Bourne Diary - June 2001

Saturday 2nd June 2001

There was a commotion out there in the street in front of our house a few days ago when my late afternoon doze on the patio was disturbed by the revving of a high-powered engine and shouts of excitement. The last time such a commotion occurred was two years ago when the fire brigade arrived after the lady who lives opposite had dialled 999 because her gas oven had caught light. But this was no emergency call out. It was the arrival of our M P Mr Quentin Davies, the Conservative member for Grantham and Stamford, who is seeking re-election for this constituency.

He drove up in a Land-Rover, a lady at the wheel and accompanied by two smart young men wearing Raybans and brandishing mobile phones who scanned the houses for likely constituents that the sitting M P might wish to meet and as they identified suitable subjects, he dashed, nay ran, between them, pressing flesh and uttering political platitudes in the hope of impressing them enough to secure their vote on June 7th and thus put him into office for another term. Within five minutes, the visiting political circus had gone and once again peace returned to our close. We last saw Quentin four years ago when he made a similar visit to our street while campaigning for the 1997 election. His promises were just as profuse, his stay equally brief, and of course we never saw or heard from him again until now and even then he has only returned because he wants our votes yet again to keep him in Westminster.

The scene I describe is not a criticism of our sitting M P. It is merely a reflection on the way in which our elections are conducted, three weeks of haste at the hustings to curry favour before disappearing either into the corridors of power or into total oblivion. The nation will speak and the majority will decide and then we can forget them until next time. It is the same for the local elections with one slight difference. Four candidates are contesting the Bourne Abbey division in which I live in the Lincolnshire County Council elections and by the weekend, the only one to knock on our door has been the retiring councillor John Kirkman who happens to be independent. He has been busy stepping out and calling at all of the 3,700 houses in the division while the other candidates from the three main parties appear to be content with canvassing by paper only. They obviously think that their political labels are sufficient exposure for them to be elected but I fear that they may be in for a disappointment.

The weekly freighter collection from the Rainbow car park was due to close after last Saturday morning's collection but the service has been given a reprieve until October 20th when Lincolnshire County Council have indicated that a permanent waste management site will be up and running. This is the good news. The bad news is that this makeshift facility that has been operating from this place for more than fifteen years is a scandalous service for people who pay large sums every year in council tax to keep this authority going.

Saturday morning was another disgraceful sight with long queues of people including women, children, the old and the infirm, loaded down with assorted garbage standing in line like a crocodile of naughty schoolchildren, shuffling forward every few minutes until their turn came to dump it into the back of the truck. Then, if they had brought more, they had to return to their vehicles and repeat the process. Yet while this fiasco continues week after week, our county council appears to be totally inactive in its deliberations to identify and open a permanent waste recycling centre that will offer a continuous service throughout the week.

It is outrageous that a public authority with a spending budget of £579 million a year is dragging its heels over such a small improvement to its community services while the people are so inconvenienced. But why should such an obvious and necessary need require so long to put into practice? Two of our local county councillors who joined in the jubilation when the decision to open a new centre was announced in April are seeking re-election next week and if they are returned to office, it is to be hoped that their first priority will be to ensure that the facility is opened sooner rather than later and so end this demeaning experience for people who merely wish to dump their garbage in a civilised manner rather than face this weekly indignity. If either of these councillors do appear on your doorstep between now and next Thursday, ask them about it.

The public footpaths in Lincolnshire remain closed because of the foot and mouth epidemic that has affected other areas of Britain but as I reported in my last Diary, this has had little effect on walkers who step out with poor regard for the edicts of officialdom. From my study window, I see them treading the footpaths between Bourne and Dyke village every day despite the threat of a heavy fine if they are caught by the police, a most unlikely eventuality while most of them sit behind desks and rarely venture out into the streets let alone the countryside. When these misguided restrictions were first imposed, the number of walkers fell off for a few days but then the reality of the situation became apparent and most people have now resumed their normal outings.

I do not say whether this is right or wrong, merely that this is the way it is. Those members of Lincolnshire County Council who continue to huff and puff about what they see is the correct procedure in total defiance of government guidelines have proved once again that they are totally out of touch with the people. The election to public office carries with it a responsibility to abide by the wishes of the people and the cardinal rule is that this power should not be used to control the rest of us because those who abuse it will find that there are still many out there who believe in the freedom to be bloody awkward in response to such wrongs.

Those who represent us on South Kesteven District Council have voted themselves a massive increase in allowances, a bureaucratic euphemism for a pay rise. In doing so, they have demonstrated that self-interest is their aim because this is the local authority that has consistently ignored the wishes of the people. Such issues have been ventilated regularly on this web site and in the local newspapers but it is all so much water off a duck's back because our councillors continue on their merry way, blithely ignoring the fact that they sit in council and committee at the behest of the people who took the trouble to turn out and vote for them at the last election. To their credit, two councillors objected to these increases as being "totally illogical" in the light of the recent conduct of their colleagues over the issue of bus passes for the elderly that has been roundly condemned as a travesty of the democratic process but their protests were drowned by the majority vote.

Under the new system of allowances, payment will no longer be based upon meetings attended as in the past but all will receive a basic £3,000 a year with the promise of even further "special responsibility" payments from October. The leader of the council, for instance, will get £11,400 a year, an increase of £4,400 while his deputy will get £9,300 instead of his present £3,500. The shame of this is that the money they will be taking is ours, paid in council tax because we are forced to do so under threat of prosecution, and although we would accept that we should contribute to help finance our public services, there is no way that our hard-earned money should go to line the pockets of those who often have little or nothing to contribute to the community.

There was a time in my experience when councillors served for the public good without thought of receiving a penny, not even a travel allowance for their car, bus or bicycle to get them to the town hall or council chamber for their meetings. But the age of philanthropy has long gone and once the system of allowances was introduced, it was inevitable that such payments would be increased as the years progressed. We have now reached that point where many of those who put themselves up for election have a weather eye open for the rewards of office which is why so many of our local councillors are men who have retired and are looking for a way to supplement their pensions or women who revel in the thought of power while picking up some extra pocket money in the process.

How then can such an increase be justified? One councillor claims that he puts in 20 hours a week on council matters and that works out at about £3 an hour which is less than the minimum wage of £4.10 an hour. But we know that many councillors also belong to other authorities and organisations that provide some form of remuneration and there are other perks available. Also, if these hours are now being clocked up by men who have retired, how much time did they put in while they were still in full time employment? Or is this, as I have suggested before, the perfect example of Parkinson's Law, the notion propounded by the political scientist Dr C Northcote Parkinson in 1958 that work expands to fill the time available for its completion while subordinates multiply at a fixed rate, regardless of the amount of work produced. After all, we hear a lot about the time being expended by councillors on their local authority duties but we never actually hear what, if anything, they have achieved except attending the meetings for the sake of them. This concern about the hourly rate of pay therefore is at the very nub of the argument for it is obvious that councillors now wish to equate this work with that of real jobs and so the time will surely come when they all vote themselves full time salaries at our expense.

