Bourne Diary - October 2001

Saturday 6^th October 2001

A small news item appeared in The Local newspaper on September 21st telling as that arsonists had again tried to set fire to the premises of Bourne Town Football Club on the Abbey Lawn. The culprits were three youngsters who were fortunately disturbed by a groundsman and fled leaving a small bonfire that was soon extinguished before any serious damage could be done. This was the second such attempt to burn down the clubhouse and grandstand this year and police are making the usual inquiries to find those responsible.

This report did not appear on the front page of the newspaper as one would expect but was tucked away in the sports section on Page 25 and it is this editorial decision to give such an occurrence so little prominence that illustrates the scant regard we have for teenage crime. This column has in the past suggested that a policy of zero tolerance by the police would eliminate many of the infringements of the law that threaten our society and indeed the present government is fully aware of the broken window syndrome, that small crimes allowed to go unchecked will lead to bigger ones, yet nothing is done and so incidents such as this become commonplace and end up inside whereas once they would have been front page news with banner headlines.

By coincidence, I have received an email on this subject from a former Bourne resident with fond memories of the Abbey Lawn and the days he spent there playing cricket. Tony Walton, aged 35, left his home in Southfields earlier this year with his wife Lisa and their three children, to take up a new position in Singapore. He works for First Union, one of America's biggest banks, and he has been moved to the Far East to take over responsibility for the Asian markets. They miss their friends and the children miss their school but most of all, Tony misses his sport because he was a member of and sometimes a player for Bourne Town Cricket Club and is anxious to know of their progress.

When I asked him about the most noticeable differences in his new lifestyle, the answer was immediate. Shopping is marginally better, he said, but more importantly Singapore has the solution to the type of vandalism that has plagued the Abbey Lawn and that is caning. Five years ago, there was an international outcry when an American schoolboy was caned in Singapore for scratching a parked car but such punishment is still statutory and there is no such thing as mitigating circumstances. Tony goes on:

Unlike in certain countries in the Middle East, the rules are clear. Dropping litter, scrawling graffiti and spitting in the street are all regarded as forms of vandalism and are subject to the requisite punishment. In Britain, and Bourne in particular, such a punishment would raise gasps of astonishment in many quarters but spot the difference. Here in Singapore, it does not matter if you think you have nothing to do. It does not matter if there are problems at home. It does not matter if it only happens once. If you get caught, you are punished and you cannot sit down for a week. You have also been publicly humiliated and will think twice before you re-offend. This is why Singapore Cricket Club that occupies an even more public place than the Abbey Lawn, will certainly never be vandalised. This is also why a city of over 3.5 million people manages to stay cleaner than a town of some 12,000 people.

In a country where parents are now unable to discipline their own children with a clip round the ear, this is food for thought. Caning was a recognised form of punishment when I was at school sixty years ago and I knew of no one who ever transgressed a second time. I can already hear the clamour of objections from that liberal section of society which prefers the softer approach to hooligan behaviour where not even the wagging finger of condemnation is allowed. That way has been tried in Britain for the past 20 or so years and it does not work. Our streets are dirtier than they have ever been, our inner cities are full of sink estates, muggings and burglaries are endemic, vandalism in all of its forms has become a way of life, and yet all we give the culprits is counselling. It is ironic that Singapore was once a British Crown Colony to which we gave western ways and civilised behaviour. Perhaps we can now learn something from them in return.

Shoppers at the Thursday and Saturday markets in Bourne are probably too busy on the lookout for bargains to realise that the water for which Bourne was once famous is right under their feet. An artesian well that had been sunk by Lee and Green Ltd a century ago was discovered during work on the new market place in April 1990. The company had premises in Spalding, Skegness, Sleaford and Bourne, producing aerated waters with such fancy names as Royal Seltzer, Lithia and Nectar and they claimed to have received a large number of testimonials confirming their healthy and wholesome qualities from "a number of eminent medical men". Bourne's water, they said, was unequalled for purity, price and excellence.

