Bourne Diary - September 2001

Saturday 1^st September 2001

The exact population of Bourne at this moment is not known but a realistic estimate would be 13,000. We must wait until next year when the results of Census 2001, the head count taken last April, are announced. One thousand years ago, it was barely 500 and so there has been a slow and steady growth that has turned this settlement that sprang up around the springs that flowed from St Peter's Pool into a hamlet, then a village and now a market town that flourishes still.

When the last census was taken in 1991, the population figure for Bourne was 9,958. The government does not publish statistics for parishes and towns between each 10-year census but an official estimate from mid-1998 was 11,620, based on information from house building and other factors. A current figure of 13,000, perhaps higher, would not therefore be amiss.

The Elsea Park housing development, a bogey to all who dislike forced expansion, will bring the most dramatic change to Bourne in 2,000 years and by the time the next census is taken in 2011, the population figures will most likely be nearer 20,000 or even 25,000. This is known as progress. I have been researching population trends in Bourne through the ages and my results are added to the web site today including all of the national census figures since it began in 1801. These statistics may be a shock to those who thought that this was a quiet backwater and might continue so, whether they are from old established families or have recently moved here to live, and I have therefore asked the question on the Bourne poll today:

Is Bourne expanding at too fast a rate?

I hope that everyone will cast a vote on this very important subject. The result will make little difference to what happens to our town but it will reflect public opinion and perhaps those we elected to serve in our name might take notice.

Parking fees for Bourne are again on the agenda and it now seems likely that we will soon be joining the other towns in South Lincolnshire where charges will be imposed on those who leave their vehicles in town centre car parks, despite the protestations of our local councillors. It was inevitable that this particular imposition would catch up with Bourne one day. South Kesteven District Council has been looking at the potential revenue from this town for some years and now that all car parks are full on each working day, the income to be gained from parking charges is too good to miss. Government at all levels is always on the alert for more means of raising money and here is a golden opportunity. The fact that this will be the very last straw for any car owner to shop in Bourne again means little to them but that is the way it will be because if they have to pay to park here, they might as well pay to park in Peterborough, Stamford or Grantham, where choice is wider and prices often lower.

Parking is a comparatively recent problem in Lincolnshire. It was first noticed in 1930 when the Lincolnshire Automobile Club observed that in certain towns, particularly on market days, places to leave cars were becoming more and more restricted. The motor car was still a new phenomenon because in the same year, speed limits that governed their use were abolished although new penalties were introduced for dangerous or careless driving. Since then, the motorist has faced new rules and regulations constantly, either to restrict his activities or increase his overheads.

One of Bourne's early motoring pioneers was Dr Gilpin, a general practitioner, who was one of the first owners of a motor car in the town along with his friend Thomas William Mays, father of the famous Raymond Mays. In 1904, Dr Gilpin read a paper on motoring to the Lincolnshire Automobile Club, an organisation that had been formed in 1900 and had 91 members within two years and by 1914 the figure had risen to 322. One in every six of those was a doctor, professional men who could afford such a luxury.

During his talk, Dr Gilpin gave some facts concerning car ownership based on his own experience. He estimated that if £25 a year were spent on tyres, 6,000 miles of motoring would be possible in that period, Allowing for 15 shillings (75p) as a weekly wage for a man to look after the car and also to do the work in the garden and various other odd jobs, then reckoning the further expense of petrol, clothes, accumulators, licences and repairs, he estimated the cost of his motoring worked out at 3½ pence a mile. This contrasted very favourably with horse transport for in earlier days, when the doctor had relied on that, it had cost him sixpence a mile. He had paid £200 for the vehicle itself and in his opinion, each year would see more uniformity in the types of cars while depreciation would be limited to the wear and tear of tyres. He was right about the proliferation of the different car models but badly wrong about motoring expenses that have reached a level today that would stagger him. I also wonder what he would have thought about having to pay to park his car in the town.

The ignominy of queuing up to dump our surplus garbage in the freighters at the Rainbow car park on Saturday mornings continues while the county council dithers over the establishment of a permanent waste facility. However, these weekly trips are always interesting because of the people you meet while disposing of the garden waste and so it was last Saturday. The chap driving the car that pulled in next to me was dumping several plastic bags full of rubbish that he had cleared from the bottom of his garden in Mill Drove but he had also scooped up a family of frogs without realising it. The first he knew of his unusual passengers was when one climbed up his leg on the way to the skips and he found several more while emptying his bags. Fortunately, he was a nature lover and he collected them all up, put them in the boot and drove them home where he deposited them safely in the familiar surroundings of his back garden.

One of my regular correspondents in Israel slipped and broke an ankle earlier this year, a traumatic occurrence for a lady who will be 81 next week, but she is now recovering well although complaining that her convalescence is keeping her housebound and so she is contemplating the purchase of a walking stick or perhaps even "a small electric vehicle" as she puts it, to enable her escape her kibbutz apartment for the great outdoors where she is at her happiest. These motorised buggies are much in evidence here in Bourne and I have been telling her about the small club that has developed outside Budgen's supermarket, especially on Thursday market days, where seven or eight fellows gather from mid-morning onwards to exchange gossip and no doubt discuss the merits of their various machines. Clubs are like this because they bring together people with the same interest and although in this case the common denominator is a difficulty in walking, it by no means affects the bonhomie that exudes from this company because these genial old chaps are always chuckling over some joke or other whenever we pass by and when they all leave together to go home, it is rather like a miniature motorcade.