Perhaps they would like to give themselves added status, like our Members of Parliament, elected and paid without question and even with holiday entitlements, severance pay and pension rights when they are rejected by voters at the next election. This is certainly the way in which our local government is going and in the process we are creating a huge and unwieldy bureaucracy that is being financed at the expense of public services while at the same time becoming increasingly remote from the people. We also seem to forget that the district and county councils are already staffed by small armies of highly-paid full time professionals whose salaries and increments account for a large slice of the annual budget and we should not need two such tiers of responsibility to sap this income even further.

Gyles Brandreth, a former Conservative M P, caught the mood perfectly in an article for The Sunday Telegraph on 13th May 2001 when he outlined his bluffer's guide to getting elected and it is worth remembering in the run up to June 7th when we will be voting in our national and local elections. Brandreth, who fought and won a marginal seat (and fought and lost one too), runs through the wrinkles of the election campaign and then when victory is won: "You've done it. You've got the job: no qualifications required, no training necessary, £49,822 per year and the same again in expenses. And, other than signing on ('swearing allegiance', it's called), nothing, but nothing, is required of you for the next five years. Congratulations."

There is now some doubt over whether the so-called Farmers' Market that was introduced in Bourne last year will ever return. The venture was cancelled in the spring as a result of the foot and mouth crisis and although the all clear has been given for trading to re-commence, there are few takers from stallholders and so it has been cancelled for the time being. It will not be missed. This was a farmers' market in name only for you cannot entice customers away from the supermarkets with two or three stalls selling ostrich eggs and a few jars of honey.

The real farmers' markets, such as those that thrive in the big cities, do so because the participants have an enthusiasm for what they sell and this gives the consumer a wide range of traditional meats and produce direct from their farms that have been brought in overnight, as in centuries past, and unless growers accept that they must offer alternative foods that are genuinely fresh and straight from the countryside, then their enterprise will fail and deservedly so. There is little doubt that many of these copy cat markets, as with some farm shops, will blame their demise on the foot and mouth outbreak, a most opportune occurrence that provides the perfect excuse for poor marketing and bad management but in the final analysis, both enterprises are examples of ill-advised exploitation of the public taste.

The mystery over whether the pop singer Leo Sayer ever worked in Bourne has finally been solved by Leo himself and the answer is that he did not. There has been speculation for more than a year that he was once employed as an assistant at D J Spire's electrical shop in the town centre, now occupied by Galaxy Travel, and since then there have been regular messages on the Bourne Forum from people who claimed to have seen him there behind the counter and even that his mother lived in Stamford. There were also suggestions that a plaque should be erected on the front of the shop saying: "Leo Sayer once worked here".

The tale eventually reached London and last month I received an email from Carmen Poston of Tiger Aspect Productions asking for further information. She said that a documentary series called Before they went Pop! is due to be broadcast on ITV sometime during the summer of 2002 and will deal with the secret former lives of pop icons such as Jimi Hendrix, who was a painter and decorator in Seattle, and Luther Vandross, a one-time glazier's apprentice, and they also wanted to include Leo and his time as an electrician in Bourne.

I had already carried out some detailed research on the Internet where there are a number of sites devoted to Leo but could not find any evidence to support the story and so I issued a final appeal a fortnight ago for further information and this produced a reply from the man himself because Leo emailed me over the weekend to put the record straight.

He said that he knew Bourne because he had visited the area a long time ago but he added: "I really must clear up this rumour once and for all about my career there as an electrician. It is simply just not true. I spent most of my early years on the south coast of England and in London where I worked as a graphic designer. I cannot imagine the havoc I would have caused as an electrician for although I am technically minded, my experience only helps me run my studio or fiddle with my computers. As to working in a shop, well, let's just say musicians or artists are not the most practical of people. I don't know how this rumour started and I've tried to scotch it before, but you know how creatively people's minds can work."

Leo finished his message by saying: "Congratulations on a great web site about a lovely place. I wish the people of Bourne happiness, tranquillity and freedom from the threat of visiting pop stars!"

Someone emailed me this week saying that I should take another look at the Corby Glen entry on the web site. He (I imagine) explained that he was a newcomer to the village and suggested that I might like to review the contents. As it happens, he has a good point and so this has now been revised and extended and as this is such a large and interesting village, I will add to it again before the year is out. Many such entries were among the first I wrote when the web site was launched three years ago and I keep them all under constant review but it is impossible to include everything that others think important. I am in the process of upgrading as the months go by to improve on both text and photographs and if anyone has any suggestions, please email me with details and they will receive sympathetic consideration.

Thought for the Week: The populace were unconcerned about the form of government, provided they were well fed and amused. - from A History of Rome (The Reign of Augustus to the Death of Nero, BC30 - AD 68), edited by Henry White (1863).

This surprised me because oil seed has been grown as a staple crop in this locality since the major fen drainage schemes of the 17th century and its presence therefore can hardly be called inappropriate. Yellow is also one of the most frequent colours in nature's palette. However, it is easy to understand why so many people believe that oil seed is a recent innovation, a perception that is mainly due to the fact that the crop has become more popular during the last fifty years. It has been well known in Britain for centuries but the image of rape oil remained industrial until the 1970s when it began to be promoted as an edible product, a home grown alternative to groundnuts, sunflowers and soya. Since then, the acreage has increased enormously and the bright yellow flowers have become a common sight in the countryside at springtime. The revenue from a good harvest of oil seed can equal or exceed that of wheat, making it now the most frequently planted break crop to give the land a rest from successive years of cereals.

Old books on farming frequently refer to oil seed as cole or coleseed and in the absence of photographs, this has confused many people as to the crop's identity. Also, its eye-catching colour that has proliferated in the fields in the past 30 years has persuaded the public that it is a new crop when in fact it is an ancient one. Lord Willoughby, who opposed the draining of the fens, wrote as early as 1598 in a letter to the Earl of Essex that he was convinced the land to be drained was eminently suited for growing rape seed "which is of singular use to make soap and oils with" and would therefore "not help the general poor but undo them and make those that are already rich far more rich".

William Wheeler, in his book A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire (1868) also indicates that oil seed was being grown here when the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden began his task of draining the fens during the early 17th century and as Lord Willougby had predicted, the newly enclosed land was particularly suitable for its cultivation and it therefore became a major crop, second only to cereals such as oats, and used mainly for making soap and oil. In a petition to King Charles I (1600-1649), it was stated that since the draining of the fens, crop yields had increased dramatically and they had an abundance of all sorts of grain and "seed for oyl". This was a cogent reason for oil seed production two centuries before the discovery of petroleum and so one of the most important functions of the fens after drainage was to provide England with a continual supply of soap.

It is unfortunate however if anyone who passes by a crop in full blossom is affected by the pollen. Should farmers stop growing hay to appease those with breathing and nasal problems and other associated allergies caused by a high pollen count? If so, must they also ban linseed, which gives off an equally strong scent while turning the fields blue? But perhaps this is also an inappropriate colour, like the golden cornfields at harvest time. Must we also uproot the hawthorn hedges because they too are colourful and the smell of May blossom can be overpowering as you pass, and while we are at it, kill off what wild flowers we have left in case they too cause the odd bout of sneezing, a runny nose or a watering eye?