The borehole was sunk in 1900 with a 2¼ inch pipe to a depth of 98 feet and had remained in use until 1930, producing a continuous supply of "Pure Bourne Water" at the rate of 170 gallons a minute. The water was then aerated, flavoured and bottled in their Old Theatre factory that was demolished in February 1989 to make way for the new market place after being used in later years as the premises for an agricultural engineering firm and builder's merchants. Contractors also unearthed several broken Lee and Green bottles that were used in production.

There was an appeal to South Kesteven District Council to use the borehole again. A letter to the Lincolnshire Free Press on 1st May 1990 suggested that the Ostler memorial drinking fountain that had been removed from the town centre to the cemetery in 1960 because it was endangering traffic flows, could be sited here and the borehole would provide it with a continuous supply of water. The suggestion was ignored. Instead, well experts were called in and it was sealed with a cement grout and so next time you feel parched after traipsing round the market and are unable to quench your thirst from a convenient fountain, blame the council.

We were shopping at Woolworth's in Bourne last week and noted that although the summer holidays have only just finished and it was still September, the display shelves were already filled with Christmas cards and wrapping paper and that more space was being cleared for other festive goods. A few days later, I was driving home and spotted a couple putting up their Christmas decorations. The date by this time was October 2nd with the celebrations still almost three months away. What, I wondered, motivated them to be so early with their preparations and so I stopped to find out.

John Newton, a 68-year-old retired driver, lives at Number 4 Manning Road which has established a reputation as being the best decorated and brightly-lit home in the neighbourhood each Christmas for the past three years. It will take him and his wife Paula several weeks to finish the display that will eventually take over the front and side of their bungalow and will include Santa Claus and his reindeers, coloured, flashing lights, snow scenes and whatever else occurs to them between now and when they finish.

"We don't do it for yourselves", explained Paula. "It's for the children from the schools in the neighbourhood. They walk by and stop and look and just to see the expression on their faces makes us forget all of the work that we have put it. We give them sweets and lollipops and balloons because their enjoyment is our pleasure and we love every minute of it."

The lights will be switched on as term time ends shortly before Christmas and from then on until well into January, the display will be lit up daily from late afternoon until just before bedtime. "It's not just the children who love the lights", said Paula. "We have two regular visitors who drive down all the way from Mablethorpe just to see them. It is expensive to keep the lights on for so long and it pushes up our quarterly electricity bill to well over £200 but it's worth every penny just to see their obvious enjoyment. After all, Christmas is a time for children and this is our little contribution."

I do not wish to be condemned as an old Scrooge by suggesting that Christmas is all humbug and John and Paula are to be applauded for giving their time and money in providing such an enjoyable display for local youngsters and other passers-by free of charge. But there is no doubt that the commercial aspect of Christmas has now become its most important aspect and that the Church of England would dearly love to have as many people in their congregations over this period as throng the shops but the sound of coins on the collection plate can never equal the clatter of the tills and so shopping will again be far more popular than worship. But have commercial interests overstepped the mark? Our question in the Bourne web site poll this week therefore is:

Does Christmas start too soon?

Your vote will be a message to the shopkeepers on whether they have got it right in stocking festive stuff when autumn is not yet over.

Thought for the Week: "The terrorist training camps where Osama bin Laden, now America's most wanted man, allegedly planned his attacks, were built with American money and backing." - John Pilger, award winning campaigning journalist, 13th September 2001.  

Saturday 13^th October 2001

Lincolnshire County Council has demonstrated a shameful incompetence over what they allowed to happen in Bourne on Saturday. The weekly refuse collection from the Rainbow car park produced two hours of chaos and the longest queues on record since the facility was introduced 16 years ago. Old age pensioners, both men and women, struggled under the weight of heavy plastic bags and boxes as they were forced to stand in line for five and ten minutes at a time until they could reach the waiting refuse vehicles to dump their garbage.