The football season is again upon us and during my researches, I have stumbled across a story that will be of interest to Bourne Town Football Club. They have been in existence sine 1883 and one of their big tournaments in years past was for the Ancaster Cup, a silver trophy donated by the Earl of Ancaster. This was a competition confined to local teams and the club's fiercest rivals were from Billingborough, the village nine miles north of Bourne.

The two teams met annually on Easter Monday, a red letter day for supporters from both sides, when trains, carriages, carts and horses took supporters to the Abbey Lawn ground which rang with the cheers and jeers of opposing supporters. The Ancaster Cup was a much sought after trophy and after a rare but glorious victory for Billingborough in 1924, a black-edged mourning card was printed and circulated by the visiting players and widely distributed in the town, much to the chagrin of the Bourne club.

Well, I am sure that there was no acrimony and that Billingborough only meant it as a joke but I have an idea that Bourne Town may have improved immeasurably since those days.

Tales abound of the way in which Bourne's motor racing pioneer Raymond Mays lived his life, always to the full and without a care for tomorrow. He had little regard for money and even for his own health because he was still smoking furiously at the age of 68. During the years before the Second World War when his name had become synonymous with speed, daring, skill and record breaking, one journalist remarked: "He would either break the record or break his neck. The unnerving thing was that he knew it." Miraculously, Mays lived to be 80.

The word serendipity describes the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by chance and this happens to me frequently while researching Bourne and its environs, as with the football story above and the anecdotes about Dr Gilpin and Raymond Mays. It was coined in 1754 by the author and historian Horace Walpole in a fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip [Ceylon or Sri Lanka] in which the heroes of the title "were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". Those items that I have stumbled across by luck rather than design and think worthwhile preserving, will now be given a permanent place in this new feature that is added today to Memories of Times Past.

Thought for the Week: "I have had an attack of misanthropy and am very much afraid that it is getting worse. The general election brought it on, and now there is hardly a man or woman in the public eye that I can bear the sight of."- Edward Enfield, father of comedian Harry Enfield, writing in The Oldie, September 2001.

Saturday 8^th September 2001

There was a time when this part of South Lincolnshire was alive with birds of many varieties. The accounts of travellers in earlier centuries teem with sightings of species that are either unheard of today or are a rarity at best such as the great crested grebe, water rail, redshank, red-breasted godwit, short-eared owl, red kite, woodcock, quail, puffin, bittern, curlew, crane and heron, cormorant and osprey, names to excite even the most inexperienced bird watcher but all are now most unlikely sightings.

In years past, bird numbers were drastically reduced by trapping them in decoys and forty of them operated in Lincolnshire during the 18th century, one of them at Dowsby, six miles north of Bourne, that took over 13,000 birds in a good season. Teal, widgeon, mallard and pochard were among the wildfowl killed between October and April with lesser numbers of shovellers, tufted duck and pintail, all without a shot being fired. Some were sold locally but most were sent to the London markets to supply the tables of the wealthy. The birds from these decoys often included huge numbers of winter migrants and one observer wrote in 1761: "I have often seen wagons drawn by ten or twelve horses apiece, so heavy were they laden." In the early 19th century, it was recorded that 31,200 ducks from ten South Lincolnshire decoys were sent for sale in the capital.

The decoys are no more, prohibited by Act of Parliament unless specifically licensed to trap birds for research such as the one at Newborough, just over the county border in Cambridgeshire. But our birds are still under threat for as one danger is removed, it is replaced by another.

The summer population of swallows in this country is down by 20%, according to the British Trust for Ornithology. Observers from this excellent organisation which is devoted to the conservation of birds that choose to live here, either all year round or as seasonal visitors, were out in force along the coast of the English Channel around Dover last weekend as the annual migration got underway in an attempt to count, perhaps estimate might be a better word, the numbers that have been spending the summer in these islands. Swallows are part of our heritage and are celebrated in poetry and song and particularly eulogised by Tennyson with his evocative words

O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South . . .

for it is their arrival in the spring and departure in the early autumn that act as markers for the passing year.

The swallow is a blue-black bird with a red and blue face pattern and a long forked tail and is therefore easy to distinguish in flight from its relatives, the house martins and swifts. All of them catch insects on the wing, their bodies being designed for speed with long, curved wings and it has been estimated that swallows can reach up to 100 m p h although in reality they rarely exceed 30 m p h. Swallows depend on man for their habitats, breeding in barns and sheds, often returning to the same nest year after year. They stay in Britain from late March and early June until September or October and can be found throughout these islands except the very north east of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland and they winter in Africa south of the Sahara.

The trust is concerned that the number of swallows coming here has declined markedly in some parts of the country but research indicates that these changes are most likely linked to the availability of food supplies that have been badly affected over the years by intensive farming methods in which hedgerows have been uprooted and the use of agro-chemicals has caused a dramatic decline in the number of insects on which they feed. It is thought that the current foot and mouth crisis may also be a factor because greater farm hygiene has reduced potential nesting sites and, with the greater use of insecticides, has limited food supplies. Also, fewer animals in the fields means fewer flies on which they feed and so even the slightest changes in the rural environment can upset the delicate eco-system that we have in the countryside.