The real threat in the countryside is not the plants that grow there but the chemicals that are regularly used to pollute the land in pursuit of profit, a far greater hazard to health than anything produced by nature. You will never see a farmer crop-spraying without wearing protective clothing. Anyone who suffers from asthma or inflammation of the mucous membranes would do well to stay away from such crops at this time of the year although even their own back garden might prove to be equally hazardous. We sympathise with their plight, but the countryside is not to blame.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the Bourne web site has now been translated into German and is available to surfers in Berlin and Munich in their own language. I have this information from my sister-in-law who lives at Rosenheim in Bavaria, just a short step from the Austrian border. Surfing the net has become a hobby in her retirement as a hospital matron but she was most surprised to stumble across this oddity, not for its content because she is a regular visitor and knows the site well, but by the use of her native tongue which provoked a great deal of hilarity.

This is the product of the Google organisation that continually surfs the Internet for all sites with any German connections and then automatically translates the text but as any linguist will know, dictionary definitions cannot possibly embrace the nuances of everyday speech and so the result frequently misses the mark and there are many absurdities to be found here. My wife Elke is the reason why the Bourne site was picked up for this venture because she was born in the Rhine Valley of a well-known wine growing family, but she is described as "a prefabricated building" while the cluster of dwellings that was mediaeval Bourne becomes "a block of flats". The Car Dyke is translated as the "auto damm", Robert Manning a "crew member Robert the man" and our Saxon hero "Hereward the Spoor". There are many other similar howlers that any schoolboy would spot although all have a semantic connection for German speakers, however inaccurate the translation. Nevertheless, the overall product is eminently readable if you live in Frankfurt or Mönchengladbach and are interested in Bourne and so the history of our town is acquiring yet another audience in the heart of Europe.

This project is the result of an automatic translation service and what you read here is the product of a computer rather than a human brain. It is a very clever piece of technology and although still in the development stage, it is an indication of what we can expect in the future. As a writer brought up on the typewriter, two ancient machines shared in a reporters' room of ten in my young days as a budding journalist fifty years ago, the PC is still a cause of wonderment and so each innovation is equally astonishing and I am prompted to speculate on what awe-inspiring changes we shall see in this field during the next half century because everything seems possible. What next then? Bourne in Words and Pictures in Japanese, Mandarin, Bengali, Sanskrit or even Eskimo? Who knows what the future holds.

Schooldays are the happiest days, we are told, and even if you did not find them totally enjoyable, this was a time when the friendships we made often lasted a lifetime. The difficulty is keeping in touch as the years progress. Now a new web site called Friends Reunited is available to help you do just that with a database of more than 28,000 secondary and primary schools and colleges in the United Kingdom and Bourne Grammar School in South Road is one of them. Over 20 former pupils who attended between 1966 and 1998 have added their names to the roll in the quest to renew old acquaintances from their alma mater.

You will need to register and add a password to protect your privacy but after that you can search for your school site and then email any former pupils on the list whose names have a familiar ring. There are also facilities to leave a note on the message board, add fond memories from your classroom days and even your photograph. You can also receive regular emails about the progress of the list. This web site is the ultimate in finding old pals from those days, second only to the school reunion, and for those that have made it in life, there is also a section devoted to success stories. You can find details of this site in Bourne Links.

There are times when officialdom in Britain appears to be part of another world totally divorced from reality and those who work within its ranks see only that which they wish to see. Earlier this year, I commented about the lamentable state of the A6121 road through the village of Toft, three miles south west of Bourne (See Diary for April 2001) that is acknowledged as an accident black spot with large warning signs urging drivers to take care because of a steep hill and sharp bend. The potholes that created the main danger to drivers were filled in by the highways authority after my item appeared but this has not solved the overall problem because the parlous state of the road surface is still causing concern for motorists, not to mention motor cyclists, and as someone who drives this way two and three times a week, I can state quite unequivocally that remedial work is needed as a matter of urgency.

The official view is somewhat different and I am dismayed, but not surprised, to read a news report from The Local here in Bourne that follows up my recent comments. Mr Kevin Brumfield, the area surveyor for Lincolnshire County Council who is based at Thurlby, is quoted as saying that the road surface looks worse than it actually is and although the authority had hoped to carry out re-surfacing work during the last financial year, the money set aside for this has been spent elsewhere and there will be no further funds until 2002-03 when the job might get done.

Well, I can tell the county council that in the view of most motorists passing this way, they are wrong because the condition of the road here is in fact far worse than it looks and no amount of denial will make it otherwise. Anyone driving along this stretch is in for a dangerous and bumpy ride and the only way to negotiate it safely is to slow down to 20 m p h or less but only those drivers who know what to expect do this while the unwary face a roller coaster of a ride, rather like driving over endless cattle grids or sleeping policemen, until they do reduce speed. There is little wonder that this stretch of road has become an accident black spot.

If the name Manning is mentioned in connection with Bourne, most people immediately assume that you are talking about Robert Manning, the mediaeval monk who lived here during the 13th and 14th centuries and as poet and chronicler, was instrumental in putting the ordinary speech of the English people of his time into a written form that is still recognisable today. But there is another author called Manning who also had close associations with the town and who perpetuated its name by using it for the main character in his memorable novel that is widely regarded as the foremost book to emerge from the Great War and one that is still in print today.

Her Privates We was written by Frederic Manning, an Australian who got to know Bourne when he stayed at Edenham vicarage in 1904 and later, after his military service, he lived at the Bull Hotel in the Market Place, now the Burghley Arms in the town centre, where he wrote his novel about life in the trenches as seen through the eyes of Private Bourne. Manning died in a London nursing home in 1935 after being driven there by Dr Alistair Galletly who was his medical advisor. I have researched the life and times of Frederic Manning and enjoyed his book and my account is added today to Bourne Focus.

One of the most rewarding aspects of running this web site is in helping young people with their homework. Teachers at our schools here in Bourne often choose subjects of local interest for research and I get many queries for assistance about the history of this building or that and am always happy to lend a helping hand although I would never divulge the identity of those who have sought this information. The mere fact that pupils email me for help is proof enough that they have sufficient initiative to master their subject for they have consulted one of the likely places to provide the answers.

A year or so back I was emailed by a schoolboy from Texas with some questions about England that he was struggling with for his homework and I later learned that the facts I provided earned him high marks in class and so if there are any youngsters outside Britain who are similarly seeking answers, do not hesitate to ask and I will help if I can. I am a little envious about all of this because in my schooldays of sixty years ago, such information that was available could only be obtained by trekking a mile or more to the local library when it was open which was not very often and even then it was difficult to find what you wanted because the books on offer were more for entertainment than education. But the world has moved on and today our youngsters can find what they want at a mouse click. This is a welcome progression but one that can only be fully appreciated by those who remember the way it was.