The first queue had formed at 8 a m, half an hour before the trucks had arrived and from then it was a continual push and shove to dispose of waste that should by rights be collected from our doorsteps. Then, with a final coup de grace from council headquarters, they arrived at the trucks to find it surrounded by notices saying: "The last collection from the site will be Saturday 20th October." The facility is closing and although it has been under threat for the past year, the council has failed to find an alternative site.

The mood of home owners as they battled with the simplest of domestic chores, a task made almost impossible by the bureaucratic machine, was one of seething anger. A 73-year old man who waited 45 minutes to dump his rubbish, an operation that took three separate trips to the truck and therefore a long wait in three different queues, said angrily: "The country can find the money to bomb Afghanistan yet it cannot afford to find us a decent waste dump. It is utterly unforgivable because no one appears to be taking the blame for this fiasco." Another elderly gentleman who should have been at home sitting in his chair instead of joining this mêlée, pointed to one of the closure notices and said: "This facility is shutting at the worst possible time because it is then that we will be sweeping up all of those autumn leaves. Where are on earth are we supposed to put them?"

I wrote in this column on March 31st:

The county council negotiations for a permanent waste recycling centre in Bourne proceed at snail's pace and as recently as last month I urged councillors to follow the advice of the Duke of Edinburgh and pull their fingers out. If the Rainbow site closes without an alternative available, then the scenario will be too horrendous to contemplate with tons of domestic waste awaiting disposal and nowhere for it to go and so it is inevitable that some will end up in ditches and dykes and roadside verges, at farm gates, on playing fields and in other public places. Our county councillors must therefore look to their laurels for this will be their acid test.

With the closure of the facility now imminent, it would appear that Lincolnshire County Council, this mighty bureaucratic machine with an annual spending budget of £579 million, has failed abysmally to provide one small improvement to our community services and no amount of posturing and feeble excuses will make it otherwise. Once again it is the people who elected them that will suffer. Bourne deserves better.

The problems created by the Bourne Eau running dry and turning into a sea of mud may soon be over. Construction engineers arrived this week to start laying a nine-inch water main from St Peter's Pool to the pond section in front of the Wellhead Cottage, a distance of 200 yards. This has involved digging up the meadows where Bourne Castle is reputed to have stood and an archaeologist has been on hand to record any important finds and he has not been disappointed.

This area was last excavated in 1861 and the map generally accepted as a layout of the castle dates from then although there was a more limited search during the early 1960s when engineers from the electricity board dug a trench across the gardens and as now, an archaeologist recorded the finds which included items of pottery and a well preserved wall, both from mediaeval times.

The investigation this week is being carried out by Barry Martin from Archaeology Project Services which is part of Heritage Lincolnshire, who has already recorded items of pottery from Roman, Saxon and Norman times but, more importantly, he has also identified the foundations of masonry walls four feet thick running from east to west behind the Wellhead Cottage. These appear to be the remains of a substantial building and could well have been part of the castle or perhaps a fortified manor house.

The pipeline is being laid by the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board, instructed by Bourne United Charities that administers the Wellhead Gardens. The pipeline is being laid two feet down and will connect with St Peter's Pool via a manhole containing a valve to regulate the flow of water into the pond during dry spells. The river at this point is a backwater without a flow and at times such as this, the build up of silt and mud is exposed causing both an eyesore and a health hazard but in future, the pipeline will be activated rather like a big tap, creating whirlpools that will disperse the weeds and debris into the Bourne Eau and then downstream into the fens where it can be cleared periodically by mechanical diggers.

The work was necessary to prevent this part of the town from becoming a regular eyesore and the archaeological finds are a bonus. Once they have been examined, correctly identified and their meaning analysed, perhaps it will add to our knowledge of past times and even tell us once and for all whether Bourne did in fact have a castle.

There has been a lot of comment about the suggestion last week that vandals should be physically punished for their unruly and anti-social behaviour but I have not received a single complaint that they should not. In fact, the majority of messages have been in favour of the strict regime in Singapore where dropping litter, scrawling graffiti and spitting in the street are all regarded as forms of vandalism and are all subject to the requisite punishment of caning without resort to mitigating circumstances. If you are caught and punished, then you will not be able to sit down for a week.