There are further hazards for the swallow and all other birds of passage and that is the threat from the shooters in countries such as France which claims 32 million migratory birds each year in Europe's longest hunting season and although the biggest toll is among ducks and other waterfowl, all birds are at risk in a country where well over three million people carry a gun at some time during the year. The European Union is moving to stop this annual slaughter but despite a directive dating back to 1979, the shooting continues and bird numbers steadily decline.

Our birds can survive most of nature's hazards, storm and tempest, fire and flood, and they quickly recover and flourish but history has proved that they cannot stand up to man whether he uses guns or contaminates the countryside with poisons. One year soon, we may well awake to a silent spring.

There has been an angry reaction in Bourne over suggestions that we should be charged to use the town centre car parks. Shoppers and workers certainly do not want to pay to leave their vehicles and traders say that it will threaten their business and drive customers elsewhere. This is a ubiquitous web site and so the debate on this issue has already reached Japan from where I have received an interesting comment on the subject of car usage. My correspondent, an Englishman who works in Tokyo as a translator, writes:

Cars ought to be taxed right out of town centres completely, through parking charges and all manner of other fees, with exceptions for emergency services and those who have no other option. In a place the size of Bourne, there is no excuse for driving to the shops if you are healthy enough to cycle or walk. Cars have taken over most English town centres and in many cases ruined them. In particular, I resent the way that our market places, the most public spaces we have, have been turned into vast, clogged pounds for metal boxes. How is it, for instance, that aluminium cans discarded in the gutter can inspire angry letters to the newspapers but the much bigger tin cans that line every street in England appear to escape unnoticed?

I also feel it is quite silly in objecting to cyclists riding on the pavements. I know this is a subject that gets a lot of people excited, but responsible cyclists usually only do this when the road is too dangerous although I must admit that there are plenty of irresponsible cyclists in this city who do it for fun. Here in Japan, the pavements are used quite legally by both bikes and pedestrians and in the ten years I have been here, I have never seen a collision or quarrel. It merely takes a little vigilance and patience and it works, despite the fact that Japan's pavements are much narrower than those in Britain.

Imagine, if Bourne jacks up parking charges in the town centre high enough, perhaps the Elsea Park housing development that everyone seems to dread will suddenly seem less attractive an idea to developers and potential buyers.

Now there is food for thought. We are stuck with the car but why should we always put it first? The situation we have reached is the direct result of the reluctance of politicians to legislate against its proliferation. If production and sale had been regulated in the past, successive governments would not have to face such massive expenditure for the building of new roads and the maintenance of existing ones. It is the popularity of the motor car that has ruined our environment, particularly our townscapes, and evidence of this can be found by leafing though old magazines of 20 and 30 years ago that contain photographs of an England long gone, when it was safe to walk the street and, as I spotted in a magazine this week, a flock of sheep being shepherded across town bridge at Stamford and that was as recent as 1980. Fewer cars on the road and more public transport would make Bourne and other towns a cleaner, healthier and more attractive place and there would be no need for parking charges.

But we are stuck with the current situation and must accept that it will get worse and not better. Like the ridiculous window tax imposed in 1696 that lead to windows being boarded and bricked up to avoid it, government, local or national, will cotton on to anything that will raise more income to fund its excessive spending and so parking charges appear to be inevitable and those who have no intention of paying will find other, often illegal, places to leave their vehicles. The bureaucrats, however, are not content with merely imposing such charges. They also want us to like them, hence the survey purported to have been carried out by South Kesteven District Council claiming that 64% of those questioned in Bourne would be perfectly happy to pay up. I see no winged pigs out there on the skyline and so this must be assumed to be a figment of someone's imagination in the corridors of power at council headquarters.

The Bourne web site is therefore carrying out its own survey and the question in this week's poll is:

Should car parking charges be introduced in Bourne?

Please vote and make this an exceptional turnout and I will pass the result on to South Kesteven District Council.

An anonymous contributor left a message on the Bourne Forum this week saying that he thought the feature had deteriorated because it was discussing such mundane things as God and the Conservatives. I usually delete items that have no email address, an obviously disguised name or do not add to the debate, but in this case I allowed his message to be posted because his question carried within it the answer he was seeking. Instead of belly-aching in this way, he should have posted a subject that would stimulate discussion or add to the dialogue and the argument that he was seeking and I am pleased to note that another and more erudite contributor has since told him so in no uncertain terms. If you are out there Rob, for that is the name he uses, we are all waiting for your pearls of wisdom that will enlighten our lives.

Someone has sent me another virus, this time an email entitled Sorbi & Janice. The last one I received was a year ago when an inquiry about the Bourne Coat of Arms was infected by the dreaded KakWorm virus. Fortunately, my own computer is equipped with a very efficient anti-virus programme that alerted me to the danger on both occasions and so no harm was done. There must be many of you without such precautions on board and I can only advise you to remedy this as soon as possible because there are some very sick people out there in cyberspace who get great delight in other people's discomfort.