Thought for the Week: "When it comes to lies, deceit, bribery and corruption, the last Tory government are non-starters compared with New Labour. I would suggest that Mr Blair's entire front bench take a lie detector test but I fear that the ensuing power surge could black out half of England." - John Haynes of Welford, Northants, in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph, 4th February 2001.

Governments should remember that they tamper with our health services at their peril. We have lost not one hospital in this town during the last twenty years, but three. The closure of Bourne Hospital is uppermost in our memory because there was a vigorous protest campaign by local people to keep it open, a battle that was eventually lost when it was shut three years ago and the premises have been empty ever since.

St Peter's Hospital, a former workhouse that was converted for use by the mentally disabled, had already been phased out under the government's policy of care in the community and after standing idle for some years, the buildings were bought by Warners (Midlands) p l c, the printing firm that owns the adjoining premises, for an expansion of their business interests and so dereliction of this property has been avoided. But we tend to forget that the Butterfield Hospital that served this town for many years during the 20th century was shut in 1983 as part of an economy drive by the National Health Service and it is now used by the South Lincolnshire Community and Mental Health Services N H S Trust.

The number of vital medical beds that have been lost by these closures is a travesty. We do have two admirable group practices in the town and a health clinic but for more advanced treatment and specialist care, we have to look to the hospitals in Stamford and Peterborough and were this system a more efficient one, then we should be thankful but that is not the case because all of these units are working at full stretch and waiting lists grow ever longer because they now take patients from a much wider catchment area.

During the general election campaign, I listened intently to the message from retiring government ministers, particularly the Prime Minister Tony Blair, and they repeated ad nauseam their intention to improve our health services and to remove that fear that we all have about being taken ill with nowhere to go. The sad thing is that they said it all at the last election in May 1997 and nothing has changed. In fact, things have got very much worse. Bourne Hospital, that had served the local community for 100 years, closed under Labour rule in September 1998 and as ministers continue to spout promises for better health care, these buildings on South Road, the main thoroughfare into Bourne, are slowly deteriorating.

Each time you drive past, it is worth remembering what Tony Blair and his colleagues said at the hustings this year: "Labour promises that spending on the health service will increase by an average of 6% for the next three years. There will be 7,000 extra beds by 2004, 111 new hospitals by 2010, premises and equipment are to be improved, there are to be cleaner wards, and maximum waiting times will be cut by the end of 2005." It is much the same as was said the last time only with bells on. Perhaps the Prime Minister might like to see the reality of the situation by taking a look at our unoccupied and derelict hospital for it is not only an eyesore at the entrance to our town, but also a monument to his government's failure to keep faith with the people. How then can we accept what they now pledge for the future? What a pity that we did not have a man of the calibre of Richard Taylor to fight this last election as an independent in our constituency from a platform of health care rather than party affiliation because the result might have been very different.

We have just returned from London where we were visiting our son Justin who is also Webmaster of the Bourne web site. The city is familiar because I once worked there but it is now totally alien to me and although I enjoyed my time there forty years ago, I could never contemplate going back. It has become a seething metropolis of foreign faces that reflect the ethnic mix to be found in all of the big cities of the world and I found myself a stranger in my own land. Perhaps I have been living in the English countryside for too long to readily accept the confines of a concrete jungle, even for a weekend, especially one that has a decidedly cold and unfriendly air about it and no matter where you turn or what you do, it costs money and a lot of it at that.

My lasting impression is of the ubiquitous mobile phone. They are to be found here in Bourne but our small town's supply of these ridiculous instruments is negligible when compared to the capital where they are to be seen and heard everywhere and at all times, bleeping furiously and being talked into as if they were part of life's essential equipment instead of a fashion gizmo that we could all happily do without. If I lived among the London trendsetters, I would undoubtedly be out of it, non-U, naff, not with-it or whatever the current phrase is for someone who refuses to keep up with the Joneses of 2001. Unless you are called up during a dinner party or are bleeped during Sunday morning drinks and nibbles with the neighbours, you are way down in the social pecking order while school kids who do not have a cellphone in their satchel are regarded as deprived.

More than 4.5 million Britons received mobile phones under the Christmas tree in the festive season just gone, making it the most popular gift of all time. Like many modern inventions that have come to plague our lives, it is one of the most intrusive and offensive. What is it that needs to be said now and in a public place that cannot wait until tomorrow or at least until the caller gets home or back to the office? Instead, we have this absurd posturing by people walking down the street, sitting on the train or in the pub, restaurant or shopping centre, talking into one of these silly instruments in a loud voice, and one wonders whether their intention is really to impress those around them while they jam the airwaves with their useless information.

The South Africans, who delight in the mass of electronic gewgaws that have flooded their market since the world trade sanctions against the apartheid regime were lifted when Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994, are among the biggest buyers of cellphones, partly as a result of a totally inefficient national telephone system and partly out of a new nation's desire to impress. They are therefore present in even more places in that country than here in Britain and their continual bleeping can be heard during communion services in churches with upwardly mobile congregations whose members insist on carrying a cellphone when at worship. In fact, the South Africans are so wedded to these machines that they have become known as "Jo'burg earrings" because many people from that town carry two at a time.

There are few things in life so important that it cannot wait for an hour or a day or even a week and just a little thought about the importance of these casual calls and the ensuing conversations in public places could save us all a great deal of annoyance and stop so many people from looking and sounding so utterly ridiculous. When we left Victoria on the coach bound for home, I anticipated a respite from these silly instruments, but it was not to be. We were hardly past Marble Arch when the first of them started bleeping and they continued for most of the journey, the worst offender being a young Russian girl who spent the entire time jabbering away to her boyfriend at the top of her voice and their conversation continued until we pulled into Peterborough where he was waiting with his own mobile clapped to his ear. The cost of these calls is extremely expensive and apart from the annoyance they caused to passengers on the coach, between them they must have contributed towards the very considerable profits of Vodaphone.

Bourne has made it into the pages of the Internet web site for Walsall in the West Midlands, an industrial town ten miles north of Birmingham where urban decline has won it a reputation as the ugliest place in the world. The common denominator is refuse because George Roper who runs the site was fascinated by my description of the Saturday morning collections of household waste from the Rainbow car park (See Diary for 2nd June 2001) where everyone has to queue and queue again to chuck their garbage into the back of the waiting freighters, a system that he compares to his own town where they are fortunate in having two rubbish disposal sites. George writes: "The main difference between the two is that those from Walsall can only manage to get as far as the nearest industrial estate or vacant property whereas the people of Bourne are coping with the inadequacies of their council by queuing. Think yourself lucky because we have no excuse here in Walsall."

If you want to see the effect on a town where there is inefficiency, neglect and total indifference in public affairs, then take a look at Ugly Walsall and pray that it does not happen here.