One message has come in from Karen who lives in Bourne and her experience is typical of many. She is in no doubt that the vandals should be pursued and punished. This is what she wrote:

The police will not do anything to stop these people. They do not seem to bother about all the boy racers chasing up and down the town. The police presence is very low and they are very rarely seen. On Friday morning (September 28th) at about 2 a m, we were woken up by shouting and swearing and looking out of our window, we saw two boys staggering down the road, ripping wing mirrors and aerials from the parked cars. Do you go out and confront these idiots and risk getting beaten up? Or do you ring the police and wait for them to arrive, maybe from Grantham? By that time, the culprits are safely tucked up at home, sleeping it off. And what do the police do when they do get here? Nothing. This country has gone soft with do-gooders and a minority of young people of today are growing up with no respect for what is around them. What is it going to be like in 20 or 30 years when their children are also growing up and copying the ways of their parents? It is these people who spoil the lives of others and it is very frustrating that nothing is being done to stop this mindless vandalism. We should learn from the ways of Singapore and stop it from the start.

Many similar messages have been received in recent weeks from Bourne people who are continually being harassed and inconvenienced by the surly and aggressive element in our society. The consequences of allowing petty crime to become entrenched in our neighbourhoods is well known to our government and it is worth recalling what the Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his anti-yob speech on Tuesday 24th April: "In isolation, a bit of vandalism here or graffiti there might seem trivial, but their combined effect can seriously undermine local quality of life. Some criminologists talk of the 'broken window' problem. They argue that a failure to tackle small-scale problems can lead to serious crime and environmental blight. Streets that are dirty and threatening deter people from going out. They signal that the community has lost interest. As a result, anti-social behaviour and more serious criminality may take root."

We may not have the problems of the inner cities but then we do not have their high populations and social deprivation but, like Karen, there are hundreds out there who have been the victims of these petty crimes and they are crying out for something to be done about it.

There were some complaints last month (Diary September 22nd) by walkers in Bourne Woods who were dismayed to find some paths fouled by dog dirt. One man who took his young children there for a weekend walk, was particularly bothered because one of the worst affected spots was quite near to the children's play area. I asked the Forest Enterprise who administer the woods, about this and they are aware of the problem. The Bourne forester John Wilcockson has replied saying:

Forest Enterprise fully recognises the associated problems of dogs fouling in Bourne Woods. We have looked at various ways of trying to minimise the impact, but the problem is not easily resolved. Dog litter bins were a proposal that we looked at in the past but these involved our staff having to empty them and the Health and Safety aspects that go along with the handling of dog faeces. It was decided to leave the onus on the owners with the hope that they would be responsible in their dog exercising, either by using the dog loop installed in the car-park area, specifically for this purpose, or less-used paths. The preferred method in any situation is the removal of faeces in plastic bags by the owners themselves. Dog walkers have exactly the same rights to walk in the woods as everyone else and I would like to stress that the majority of owners are responsible but there are always exceptions. This is a long-term problem, both for members of the public and indeed our own staff (it is not very pleasant using a grass strimmer in some areas) and unfortunately there is no easy answer as to how best resolve the issue. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The answer therefore appears to be in the hands of pet owners and it is to be hoped that they take notice of the concern that is felt by visitors to this place, particularly parents who have no wish to put their children at risk.

The power of the Internet has been demonstrated in locating former pupils from Bourne Grammar School who are holding a reunion later this month. Garry Foot, who attended the school 25 years ago, emailed me earlier this year asking for an entry on the Notice Board in which he asked for anyone who left between 1975 and 1977 to contact him. This week, he sent me another message saying: "You have had my notice on site for the past ten months and we expect to have over 60 people at the party. Many thanks." The reunion is being held in the Copperfield Suite at the Angel Hotel at 7.30 p m on Saturday 20th October.