We count ourselves lucky here in Bourne because we are a small market town where high profile crime is not common but that does not mean to say that we are totally free of those who wish to profit from others through such anti-social behaviour. It is therefore sad to report that law breaking has finally arrived in our neighbourhood. We live in a quiet residential part of the town, a secluded cul de sac where even the weekly arrival of the refuse collectors is an event, but in recent weeks we have had a night time prowler who has been opening unlocked garages and stealing whatever he can find. He tried my garage one night and actually opened it but found nothing to his fancy although he did have richer pickings further up the street and then he made the big mistake of attempting a similar intrusion at the home of a policeman who, despite it being two o'clock in the morning, was up and about and so he arrested him. Next morning, the Scenes of Crime officers came around mob-handed and I had to guiltily admit that, like most other people, I had left my garage unlocked but that will not happen again.

Nevertheless, this is still a rare occurrence for this part of town for which we are thankful. A few years ago, my brother-in-law came over from South Africa and one afternoon we went out for a walk leaving the garage door not only unlocked but also fully open and he suggested that this might be incautious because had he done the same at his home in Johannesburg, not only would all of the contents have been stolen within minutes but the door would have gone too. But then South Africa is now the crime centre of the world with 25,000 murders a year, higher even than the United States, and so with one sneak thief in 20 years, I suppose we ought not complain.

Thought for the Week: "Travel is way more stressful than staying at home, and for what? Inspired by George Bush and Tony Blair, the West now believes travel is the highest form of life, but mostly it is as vacuous as that 1980s obsession shopping. On this splendid Bank Holiday, Englishmen are advised to enjoy their mid-day sun at home." - Jasper Gerard, writing in The Times on the madness of holidays, Bank Holiday Monday, 27th August 2001.

Saturday 15^th September 2001

Every Sunday morning I am up and about early and usually in town buying a newspaper. It has become a habit rather than depend on delivery boys who arrive at mid-morning when the urge to read the news has gone. I often walk the streets at 7 a m, sometimes before, and the mess that can usually be found is not a pretty sight. In recent weeks I have noticed broken glass in the alleyways and gutters, shattered windows, upended waste bins, discarded paper and wrappers from fast food outlets, cigarette cartons, cans, bottles, vomit and even blood, on one occasion a trail of it along the pavement from someone who must have been very badly hurt. Other unmentionable items can also be found littering the passageways where later in the day mothers and their children will be walking as well as weekend visitors, and what do they think of our habits when they see this detritus from the excesses of a Saturday night?

When I have written about these matters in the past, I have received rude email messages saying that I should not mention such things in case it deters tourists but this column is not concerned with what might be, only what is. After all, it is not so long ago that Bourne was the best-kept small towns in the Kesteven area of Lincolnshire. The year was 1965 and the following February, Bourne Urban District Council which then ran our affairs was presented with a metal plaque and trophy from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England for winning this competition. An additional prize was a tree of their own choice and the council selected a flowering cherry that was planted near the entrance to the Abbey Lawn during a civic ceremony by the chairman, Councillor J R Grummitt, with representatives from Bourne United Charities in attendance.

The cherry tree flowers still and the small plaque nearby reminds us of this success and of those days when Bourne was a town of which we could be justly proud. Today, few people know that the plaque is even there because it is neglected and hardly noticeable.

A new booklet has been produced by the Bourne Civic Society for the benefit of visitors and for those who live here but would like to familiarise themselves with our surroundings. The booklet entitled Walks Around Bourne has been produced in co-operation with the Town Centre Management Partnership and South Kesteven District Council, superseding the previous edition published in 1984. The latest version has not only been updated but also has the benefit of a larger format, colour photographs and a useful map of the town centre with an indexed key in case you lose your way.

The walks are presented in three stages from St Peter's Pool in the Wellhead Gardens and then around the town taking in our natural resources, the site of the first industries, the road and rail influence and finally returning to the Red Hall, one of our oldest domestic buildings. On the way you can see most of the interesting places that Bourne has to offer and the walk at a relaxed pace will take about 1½ hours.

Bourne Civic Society makes its presence felt over so many controversial local issues concerning the town's future that we tend to believe it to be an old established organisation but that is not so. It began at a public meeting at the Red Hall in 1977 when a steering committee was set up and the following year, a second such meeting approved a constitution to promote high standards of town planning. The impetus for the society's formation was to save No 15 Bedehouse Bank from demolition, a mediaeval thatched cottage made from mud and wattle, a building method rare in Lincolnshire, and so the property was unique to Bourne where it had been in continuous use for more than 250 years. The cottage had become vacant and was no longer considered to be habitable and so it had been put up for sale as a redevelopment site but the owners failed to find a buyer. Experts insisted that it was sufficiently rare to be preserved, perhaps as a museum, but costs were said to be prohibitive and the owners sought permission to pull it down. Although it was a listed building, the cottage was demolished in 1980 after a public inquiry when objections by the Civic Society, the Ancient Monuments Society and other conservation organisations, were overruled.

Despite the failure of this campaign, the joint endeavour sparked an appreciation of the richness of the urban environment and the society vowed to help enhance our old buildings, through persuasion and criticism, to plant and landscape unattractive areas and so preserve the heritage of the town. The society invited the Earl of Ancaster to be their president and he continued in office until his death in March 1983 when he was succeeded by his daughter, Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, who remains in office today. The inaugural meeting also voted to produce a regular newsletter and to bring guest speakers to the town to talk on environmental issues and both of these objectives have been achieved in the years since.