This web site has a dedicated following around the world and I regularly receive emails from people in many countries who read about our town with great interest. The close attention that is paid to what is going on in Bourne by those who live in other places came home to me last week when I received a most detailed comparison of life in a small town down under. Dennis Blue, aged 75, is a retired antiquarian bookseller who discovered our web site in April 2000 and has been visiting ever since while our exchange of emails has become one of the pleasures in our life because he is erudite and urbane, inquiring and understanding, and his writings are laced with that wry humour that comes from a lifetime's observation of the human condition.

Dennis is also English, having been born at Ashford in Kent, and he emigrated in 1957 and now lives with his wife Doreen at Balaklava, a farm-based township situated 60 miles north of Adelaide in South Australia. The fact that he still has a hankering for the sights and sounds of his homeland is evident from his messages although I fear that the land he once knew has changed out of all recognition and a return would ruin those perceptions that he has and so better the memory than the reality. But the description he has included in his email is worthwhile repeating here for a wider readership, particularly in view of the fact that Bourne has a population of around 12,000 while Balaklava is less than 2,000:

During the past year, through your letters, the Diary and the Forum, we have built a mental picture of Bourne and it may be appropriate for me to paint a simple word picture of Balaklava. The difference in population size makes comparison meaningless because large towns and cities seem to encourage the growth of those disruptive elements not found in smaller communities. Our streets are clean and safe to walk in by night as well as by day. There are no dilapidated or boarded up premises, commercial or residential, in Balaklava and unruly behaviour is rarely if ever seen. Crime when it exists is little more than teenagers ruining their motor car tyres, or the odd cannabis plant found in back gardens. There are no abandoned or vandalised motor vehicles to be seen anywhere that I know of. The township has an eighteen-hole golf course, cricket and football oval, swimming pool, squash centre, bowling and croquet lawns, at least a dozen public tennis/netball/basketball courts, library, art gallery, high school and primary school and a private Christian school, gliding club, thirty-bed hospital with heli-pad and four full time G Ps with visiting specialists.

"There are three good public toilet blocks within the town with probably another ten or so within the various club and public buildings. Households have large wheeled rubbish bins emptied weekly and large items such as old refrigerators can be taken to the dump, four miles out of town, at a cost of $5 per trailer load. The council rates for our modern seven-roomed house on a quarter acre of land are a modest $700 per annum (about £250) payable quarterly if required at no extra cost.

Trying to enumerate all of the social clubs and voluntary organisations here would be a near impossible task but two of them stand out as typical. In rural Australia there is no provision made by the government for a paid professional fire brigade or St John's Ambulance service, but we have both available around the clock staffed by trained but unpaid volunteers. A siren is located at the local police station and this is used to summon the crew on stand by at any particular time, and it is rarely sounding for longer than one or two minutes before the first to turn out switches it off. Four years ago my wife called the ambulance at three in the morning, to take me to the local hospital and it took just twenty minutes to arrive at our house.

This contribution to the web site is an important insight into what can be done for the community of a small town, especially one that has been established in a country where Britain once sent its criminals as a punishment. Although we have most of the facilities and amenities mentioned here, we cannot equate with the overall picture of efficiency and security while the urban environment is only one that we can dream about. I therefore hope that this is read by all of those elected representatives who purport to have our best interests at heart and that they will strive to do better for us in the future.

The decision by Prime Minister Tony Blair to award himself a £50,000 pay rise three days after winning an election landslide was a severe misjudgement that we do not expect from our leaders. It comes at a time when ministers are targeting the public services for wage restraint and no matter how much spin is employed to excuse the move, the public will not buy it and the image of pigs and troughs will be a hard one to obliterate. This ill-advised and even immoral dip into the public purse so soon after polling day is also likely to trigger claims for pay rises from the trade unions and even torpedo Mr Blair's grand plan to reform the public services. It also highlights the disgust that the electorate have with those they choose to represent them in voting themselves more money as soon as they get into office, money that they do not always deserve.

We have a similar case here in recent weeks in which the members of South Kesteven District Council have voted themselves large increases in allowances and in many instances it is for doing less work. By sheer coincidence with the events at Westminster, the question asked on the Bourne web site poll this week was: Should local councillors be paid for their services? The answer was a resounding no from more than 80% of those who voted. If we had asked whether Tony Blair should give himself another £50,000 a year so soon after the ballot papers had been counted, it is inconceivable that the result would have been less decisive.

Today is June 16th, a magical date in the calendar for Britain's four million anglers because this is the opening of the coarse fishing season. It is a date that I remember vividly from my early years when most of my spare time was spent on the riverbank and there has been no time since that I recall with such pleasure. Perceptions change however and I no longer go fishing or support it as a leisure activity because, like fox hunting, it is not pursued for the acquisition of food but for the thrill of the chase and I find this anathema to the human spirit. But no experience is a lost experience and I often dream of those halcyon days when sitting by a quiet river or pool on a sunny morning was my idea of heaven, a sentiment that is not new because the Scottish shepherd and poet James Hogg (1770-1835) had experienced it long before me and evocatively described in his verses about boyhood:
 

Thought for the Week: "Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other." - Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84), the English lexicographer, essayist, poet, moralist and wit.

Saturday 23rd June 2001

How then does the town council plan to solve the problem? Simple. Follow the time-honoured procedure of our local authorities when faced with an insurmountable problem by throwing money at it but in this case, our councillors will be spending £40,000 they have not got and so they have arranged to borrow it. Live now, pay later is their motto. One councillor has even suggested that the repayments on the five-year loan will become easier for council tax payers when people start moving into the 2,000-house Elsea Park development to the south of Bourne and begin to contribute their share to the community chest. He forgot to say that although there is some activity on site, not a single brick has yet been laid on this new estate and so it really will be a case of jam tomorrow, or perhaps the day after that.

But the most important question about this £40,000 loan is where it is coming from and I must tell you that the lenders will be South Kesteven District Council. Such a transaction does not need too much grey matter to understand but I will simplify it thus: the town council that exists on our money has asked the district council that also exists on our money to lend them £40,000 and this loan has been agreed at the rate of 5.5%. We are therefore borrowing our own money and being charged for it in the process and such a loan will mortgage the town council's finances for the next five years. After all, the entire town council budget for the year is barely £100,000 and here they are borrowing almost half of that for a few Christmas gewgaws at a rate of interest that will cost them £2,200 alone in the first year apart from repayments on the capital sum. Councillor John Kirkman, chairman of the town council's finance and general purposes committee, who also happens to be a member of the district council's finance and personnel committee, said: "This is something which hasn't been done before." How right he is and it is to be hoped that we do not make a habit of it.

Meanwhile, the town's shopkeepers have kept very quiet on this matter although it is they who will benefit most from the illuminations with increased trade over the Christmas period. But they have still not offered to chip in to help with the cost of the new lights although the Bourne Chamber of Trade and Commerce is making an effort to fund raise on their behalf with a dance that might, or might not, bring in £1,000. We should be thankful for small mercies because if this sum does materialise then at least it will help pay the interest on the loan we are making to ourselves.

Capital punishment means the death sentence for a crime in accordance with the ruling of a properly constituted tribunal, civil or military. It is so named from the Latin caput because hanging or decapitation was the most usual method of execution and has been associated through the centuries with feelings of revenge, regularised by lex talionis, the law of retaliation or punishment in kind, summed up in the Old Testament admonition: "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. Eye for eye, tooth for a tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:23-24).