The media has been totally preoccupied for the past four weeks over the terrorist attacks on the United States and now President Bush has started to retaliate by bombing Afghanistan with the support of our Prime Minister Tony Blair. We have not yet been given any proof that the Afghans and the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden, a guest in their country, were responsible for these outrages yet the military strikes continue around the clock and at least 100 civilians are reported to have been killed. There is no question that America should seek justice but vengeance is another thing, especially if it is carried out without attested evidence of the culprits. Many people have therefore questioned the morality of these actions and so our next question is:

Should we be bombing Afghanistan?

Your vote would be appreciated.

Thought for the Week: "Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving - HOW NOT TO DO IT." - Charles Dickens (1812-70), writing on bureaucracy in his novel Little Dorrit.  

Saturday 20^th October 2001

Summer has gone and autumn slides gently into winter but not before giving up the abundance of its woods and hedgerows which abound with blackberries, sloes and rose hips that are so plentiful that the byways around Bourne have changed colour in many places. There was a time in my early days when such fruit was collected before it was really ripe because we were hungry for anything and the annual blackberrying trips into the countryside inevitably meant that we would return home with scratched hands and arms and our mouths stained purple with the juice of the fruit we had eaten on the way.

Blackberries were collected by the basketful and my mother turned them into jars of jam that became one of our staple diets during my childhood. Sometimes, when out early enough in the morning, I would return home with some wild mushrooms but those occasions were rare indeed because everyone was anxious to find food and the berries, hazel nuts and crab apples were snatched off the trees and bushes as soon as they were ready for picking.

We also raided the countryside in pursuit of some extra pocket money because during those austere years of rationing when the food available had little sustenance for growing kids, the government issued an annual appeal for the fruit or hips of wild roses that are rich in vitamin C and could be turned into a syrup that was particularly beneficial to schoolchildren, babies and pregnant mothers. The hips were picked during the war years at an annual rate of about 300 tons, sometimes more, and these autumn collections from 1939-45 produced 2½ million bottles of rose-hip syrup that contained as much vitamin C as 25 million oranges, a fruit that had become unknown in Britain at that time because its import was a low priority when merchant shipping was needed for other purposes. I am happy to say that I was among those who contributed to this supply although I was paid at the going rate of 6d. a basketful and as anyone who has ever been picking from the hedgerow will know, that is an awful lot of hips.

But it was not all work because this season also brought its pleasures for small boys. When the golden month of October arrived, we would head for those outlying villages where the oldest horse chestnut trees grew because they produced the best conkers for our annual autumn sport. We would kick up the crisp, russet-brown leaves strewn over the floor beneath their canopy in our search for conkers and soon, the biggest of them were threaded on to leather boot laces or lengths of twine and we were merrily swiping away to determine who would be the "conquering hero" for that year. Even today, I cannot pass a horse chestnut tree at this time of the year without stooping down to pick up one or two of these shiny red-brown nuts that nature has polished to perfection and that carry with them the recollections of boyhood. This year's finds are before me on my desk as I write for nostalgia is a powerful emotion and the memories come flooding back.

The custom of incorporating a photograph of the dead on a memorial or gravestone is well known around the world, particularly in Southern Europe, and I have seen the faces of those who have passed on stare out while walking through the cemeteries in the towns and villages of Spain and Portugal, Malta and Italy. Such a practice however is practically unknown in Britain where those who run our churchyards and cemeteries have resisted change over the centuries. There was in the past a tradition that only stone should be used for a memorial and there was opposition to the use of wood, slate and cast iron, yet all of these materials can be seen today and we accept them as quite normal and so what was originally controversial becomes acceptable through common usage.

Cemeteries should be places that reflect the wishes of those who mourn rather than those who administer and as it is their money that finances their upkeep, then they should be listened to when they ask for something that departs from accepted practice. Plastic flowers, for instance, are not to everyone's liking and they are banned in many churchyards, as are glass flower vases or containers that do no conform to the rules. We now have a lady here in Bourne, Mrs Ruth Moody, who has challenged the authorities by asking for permission to incorporate a photograph of her late husband on the front of his cremation stone in Bourne Cemetery.