The society's greatest accomplishment however has been in persuading Bourne United Charities to grant them a lease of Baldock's Mill, an early 19th century water mill in South Street, for refurbishment as a Heritage Centre and museum and that too has been achieved during 20 years of fund-raising and dedicated voluntary work by society members. Restoration work began in 1983 and the centre opened in 1999. The features include many artefacts, maps and documents from Bourne's past and a large display of photographs and mementoes from the career of Raymond Mays, the motor racing pioneer who lived in the town.

The Civic Society's new booklet can be obtained free from the Heritage Centre at Baldock's Mill.

A visitor to the web site has asked about the huge item of machinery that appears to be permanently parked outside Anglian Water's depot in Abbey Road. This relates to the new water pumping station that was opened at Bourne in February 1974 during a modernisation scheme costing £350,000. It comprised six new electrical pumps, each capable of delivering 1.5 million gallons of water daily, and a large office block on a site between Abbey Road and Manning Road. The development was designed to provide a water supply to one quarter of a million people in South Lincolnshire and Peterborough. The new automated machinery meant that the two oil-driven beam pumps that had been working continuously since their installation in 1922 had become redundant but it was decided that one of them was worth preserving in its original position in front of the control building as a permanent monument to the engineering skills of an earlier generation. The base was concreted and all metal parts treated to resist rust and then given a fresh coat of paint and it remains on show to this day.

A special feature of the development also enables visitors to actually see water on site for the first time. Until then, all that was visible above ground at the pumping station was a mass of pipes and valves but engineers integrated a cascade within the building at the side of the main entrance. Water pumped out of the ground needs aerating to remove iron bacteria and give it a bright look and so glass windows were installed to provide a grandstand view of this waterfall of six million gallons a day. Shortly after the new pumping station was opened, the South Lincolnshire Water Board which had controlled Bourne waterworks since 1962, came to an end and its responsibilities were handed over to the new Anglian Water Authority, now known simply as Anglian Water.

I spend some time in the reference sections of the public libraries at both Bourne and Stamford and my main sources of information include the local newspapers from past years. It is these publications that chronicle the changing times in our town and among the most dramatic was the death of the railways and the advent of the motor car that is causing so many problems today.

Those who cannot remember the old railway branch lines that carried us between town and village during the first half of the last century, and even before, will find it difficult to understand the affection in which this transport system was held. The services were dependable, frequent, cheap, and usually on time and to go by train even for the shortest journey was an adventure, unlike today when it is usually an ordeal. The demise of these much loved local services was the direct result of the proliferation of the motor car after the Second World War and their passing was greeted with deep regret and some emotion.

Bourne became a railway centre for this part of South Lincolnshire during the 19th century when the main route that ran through was the Midland and Great Northern line connecting us with Spalding, King's Lynn and the east coast. This and similar branch lines in Britain, served the community for more than 100 years under private ownership but when the railways were nationalised by the Labour government in January 1948, many started to run at a loss and closures became inevitable. Bourne's turn to lose its passenger services came in 1959 but the closure did not pass without notice. The final steam locomotive to travel the line on that fateful Saturday in October carried a farewell headboard bearing a cartoon of the last train and the message: "That's yer lot!" The Lincolnshire Free Press sent along a reporter to travel on the train and he wrote afterwards:

The railway line met its death bravely and defiantly, with epitaphs and slogans on its passenger train engine and amid a challenging din of deafening fog detonators, sirens and whistles. Up and down the line through the day, drivers, firemen and guards made their final journey on the old, friendly, familiar route. Hundreds of passengers of all ages accompanied them, carefully preserving the last souvenir tickets. The final curtain came late at night when crowds gathered at Bourne, Spalding and Sutton Bridge stations and at intermediate stations and crossings, as the last train, whistle blowing, slowly puffed out into the darkness like old friends gone forever. The locomotive carried a wreath and the epitaph, "Goodbye all, for we may not pass this way again." One woman was weeping.

Bourne also lost its freight service in 1965 and so the line finally closed for good and the tracks were ripped up but the route of the railway and many of its associated buildings can still be seen. The majority of the closures at this time were made under the Beeching Plan, a policy formulated in 1963 by Richard Beeching, scientists and administrator who was chairman of the British Railways Board and who advocated concentrating resources on inter-city passenger traffic and freight at the expense of many rural and branch lines. He identified 5,000 miles of track and 2,000 stations for closure and this had a tremendous effect on the future of the railways.

The axing of these railway lines was one of the biggest acts of government vandalism during the 20th century. If they were still here, imagine what it would be like to be able to hop on a train at the various halts around Bourne, or at the railway station itself, and journey effortlessly to nearby towns and villages. For those who wish to travel comfortably and without hassle, the traffic jams and parking chaos that we are experiencing today would not matter a jot.

Thought for the Week: Ice in drinks served at holiday resorts is frequently contaminated with human waste, a Which? report has revealed. Researchers tested 179 samples of drinking water and ice from rooms, camp sites, bars, cafes and fountains in France, Spain, Portugal and Britain. Holiday Which? found that one in five samples were contaminated, many with bacteria formed in human faecal waste. - reported by ITN Teletext 11th September 2001.