In pre-Norman times there were various forms of capital punishment including hanging, decapitation, burning and hurling from rocks but after the Conquest, mutilation seems to have been substituted and is mentioned at the assizes of Clarendon and Northampton during the reign of Henry II (1154-1189). The law was variable for some time after that but gradually crystallised into a common punishment for a great number of crimes comprising treason and all felonies except larceny and wounding. This continued until 1826 at which time there were nominally no fewer than 200 crimes punishable by death.

Capital punishment has been closely questioned in Britain during the last two centuries and particularly since its abolition in this country 40 years ago. The controversy invariably surfaces whenever we hear of an execution in another country, as with the case in the United States of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, that has once again brought the discussion over the rights and wrongs of the death penalty into the public forum.

McVeigh, aged 33, a veteran of the Gulf War, was killed by lethal injection at Terre Haute federal prison in Indiana, on 11th June 2001, the first federal execution for 38 years. He had been convicted of the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, the worst peacetime attack on American soil in which 168 people, including 19 children, were killed, and more than 500 others injured. An added ingredient to these macabre proceedings was that 250 survivors and relatives of those killed in the bombing were allowed to watch the execution on closed-circuit television.

The first country in Europe to abolish the death penalty was Portugal in 1867 but it continued in Britain until 1965, the punishment being carried out by hanging which for the previous 100 years had been in private. Before that, hangings were a public occasion and everyone turned out to watch. Such grisly spectacles may seem remote and therefore less dramatic to people living in the rural areas but it is worth remembering that in centuries past, the Lords of the Manor wielded judicial power to protect their property and possessions with the aid of the pillory, the tumbrel and gallows. They meted out capital punishment for a range of minor offences as well as murder and the public gibbets were such a familiar sight that in 1280 they could be found at more than 100 towns and villages in Lincolnshire and felons were frequently hanged along the fen edge at Bourne. Our own Dr William Dodd, an Anglican clergyman and son of a former Vicar of Bourne, was found guilty of forgery and publicly hanged on 27th June 1777 at Tyburn Tree, the mass gallows at the junction of Oxford Street and Edgware Road in London which had been used since the 12th century, and it was not until 1866 that public executions of this nature ended in Britain.

It is therefore even more disturbing that people were allowed to watch the very high-profile execution of Timothy McVeigh for it demonstrates that the inhumanity of past times is still with us, lurking below the surface of the human psyche. The event has also highlighted the moral dilemma over the legal taking of life. Another important issue that is being discussed in Britain is the subject of euthanasia and this will make it difficult to respond to those terminally ill patients who are dying in agony because the medical profession refuses their pleas to administer a lethal injection. We must therefore ask whether it is morally right to take a life in pursuance of vengeance but not to end unnecessary suffering at the patient's request. That is the debate that we should now be having in Britain.

The gas guns are now firing over the fen throughout the day in an attempt to keep the birds at bay. Farmers have little regard for the annoyance they cause to the people who live nearby in the homes built on land that they sold for high prices because once they have pocketed the cash they wish us to go away. It matters not that we are inconvenienced by these repetitive explosions or that they are infringing the Code of Conduct drawn up for the use of auditory bird scarers by their professional body, the National Farmers' Union, and approved by our district council. This document quite clearly states that such devices should only be fired at fifteen-minute intervals and not be used after dusk or on Sundays, the sound should be muffled by straw baffles and that the wind direction should be taken into account, but all of these guidelines are being regularly flouted.

Last Sunday was a particularly bad day when these guns, sited in open fields, were going off every two or three minutes and the sound was being carried towards our homes by a prevailing wind and therefore their operation was breaching at least four clauses in the Code of Conduct. I have written on this subject before and know from experience that such a code will not be enforced by the authorities because they are unwilling to take the farmers to task while they themselves appear to be totally unconcerned at the low esteem in which they are currently held by the public. They continue to live a cosy, subsidised existence remote from the real world and if ever there were a time for building bridges then this is it but all they can do is to bring out the guns yet again and keep them firing in total disregard for the rules and regulations.

As we are unable to either get official intervention or to shame them into silence, perhaps I can use another tactic to show the farmers the error of their ways by proving that these appliances are totally useless. My first floor study overlooking the fen between Bourne and Dyke village gives me a panoramic view of a field of peas where two of these guns are deployed in an attempt to startle crows and pigeons and stop them pecking at the succulent green shoots that are well above ground level. The idea is that intermittent explosions from the guns will scare them away and deter them from returning to make a meal out of this year's crop but the entire theory is flawed from the outset and I have proved this by a little private research in which I have kept this field under close scrutiny for the past two weeks while working at my desk.

The result did not surprise me. Firstly, the arrival of birds in large flocks is an extremely rare occurrence and happens once, perhaps twice a day. No more. Secondly, the N F U code claims that birds scared off by these appliances take around fifteen minutes to regroup but my observations indicate that with crows particularly, this is incorrect and that initially they flock back within minutes, later within seconds and eventually they are completely immune to any of the explosions.

It would therefore seem that farmers gain little or no practical advantage from the use of audio bird scarers and they would be well advised to save their time and money. The most they can do on those rare occasions when birds do invade in large numbers is to send them to another farmer's land. So much for countryside neighbourliness. It would take only two or three like-minded farmers installing similar equipment to muster more fire-power than a Boxing Day pheasant shoot.

Only those people who live within earshot are affected by these scarers and continued explosions increase the antagonism of the public. The message to the farmers then is clear: some birds may feed on your crops but the damage is likely to be negligible. The use of gas guns to stop them is quite futile but will do even more harm to your standing in the community. Take your pick.

The summer solstice was on Thursday 21st June, the longest day of the year when the sun is farthest north and the date that summer officially begins. We may be forgiven this year for thinking that this season had eluded us because our days have been chilly and our nights decidedly cold and there have been times when the temperatures were more in keeping with December than June, a month when the central heating has usually been off for several weeks, but not so this year. It is also noticeable that there has been no mention of global warming in the media, a phrase that disappears from the language whenever the weather turns unusually cold. How many recurrences of this unseasonable weather will we need then before it is accepted that global warming is one of the great myths of our age and that such occurrences are merely the result of unpredictable climatic fluctuations?

The use of this phrase is certainly a modern phenomenon, originally coined to explain the few hot dry spells that have produced drought conditions in recent years but then when they did not recur, its usage was extended to embrace all unusual meteorological circumstances from high winds to flash floods. It was for instance, a totally unknown expression in 1816 when the weather was so bad that it became known as the year without a summer or in 1976 when it was so hot and dry that it became known as the summer without rain. How convenient if both extremes of climate could have been blamed on global warming when, like today, it was nothing more than a natural fluctuation in the weather pattern although the merchants of doom now have carbon dioxide emissions to blame for the inherent meteorological instability. We may well have a heat wave before this summer is out and if so, global warming is sure to get yet another airing.