Naval veteran Tim Moody, a retired youth worker, died three months ago at the age of 67 after suffering from cancer and Parkinson's disease and during his final days he was confined to a wheelchair and totally dependent on others but whenever his widow visits his last resting place, she wants to remember him as he was before his illness, a man with a great sense of humour and who never complained. The first reaction of the town council that administers the cemetery was to resist change and refuse the request but then the decision was reversed after members heard about Mrs Moody's feelings on the subject. "The photograph she has chosen was taken during a barbecue and he is laughing and smiling, which was typical of him. It would mean so much to her to be able to sit and talk to his picture. This is well in keeping with the cemetery and we would keep it as simple as possible."

These moving words, read to the council by her daughter Mrs Belinda Bryant because she was too emotional to speak herself, won the day and the town council approved her request and a new policy on the similar use of photographs in the future is to be formulated. The nine councillors who voted in favour of this are to be applauded. The three who abstained ought to travel more to see how the rest of the world lives and dies.

There is a great deal of good cheer in Bourne over the announcement that a new public house is to be opened in North Street where planning permission is being sought to convert a former grocer's shop into licensed premises. We have no wish to see valuable business premises standing empty and blighting the street scene but will yet another pub be of commercial benefit to this town?

It is doubtful if the new establishment will attract sufficient customers to make a profit and so its business will almost certainly be taken from the other pubs in Bourne and so their trade will inevitably be hit. Not everyone then is rejoicing.

Bill Shankly, the legendary manager of Liverpool, made the most memorable quote of all times about football when he said: "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

Last week, another man close to the heartbeat of soccer, says that Britain would be nothing without it. Dave Whelan, who played for Blackburn Rovers in the 1960 F A Cup Final, now owns Second Division Wigan Athletic and is also chairman of JJB Sports, a £380 million company that retails football shirts. His opinion on the great game is therefore a valid one and he says: "The United Kingdom is obsessed with sport, totally and utterly obsessed. If we hadn't got football, what would the nation do? Without football, you've not got anything."

This would appear to be an extreme view although football certainly intrudes into our daily life by dominating the media, disrupting the television schedules and generally easing its way into our consciousness through the wearing of soccer strips in the street, the Beckham copycat haircuts among the kids and the display of rosettes in cars and windows while you would have to be on a desert island if you were not made aware in some way that a big game was in the offing such as the huge flag of St George that was fluttering outside the Angel Hotel in Bourne last week when England was playing Greece, scoring a 2-2 draw that will take us into next summer's World Cup finals and another frenzy of soccer indulgence.

We should not forget either that football has become big business, an entertainment rather than a sport. The days when talented amateurs turned up on Saturday afternoons for a game as a break from the daily routine of work have been replaced by a corporate display of highly trained professionals who enjoy salaries and popularity way beyond their worth but as with film stars, the razzmatazz of celebrity is all important if the game is to retain its crowd-pulling glamour.

Not everyone would agree with the importance that we confer on football but the game and everyone connected with it are given such a high profile by the newspapers and television that it does appear to occupy the country's waking hours and we conveniently forget that more people go to museums and stately homes in a year than watch football matches. In other words, it is not everyone's preoccupation and next time we hear that ten million people in this country watched an important match on television, it is worth remembering that 50 million people did not.

I have therefore decided to test the water and our next question on the web site poll will be:

Is football a waste of time?

Cast your vote and let us find out whether the great game does have such all-pervading support.

A new section has been added to the web site this week dealing with business and industry. There are many firms around the town with an interesting history and the first that are featured here include Delaine Buses, Bourne Services Group, Wherry & Sons Ltd and Pilbeam Racing Designs. Others will be added as the weeks go by and if there are any out there that wish to be included, please email me and it will be done. Eventually, I hope that this section will become a comprehensive directory of those companies that bring both prosperity and employment to the town and it will also become a record of the mark that they have made on the community.