Saturday 22^nd September 2001

The public debate over the likely introduction of car parking charges in Bourne continues and most shops in the town centre have been displaying forms on their counters for customers to sign if they wish to register their displeasure as part of a campaign mounted by The Local newspaper. The result was 3,750 signatures within a fortnight and almost 98% decided that that they did not want to pay, a remarkable demonstration of public opinion on a controversial local issue.

Meanwhile, visitors to this web site also participated in a similar exercise last week when one of the highest ever polls since the feature started last May was recorded. A total of 435 people voted and 97% came to the same conclusion. Both our result and that recorded by The Local have been sent to South Kesteven District Council for consideration when the subject is discussed on Monday.

There is a facility for those who vote on the web site to leave a comment and I reproduce these remarks each week in the Bourne Forum along with the results. One voter on the parking charges issue last week said: "Silly question this, considering it's the people that would have to pay . . . come on Rex!"

I have been pondering on this remark ever since and as it was left anonymously, I have no way of discussing its meaning with the author but the very wording suggests that he thinks I am trying to put one over on the public although why I should wish to do that I have no idea. The other interpretation is that if the answer to questions on matters of public interest appear to be already determined, then there is no necessity to ask them and that is a very different matter because those who think this way will find themselves frequently mistaken. For instance, the same question on pay parking has been asked by The Local newspaper and that has attracted almost 4,000 replies. Was this also a silly question?

Our contributor appears to think that if he immediately recognises the rights or the wrongs of a question, then its validity is in doubt and of course that is quite absurd. We live in a democracy in which all shades of opinion are tolerated and this includes extremes of opinion. In a recent poll, we asked who would be the next leader of the Conservative Party, Kenneth Clarke or Iain Duncan Smith, and to anyone who follows politics, the answer was obviously Iain Duncan Smith and yet our poll showed a 53% majority for Kenneth Clarke. I hold no brief for either but those with an understanding of the situation would not have been surprised by the eventual election result.

We have also asked whether you believed in God and 60% per cent said that they did not while 64% did not believe in ghosts. Euthanasia should be legalised in Britain, said 88% of those who voted while 64% wanted the return of the death penalty and 87% wanted the police to take a tougher line with law breakers. Were all of these silly questions to those who thought they already knew the answers?

We have had yet another such comment on this week's poll about whether Bourne has a serious litter problem from someone who also inferred that that question should not be asked because he wrote: "Can I suggest that anyone who has voted 'yes' in this poll take a drive into our capital city on any morning of the week? Then they would see litter on a grand scale. It would be nice if the litter that is dropped in Bourne were not there, but please don't refer to it as a problem. For the most part, Bourne is a lovely clean place. The woods and the parks are always clean and it is only a small area around the town square that causes offence and that is usually cleaned up pretty quickly by the council. Referring to a litter 'problem' is hardly likely to bring visitors to our town."

Here again, our contributor is casting doubt on the validity of the question by trying to impose his own beliefs on the voters and it is obvious from the wording of his comments that he would have preferred the question not to be asked at all. Saying that London's litter is far worse does not negate the problem here in Bourne while his last reference to the possibility of deterring visitors also gives us a clue to his identity because he is most surely a shopkeeper and therefore has vested interests in presenting a sanitised view of our town that just does not exist.

Whether people wish to pay car parking charges or whether they think that litter is a serious problem is up to them to decide. That is why these questions were asked in the first place. The subjects may be unpalatable but they are nevertheless of public interest at the present time and no amount of verbal posturing will make it otherwise.

It is the difficult questions that have been asked in years past that have helped determine the democracy in which we now live and some of those with the courage to ask them paid a high price for their beliefs. Such questions will continue to mark man's progress despite the insidious tide of political correctness that currently threatens to dampen the voices of free thought. By not asking these questions, we pretend that the problems they address do not exist.

Our experience of life is only advanced by continual inquiry and by understanding the thoughts of our fellow man. This is why the Gallup and Mori polls and other samplers of public opinion thrive and often act as pointers to the way things will be in the future. They are often wrong, but more usually right, and in the meantime they provide us with food for thought on the human condition. To condemn any question about what is going on out there in the world is to condemn our natural curiosity and to stop asking awkward questions is a step towards the realpolitik of the totalitarian state.

The question in our poll this week comes in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United States that have outraged the civilised world. The Americans have vowed to bring the perpetrators to book and it is to be hoped that justice will not be confused with vengeance in this endeavour. Britain is perceived as their greatest ally and the Prime Minister Tony Blair has pledged our support in punishing those responsible. This inevitably means armed reprisals and although the targets have yet to be determined, it would seem inevitable that Afghanistan is at the top of the list. There has been very little comment about these matters in the Bourne Forum and so at the suggestion of one contributor in Canada, our next question will be:

Should Britain support military reprisals by the United States as a result of the recent terrorist attacks?

This is an important subject for us as well as America and your vote will be an important reflection of public opinion.