A brief history of Bourne Town Council is added to the web site today. This authority has been in existence for 27 years although it origins stem from the old Bourne Urban District Council that was formed in 1899 and with which I was familiar half a century ago because one of my jobs as a young reporter with the Peterborough Citizen and Advertiser was to catch the bus to Bourne once a month and attend their meetings. In those days, every word spoken and every decision taken was dutifully recorded and reports of the monthly meetings ran to several columns and missing out a name or a particularly fine phrase from one of the councillors landed you in hot water with the editor if anyone complained.

Detailed reporting of such events is no longer the practice of our local newspapers that seem to print only those news items that are easy to acquire and do not take up the preferred space for paid advertising and so we rarely hear what goes on at council meetings unless it is about an issue of some importance and even then you are only given a bare outline of the proceedings. My lasting impression of the council meetings at Bourne, and of those others that I attended, was that the members conducted their business with a courtesy and efficiency that is considered today to be old fashioned and after listening to their deliberations for two or three hours you had the distinct impression that something good was being decided for the community. Today, most issues in the council chamber are decided along party lines and so the outcome is known before the vote takes place. The large numbers of independent councillors of fifty years ago whose primary aim was to serve are also a thing of the past and the administration of our local government is the poorer for it.

I have also extended the entry on the history of Baldock's Mill and have included brief details of the two other water mills in Bourne that survived into the 20th century, Notley's and Cliffe's Mills, both of which have sadly disappeared from the scene. While researching this material, I was contacted by a lady from the United States who told me a most interesting tale about another water mill, also called Baldock's Mill. Anita Baldock-Bryant is the descendant of a Richard Baldock, a convict who was deported to the colonies in 1741 for stealing a cow but after serving his sentence, he married and settled down and his son built the mill at Amherst County, Virginia. Strange but true and we are both wondering if our Baldocks are related.

Thought for the Week: "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend." - quoted by Polonius in Hamlet (Act 1, Scene III) by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

Saturday 30^th June 2001

This is the biggest lottery in the world and out of every pound spent, some 28p goes to good causes and it is estimated that by the end of this year, £10 billion will have been raised for the six recipients that come within the meaning of the act, namely the arts, sports, charities, heritage, celebrating the millennium and the new and combined category for health, education and the environment. Many of these are community based schemes designed to improve the quality of life for everybody in the locality and money has already been spent on helping deprived groups, saving buildings and national treasures, enabling more people to enjoy sports and the arts and supporting initiatives to celebrate the new millennium. The money is not spent only on large prestige projects and half of the awards so far have been for less than £25,000, relatively small amounts that do a lot of good.

But in the years since the lottery was launched, government has cast envious eyes over its profits and with so much money coming in every week, it was inevitable that they would see this as a way of offloading some of their liabilities and so the distribution rules for the profits were changed to allow funds to go into many other areas, particularly education and health, which are actually the direct responsibility of the Exchequer. In the coming years, we can expect the government to dip repeatedly into this bottomless pit to make their financial ends meet and so it is quite likely that it will very soon become just another official source of income along with the car tax, national insurance and V A T.

But fortunately, there is still sufficient cash available for the really worthwhile causes, especially those that operate for a charitable, benevolent or philanthropic purpose, and the outdoor swimming pool here in Bourne falls neatly into that category. This is a community amenity dating back to the aftermath of the Great War and now provides endless hours of pleasure for swimmers during the summer months. Unfortunately, such a facility that is run by volunteers is in constant need of cash to survive and so the preservation trust that runs its affairs has applied for a lottery grant and although no figure has been announced publicly, I understand that they are bidding for £1 million.

The money is needed to finance major improvements to the pool and to guarantee its survival. The trust will have to state a convincing case to the National Lottery Charities Board in order to get the money but we wish them well. This swimming pool was saved from closure 12 years ago by the will of the people and having surmounted that difficulty, it would be a sad day for Bourne if the expectations of the chairman Mrs Mandy Delaine-Smith and her organising committee were not met.

A mishap by contractors carrying out road repairs in West Street brought an unexpected bonus for motorists using Bourne town centre for most of last week. Their machinery sliced through the electricity cables that power the traffic lights and repair work took several days during which time drivers negotiated this busy cross roads as though it were a roundabout, the basic rule being to give way to traffic from the right, and the emergency arrangements worked perfectly.

The situation stimulated a lively discussion in the Bourne Forum and the consensus was that the traffic lights should go altogether. The general reaction from road users was summed up by Paul Kerr who wrote on Friday after the repair work had been completed: "As soon as I approached South Road this evening I knew that the lights had been mended because a queue had formed for the only time this week when I have been having a hold-up free journey to work each morning. There is no more to be said about the removal of these lights. Pedestrian crossings would not be difficult to install because the essential elements are already in place. Now is the time for our elected members to carry out the will of the people."

A permanent roundabout at this point has long been the dream of those who have been held up in the town centre by long traffic queues, especially when the chaos and gridlock has been made worse by container lorries taking up more than their fair share of road and by vehicles illegally parked on double yellow lines while their drivers either drop off a delivery or even draw money from one of the many cash dispensing machines in the vicinity. The benefits of such a development have therefore been demonstrated yet again but only through an accident.

There was a similar occurrence when the traffic lights failed in December 1998 when one man who observed the smooth flow of vehicles gave an unambiguous verdict. Ray Cliffe, the West Street trader and town councillor, said: "The cars flowed through very easily and when the lights came back on, the traffic started to build up again. It is like that whenever they break down. I always said that they should not have installed them in the first place."

The traffic at this point is controlled by an elaborate and sophisticated system with a staggering twelve sets of traffic lights around the crossroads that are both expensive to install and costly to maintain yet whenever they break down it becomes obvious that they are not needed. A permanent roundabout would be a one-off capital outlay with little further maintenance and what is more, it makes good sense. Perhaps our Town Centre Management Partnership might consider this a worthwhile issue to investigate.

This is strawberry time in England and doubly so here in South Lincolnshire because we grow this most delightful of fruit in abundance. They are at their very best with cream or ice cream while sitting outside on a sunny day which is why a bowl or two has become a tradition at the lawn tennis tournaments that are underway this week at Wimbledon, an event that fortunately always coincides with the strawberry harvest. One would imagine that our local shops would be full of the freshest available but that is not so and on Wednesday we bought a punnet from one of the greengrocery shops in Bourne but they were mostly bad and certainly not fresh and they may not even have been English. Those that appeared unblemished were not too good either and we felt defrauded at paying £1.35 for fruit when half of it was thrown away.

The following day when we drove out into the countryside, several of the lay-bys contained vans from outlying farms selling strawberries freshly picked from the fields at £1 a punnet that contained twice the amount of fruit that we were sold in Bourne. One grower who was doing brisk business on the A16 north of Tallington, near Stamford, had driven his van all the way from Norfolk to sell his produce and we bought a large quantity because we know him well having been a customer at his summer sales spot for several years and can therefore vouch for the quality of his produce. He told us that he will be there daily for at least another fortnight, perhaps longer, from 11 a m onwards.