Thought for the Week: "I understand that several of the perpetrators of last month's outrage were residents of London. Will George Bush be bombing us? No, it would be unthinkable. In which case, it should be equally unthinkable to bomb Afghanistan. It must seem like a safe target to Americans, such strange people and so very far away. What a petty, bigoted, xenophobic way to carry on. Mr Bush and Mr Blair are going to start a Muslim-Christian war that will burn across the whole planet in a few months time." - comment from a voter in the Bourne web site poll last week over whether we should be bombing Afghanistan.

Saturday 27^th October 2001

The small hours, as we call them, have always been the time when our fears are at their most acute, our senses at their most susceptible, but this is also the time when our reactions are at their lowest. The French call it le cafard de trois heures, that time of night when you lie sleepless, pressed upon by the woes of the world and by remorseful memories of your own shortcomings, when things look black and are black. There are some who believe that in earlier times, this is when the sabre-toothed tiger, a now extinct species but one of the most dangerous of all animals in the bestiary of human knowledge, would appear to kill and drag off its human prey because it instinctively knew that man was at his most vulnerable, lying down defenceless in a confused state between sleeping and waking, and could therefore offer little resistance.

The police and other law enforcement agencies around the world know of this which is why their raids, arrests and interrogations are so frequently staged after midnight, preferably between the hours of 2am and 4am when we can offer so little resistance and are only too willing to say yes or to admit to whatever crimes they have in mind. One only has to read the great writers on this subject for they knew the weakness of the human mind when drowsy with sleep at this time, from Kafka and Dostoevsky to Chandler and Hammett. The approach of the unknown after dark and when you have already been asleep is also one of the ingredients of modern warfare that today consists of bombing far away places from unassailable heights without fear of retaliation and in the knowledge that they will be home in time for breakfast.

I am in no doubt that those who have been bombed in this way, and I am among them, will be against the unprovoked U S raids on Afghanistan. I still have nightmares about being woken up during the Second World War and rushed down to the air raid shelter at dead of night, the skies lit by flashes of gunfire and the sound of exploding bombs rattling the windows as we hurried through the night and then my mother huddling on a concrete bench with her children around her, shivering and frightened and not knowing whether we would ever see our home again, until the morning brought yet another all clear and the hope that it might not happen again. This was the experience of my childhood years and when I asked my mother about why we were being bombed, she always told me that it was because Britain was at war with an enemy that had no human values. This was also happening over in Europe and in Germany itself, families were similarly in hiding from the terror in the night, sheltering in their cellars to escape the bombs, and among them was the girl who was to become my wife. In later years, she too asked her parents why this should be happening and the reply was that Germany was fighting a ruthless enemy that was determined to destroy every one of them.

When I went out into the world and remembered those days, I thought that man had learned to act differently but I was wrong. I wonder what innocent Afghan mothers are telling their children now as the bombs rain down and, more importantly, I am interested to know what the pilots and air crews who have been carrying out these deadly missions tell their families when they return home.

I drove past the Social Education Centre in Bourne this week and found it a sorry sight indeed. This building became operational in January 1988 and was a joint venture between South Lincolnshire Health Authority and Lincolnshire County Council's social services department and cost £¾ million. The aim of the centre was to provide an environment in which people with a mental handicap could be given the opportunity to participate in specially planned activities in order to learn the skills required to take their place in the community.

The centre had space for 77 students from a 15-mile radius and 55 were already attending on a daily basis. The facilities included a fully equipped training flat to enable students learn how to live independently, a mobility room and art studio and a range of supporting facilities including speech therapy and physiotherapy. The centre was officially opened on April 8th of that year and the ceremony was performed by the local M P Mr Quentin Davies, then member for the Stamford and Spalding constituency, who unveiled a commemorative plaque. He said in his speech:

Many would say that a joint venture of this nature would be impossible but what we have all seen today proved what a success it is. This is a tremendous amenity for South Lincolnshire. Britain leads the way in community care and has done since the White Paper [government review] in 1980. Bourne should be the envy of everywhere in the western world with the equipment, facilities and dedication of the staff at this wonderful centre. The results will most surely be seen in the years to come. It has certainly been an historic afternoon for Bourne.