The forum contributor who seems to think that Bourne does not have a litter problem has also suggested that the woods are always clean. I therefore ask him to read a message that was left this week by a Spalding man, James Pask, who has a great fondness for this town where he grew up. He has two young children, four-year-old twins, who count a visit to Bourne Wood among their most popular outings and a fulfilling open-air experience away from the small screen world of the couch potato. But James has described such a visit last weekend with some disappointment:

We parked up at the main entrance, donned our wellies and fleeces, and set off but within two minutes we were faced with piles of dog mess. Anyone who walks there often will have seen this on the first main path from the car park and not far from the children's play area. It is disgusting, it is unsightly, it smells, it is germ-ridden and it makes me feel sick. I could not let my children run free as they love to do but had to insist that they stuck to the middle of the path until we reached a safe area. There is less mess as you go deeper into the woods and it is obvious that some lazy and ignorant dog owners go there simply to use it as a toilet for their pets. I realise that they are in a minority because most dog owners are responsible people who take a bag and clear up after them. There are prominent signs posted around the woods by the Forestry Commission asking owners to keep their dogs on a lead and warning that fouling is not permitted but their staff cannot maintain a 24-hour watch. I would never wish to see these woods closed to our dogs because they enjoy them as much as we do but if such restrictions were imposed, it would not be their fault. The blame would rest entirely with their owners.

I have written on this subject before. Notices abound in the Bourne area in an effort to persuade pet owners to keep a closer watch on their dogs. Signs have also been posted in the town's streets by South Kesteven District Council warning: "Clean it up or face prosecution" yet the sight of a dog owner with his pet dropping its pile on the grass verge or even on the pavement while they look the other way is not uncommon. James Pask is therefore rightly concerned about the potential health hazard near the children's play area in the woods because this practice is likely to cause illness by spreading an infection called toxocara canis that can lead to a range of symptoms from aches and pains to bronchial conditions and in rare cases, the eyesight can also be damaged. It is then quite disgraceful that dog owners do not take more care.

The one act of allowing a dog to defecate in public places has earned their owners a very bad reputation indeed and although there is an increasing public awareness of the problem and many take a plastic bag in which to collect the mess, there are still those who persist in treating public places as a lavatory for their animals. Whenever I see that this has happened, I always say to myself that the dirty dog is the one holding the lead and not the animal at the end of it.

Thought for the Week: The churches should be places where atheists feel at home, but not places run by atheists. - A N Wilson, self-confessed "devout Anglo-Catholic sceptic", writing in The Sunday Telegraph, 9th September 2001.

Saturday 29^th September 2001

The problem with government at any level is that the wheels grind exceedingly slow. What the public perceives and desires will not become manifest this year or next, and most probably not the year after that, because those who run our affairs have a relaxed approach to their responsibilities. They always promise us jam tomorrow. Writers down the years have criticised bureaucracy yet nothing has changed and although it is we who pay the piper, we are still unable to call the tune.

Many improvements are needed here in Bourne and there is little disagreement over what should be done to enhance our town. If you stopped even the most ill-informed shopper in the street and asked them for one such example, they would probably say that it would be safer to walk the streets without the risk of being run down by the passing traffic and so a by-pass would be high on their agenda. Here then is the answer to that: Lincolnshire County Council announced in 1991 that work would start on the Bourne by-pass in April 1994 with a completion date of October 1995. We are, of course, still waiting.

Our local authorities, and that includes our elected councillors, say one thing today and do something else tomorrow according to circumstances. Progress proceeds at their rate and not at ours. What may seem expedient and in everyone's interest does not suddenly materialise. It goes on the list and once there, it becomes an item rather than a necessity and therefore has to wait its turn. A glance through back issues of our local newspapers will find the pages littered with reports of good intentions that never came to fruition and so we must be forgiven for treating the announcements that we read today with total scepticism.

How then should we react to the latest proposals from South Kesteven District Council that Bourne town centre is likely to get a much-needed facelift? The tale we are told is so riddled with ifs and buts that it just cannot be taken seriously and in any case, Bourne will not be invited to bid for such a scheme until a similar project has been completed in Grantham in 2005. That is another four years before the matter can even be considered. We all agree that this work is badly needed to regenerate the town but why cannot work start tomorrow? Why do we have to stand in line until Grantham is refurbished? The council indicates that the road to fruition will be long and winding and there is no certainty that it will ever happen.

This is familiar territory for those with an interest in local affairs. The building of new public toilets for Bourne is a case in point. We are no nearer getting them than when the subject was first mooted ten years ago. And dare we mention the waste recycling centre that we are still waiting for? This is something being handled by Lincolnshire County Council, a mighty bureaucratic machine that is spending £580 million of our money this year and yet cannot satisfactorily conclude a simple issue such as this. If it were a pay rise for the hundreds of staff they employ or an increase in allowances for their small army of councillors, I am sure it would be settled overnight yet we who have to fund the authority through our ever-increasing council tax still have to stand in line to dump our rubbish every Saturday morning as we have been doing for the past sixteen years.

There is a perception in Bourne that this last problem is only a year or so old but I can tell them that it has a history that goes back much further. In September 1986, town councillors were busy discussing this issue at a time when we had only a fortnightly rubbish collection from the old cattle market site which is now Budgen's car park. The council had received complaints that a health hazard was being caused because some people were dumping waste before the lorries had arrived, and where have we heard that before? Even then, exactly 15 years ago this month, the solution was quite clear because one member, Councillor Norman Thwaites, had the vision to suggest that a skip should be sited there permanently. "The rubbish would then be in a proper container in readiness for collection", he said.