The message then is not to risk buying sub-standard strawberries from the shops this month but get them instead direct from the farm gate that has been brought to your doorstep. I will not divulge the identity of the Bourne shop that sold us rotten fruit to spare their embarrassment but there must be many others out there who have had a similar experience and will know better next time.

The Robert Manning Technology College is particularly proud of its achievements in the field of information technology that has recently resulted in a £5,000 award to the Willoughby School here in Bourne from a national scheme run by British Telecom and The Guardian newspaper to help schools working on joint projects that promote the best use of new technologies. This scheme will involve the school linking up with the college to improve the access to and knowledge of the outside world among children with learning difficulties.

The Willoughby School has 67 pupils, all with emotional and physical problems and the scheme entitled "What I did at school" will involve working with six ITC students at the college to create a dedicated part of the school web site that will highlight individual achievements and create friendships between the two schools. Adam Booker, the project co-ordinator at the Willoughby School, said: "It is a way for our children to be included in society and will benefit both schools as our students build friendships and learn about ITC while pupils at Robert Manning will provide real world ITC solutions as they study for their A-levels. It is a method of finding solutions for mainstream students but it is also a real challenge to become involved with those who have learning disabilities."

The BT Future Talk Schools Awards were launched in 1999 offering £100,000 every term. Individual cash awards of up to £25,000 are available to fund projects that illustrate the application of ITC in the classroom. All schools in the United Kingdom qualify for entry and applications are welcome in all curriculum subject areas.

I do not receive a lot of letters these days except for the odd bill and bank statement but the volume of envelopes and leaflets that drop on to the doormat each day is invariably swelled by junk mail. Some people love it because they get no other and it gives them a feeling of being in touch with the outside world but for those to whom time is precious, it has become an intrusion and an imposition. This week for instance, in one morning delivery, I received six items, all unsolicited. Five were addressed to the occupier advising on the benefits of a particular home insurance, double glazing, buying from a fashion catalogue, a photographic printing service and participation in a consumer survey, all of which went straight into the bin. The last letter in a window envelope was clearly addressed to my wife with the correct name and post code and a Par Avion logo in the top right hand corner indicating that it had come from abroad although its country of origin was not evident. How can even the severest critic of junk mail possibly resist such a letter? It was therefore opened and read and so the sender had scored a partial victory.

Their marketing success however, ended there, for it contained an announcement couched in the most familiar of terms as though trying to forge an instant friendship by the use of the first name informing her that she was guaranteed to receive either £150,000 in cash or one of a long list of consumer goods ranging from a digital camera or wide screen television set to a £5,000 luxury holiday or a £1,000 shopping spree at Marks & Spencer. "To claim instantly, call our 24-hour claim line", said the letter. "If you do not make a claim, we will re-allocate what is named as yours to someone else, so pick up the phone this minute and find out what our computer has named as yours. Once you call, your claim will be secure and dispatched to you. If you do not claim, you will lose your claim to someone else."

Yes, we have got the message. But what is this at the bottom under Terms and Conditions and printed in a very small type? The devil was obviously in the detail because here we are told that calls to the claimline will cost £1 a minute and that the likely "playing time" will be nine and a half minutes and so the organisers will have ripped you off for almost a tenner whether you win or lose and as the list of items named as prizes also includes at the end "Male or female gold necklaces" it is inevitable what you will receive: some cheapjack worthless fairground tat that is handed out to stay within the letter of the law. The small print also indicates the country of origin as Ireland for this dubious enterprise but their address is confined to a Post Office box number in Dublin and so there is no chance contacting them by letter because you are warned: "Do not write to this address as this will invalidate your claim." They have therefore covered themselves from all angles and most people ought to realise that this is a come-on, probably run by some confidence trickster tapping away at a computer in a back room in Limerick.

We are old and wise enough to know that you get nothing for nothing and recognise such tempting offers for what they are but there must be many out there, young people anxious to make a fortune and old people trying to make ends meet, who will be seduced into making that telephone call and so the ruse succeeds. The most annoying thing about the arrival of such mail is that they got the name and the address correct and so it must have been passed on by someone else that we have actually done business with. The answer then is never to agree to allow your name to be passed on to anyone else when dealing with a mail order firm and never tick that little box that gives them permission to do so. Meantime, I have passed this particular piece of fiction on to the Lincolnshire Trading Standards Department and so I expect very little to be done about it although an official has telephoned to say that they will try to alert the public to this scam through Radio Lincolnshire.

The local newspapers frequently carry photographs of the great and the good in Bourne seeking publicity for their public services, whether actual or perceived. Whenever there is a cause to be espoused, they will be there, often with a chain of office dangling at the ready. It is this eagerness for publicity that gives them away for vanity knows no bounds. To find out who actually does the real voluntary and unpaid work that keeps this town ticking over, you have to look a little further than the newspaper headlines.

On Tuesday this week, my neighbour Mrs Brenda Jones was invited to lunch by the town's Rotary Club to receive their annual civic award for the most noteworthy contribution to the community during the past twelve months. She is chairman of the Civic Society and a magnificent silver rose bowl was handed over to mark this achievement which she accepted on behalf of Baldock's Mill, our Heritage Centre that would not survive without the unstinting work that she puts in together with her husband Jim. Their approach is always hands on because they not only keep the place ticking over and available to visitors but they also ensure that it looks spick and span with a weekly cleaning and I have known them to start this chore at 6 a m in the morning while Jim is also the handyman responsible for many of the interior improvements to this 200 year old building.

Jim and Brenda Jones are at the very heart of our community for they only wish to serve and there any many more like-minded people in this town for they are our unsung heroes who go about their business without thought of reward. If the public spirit that inspires them were a more widespread commodity, then Bourne would be the better for it.

Baldock's Mill is becoming well known throughout the world, as I reported in my Diary last week, but two web sites were drawn to my attention this week that have been using my photographs of the building and descriptive text without permission. This material has now been withdrawn after this intransigence was pointed out to the webmasters concerned. There is a feeling prevalent out there on the world wide web that anything goes and that whatever is available can be filched and used for any purpose, whether private or commercial, but I must tell those who think this way that the contents of the Bourne web site are copyright and should not be reproduced without prior sanction. The law of copyright applies to the Internet just as it does to books, music, paintings and other creative products, and I protect my work accordingly although those that seek permission to use specific examples are usually given permission, as I have this week for a genealogy site in Australia and previously many more in other countries around the world. If you wish to reproduce something from the Bourne web site therefore, please ask first.

Thought for the Week: Two policemen were on the beat in Bourne on Tuesday morning, a rare sight indeed. They were spotted outside Boots the Chemists in West Street while further up the road two vehicles had gridlocked the entire town centre by illegally parking on the wrong side of the road yet the officers continued chatting to passers-by, totally oblivious of the traffic chaos around them. One elderly resident was heard to remark: "Whatever would they do if they were here on a Saturday night when there is some real trouble afoot?"

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