If a levy of £1 or more is needed to defray these expenses, then it should be a levy on the business rate paid by shopkeepers for it is they who will benefit.
The issue is therefore a moral as well as a practical one and we are entitled to ask how much of the cost of installing these illuminations is being met by the organisation that represents the shopkeepers, the Bourne Chamber of Trade and Commerce, which is repeatedly urging us to "Buy it in Bourne", especially at Christmas time. I think we should be told and as the mayor, Councillor John Kirkman, is not only chairman of the council's finance committee but also has Internet access, perhaps he would like to give an explanation of this in the Bourne Forum that is written and read by so many of the people he represents. We await his contribution with great interest and would hope that such a pertinent question will not be met by silence. He is an elected representative and we have a right to know.
The streets of Bourne are becoming increasingly dangerous. This is not just my assessment but also the consensus of opinion from contributions to the Bourne Forum and I read of these experiences with great concern. There are frequent tales of violence in the town centre, especially after the public houses have closed on Saturday nights, while Abbey Road remains a no-go area for the unwary most weekend nights because of youngsters allegedly driving souped up cars after drinking and taking drugs. The police do nothing. Our councillors are powerless and, what is worse, totally inactive.
Until now, I have regarded the estate where I have lived for almost 20 years as one of the more secluded parts of town where you can go about your business without fear of being accosted or assaulted but that is no longer the case. On the evening before Christmas Eve, my wife and I were returning from our usual walk around the streets when we found the footpath in Stephenson Way blocked by the open door of a large vehicle parked on the footpath and I pushed it shut in order that we could pass but I was immediately confronted by the driver who appeared from the house he was visiting and started to abuse me in a most aggressive and foul mouthed manner even though my wife was standing at my side.
At one point during his diatribe he became so angry that I thought that he might assault me but my military training identified him as a coward and I therefore treated him as such and stood my ground. I came to no harm other than having to listen to his limited and obscene vocabulary but how many innocent passers-by with less experience of human nature might be intimidated by similar encounters in the future. It is such confrontations occurring on the spur of the moment that lead to the serious incidents that end up in the hospitals, in the hands of the police or even in the courts, and ruin so many people's lives in the process.
The rural backwater that has been Bourne for so many years past is fast becoming part of the real world and so we who have taken refuge here can now say goodbye to that idyll which we thought we had.
Thought for the Week: This is the time for New Year resolutions and twelve months ago I suggested several declarations of intent that might not go amiss among those who run our affairs. It would have been most welcome during the past year to find more policemen on the streets in Bourne, the Abbey Church open at all times for the benefit of the public rather than at the behest of a few worshippers, a cancellation of the 2,000 home Elsea Park development, less litter and dog dirt in the streets, an end to half day closing and the shutting of the public library on Wednesdays, a smartening up for the many dilapidated shop fronts blighting our town centre, the emptying of bottle, can and paper banks more frequently and a little more action and less talk from the town council, but these things were not to be. The New Year, however, is a time of hope for the future, and so perhaps there is a chance that we may see changes in 2001 . . . but don't count on it.
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