This idea was unwittingly an embryo scheme for a waste recycling centre that is supposedly under consideration by the county council but I have the distinct impression that when the management of the Rainbow supermarket end their concession for the mobile waste collection skips to use their car park at the end of next month, we will still be waiting.

Consider also the question of potholes. Earlier this year, this column mentioned the poor maintenance of the roads around Bourne, particularly in Queen's Road and Stephenson Way, although there were several more, and the offending craters were fortunately filled in a few days later. Many have since re-appeared but by far the worst place is on the A6121 through the village of Toft, three miles south west of the town. This is already 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 have appeared here add to the hazards that motorists face on this very dangerous stretch of road although the official view was rather different because Lincolnshire County Council has insisted that the road surface at this point looked worse than it actually was. However, no re-surfacing is likely because the money set aside for this work during the last financial year had been spent elsewhere and so it will have to wait until further funds are available in 2002-03 when the job might get done.

This is unfortunate because anyone who drives this way can testify that the road surface has deteriorated ever further since those complaints were made in April and that the potholes are now twice as deep as before and therefore twice as dangerous. There are also many roads within the town area that are a very bumpy ride for the unwary driver and repairs to these will no doubt have to wait too.

But is this a new problem? Of course not. "The potholes are getting bigger", trumpeted the Lincolnshire Free Press on 26th July 1988 and their report went on to describe how the holes were a danger that seemed to be getting worse. Councillor Ray Cliffe, never a man to mince his words, told the town council's highways committee that the potholes were getting bigger each day and there was a particularly bad example in Ancaster Road that only needed a child on a bike to come to grief "and they'd be up the creek". Each time the county council filled in a hole, he said, another immediately appeared beside it and he recalled those days when a man walked the streets with a wheelbarrow and filled in those holes he found as he went along. He added: "Why on earth don't the maintenance people bring a truck load of dirt and deal with the obvious ones? They'd not spend any extra money at all."

Which brings me to the subject of dog dirt that been discussed on this web site in recent weeks as though we were seeing it in the streets for the first time. But what's this from the Stamford Mercury on 15th July 1994? Bourne United Charities had asked owners to stop their pets from fouling the public parks and to take a more responsible attitude when walking their dogs. Amenities at the Wellhead and Memorial Gardens and the Abbey Lawn which came under their control were all being spoiled by dog fouling, said Mr Tom Teague, clerk to the trustees, causing a health risk, particularly to young children. South Kesteven District Council also joined in the condemnation by offering to provide a dog warden to carry out spot checks if requested. A month later, that was yesterday's news.

But all is not lost. I mentioned earlier this month that Bourne did once win the award for the best-kept small town in this part of Lincolnshire, although it was as long ago as 1965. Nevertheless, there are those who still make tremendous efforts to keep the place presentable. Twelve years ago, our streets were so spick and span that the person responsible was given a civic award. Miss Patricia Coles was the official street and toilet cleaner and her red cart fitted with pans and brushes was such a familiar sight around the town that she became known as "one of the red barrows".

This hard work did not go unnoticed and the town's Rotary Club nominated her for their silver rose bowl, awarded each year for the best contribution to the environment while her employers added their congratulations by giving her a cheque. "It is very nice that she should get an accolade for her work", said her boss Mr Malcolm Sandison of the Grantham-based Exclusive Clean Services, the district council's contractors. "She does her job well and people appreciate it. She is one of our star workers." Pat, then aged 31, collected her award during a special luncheon given by the club at the Burghley Arms on 12th July 1988 and she even appeared on television.

This was not the first time that Pat had been recognised for her work in the streets. During a heavy snowfall in January 1987 she won the admiration of townspeople by joining male colleagues shovelling snow off the pavements in the town centre to make it easier for shoppers and one resident was so impressed that he wrote to the town council praising her efforts. "She worked faster than the men," he said, and the council duly acknowledged her dedication.

Pat is no longer our street cleaner because she later left her job to become a post woman. The Royal Mail's gain was Bourne's loss and we could do with a few more like her now.

Film makers want a location in the Bourne area for a new production. It will not be on the scale of the latest multi-million pound Steven Spielberg epic but this does not mean that the producers are any the less enthusiastic. Daneeta Loretta Saft from the London Film School has emailed me for help with their current term project that is set in Southern Louisiana, U S A. Students are seeking suitable locations for the film and after seeing last week's Photograph of the Week on the web site of the River Glen near Tongue End showing the fens in all of its isolation, they thought that this was the exact landscape they needed.

Daneeta tells me: "We visited the Norfolk Broads and they are quite nice but there are more reedy beds than woody swamps and then I found your photograph on the Internet and it looked just right and we need such a place with a house or shack that is worn by time and weather." The young film makers would need permission to shoot exteriors for a period of two or three days, no more. If there are any owners of such waterside properties reading this and think that they might qualify, then  email Daneeta on daneeta@elektrikzoo.com.

I should warn you that there will be no money in this. Only prestige. "We do not have a real budget", explained Daneeta. "The only thing we could offer the property owner is a credit in the titles, a video of the film and our gratitude."

Thought for the Week: Many paths and walkways in Bourne, some of which are sadly not maintained to the high standard we would like to see, are too often the harbourers of rubbish, either by their design or general neglect. By drawing attention to these matters, we hope to see improvements made in the future. - from the Bourne Civic Society Newsletter, October 2001.

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