Oh, how our words come back to haunt us. Thirteen years on and the centre has closed down. The authorities decided that the building had been a mistake from the outset, sited in the wrong place on the edge of an industrial estate at the corner of Pinfold Road and the busy main A151, badly designed and needing major alterations within a short time of its opening. Local councillors said that they were disappointed that such a well-meaning project had failed so soon and that £750,000 of public money should be wasted after such a short time. Town council member and former mayor Mrs Marjorie Clark made the understatement of the year when she described the situation as "a terrible shame".

The building is now in a disgraceful state, the windows boarded up, the grounds overgrown with weeds and littered with rubbish. A tattered official notice on the broken down perimeter fence announces that planning permission had been granted for the premises to be used for general industrial purposes, storage and distribution, once a buyer can be found. In the meantime, it remains an eyesore on the main road into our town, a monument to wasteful spending by our local authorities who have been pussyfooting around for the past 12 months over the establishment of a permanent waste recycling centre for Bourne and are no nearer to a solution. Perhaps they might like to put it here.

This is a much needed facility that seems as far away as ever for it has transpired that had Lincolnshire County Council not been so slow off the mark, they could have bought a three-acre field in South Fen for this purpose, an ideal site that has now been sold to someone else.

Now that the Rainbow supermarket management have given the public their marching orders and stopped the weekly refuse collection skips from using their site, Lincolnshire County Council has switched it to the car park adjoining the Leisure Centre in Queen's Road where it will be operating on a temporary basis from today between 8 a m and 11.30 a m. I hope that it is on record at council headquarters who have taken this decision because you do not need a PhD in logistics to realise that this location for such an operation is fraught with difficulties that will soon surface.

Queen's Road and the adjoining Harrington Street are in a residential area and the sudden increase in vehicles passing through on Saturday mornings will create a traffic hazard while people visiting the leisure centre for their usual Saturday morning relaxation will suddenly find themselves competing for parking space with a cavalcade of cars and vans loaded to the rooftops with rubbish and driven by home owners whose patience has been pushed to the limit by this weekly ordeal to dump their rubbish. In case those who have made the decision do not know what this will involve, here is a picture taken at the Rainbow car park shortly before it closed and so we can expect similar scenes here until a permanent location is found.

But when will that be? That is the question I put to Alan Freeman, head of planning and conservation at Lincolnshire County Council, and he replied: "New options are being evaluated and it is planned to provide Bourne with a permanent facility before the end of the financial year."

That will give them until the end of March 2002. We in Bourne certainly hope that these words do not come back to haunt Mr Freeman.

You would imagine that this is sufficient time to find a permanent location and so it should be but then consider how the current situation has arisen. I had thought that the problem over the collection of rubbish in Bourne began a mere sixteen years ago, starting when the facility was established in the car park of the Rainbow supermarket, but apparently that is not the case. You may add another ten years on to that since the time it was first realised that too much garbage was being generated in the town with insufficient means of disposal. It was on 22nd May 1976 that the local authorities first agreed to site a skip in the council depot at Lound, two miles south west of the town, for Saturday morning collections between 9 a m and noon. The facility was requested by Bourne Town Council and provided by South Kesteven District Council who said: "If enough people use it, we will provide one at regular intervals."

In the event, there was sufficient usage and the facility became a permanent feature, later switching to the Rainbow car park under the jurisdiction of Lincolnshire County Council, and the volume of refuse needing disposal has lead to the chaotic scenes that we have witnessed every Saturday morning since. But during those 25 years, it would seem that no one in authority thought it worthwhile to consider establishing a permanent waste recycling centre until the supermarket management decided last year that enough is enough. Where is the forward planning of which Lincolnshire County Council speaks so convincingly? Where is the evidence of those other rousing slogans that they trot out year after year?: "The best value for Lincolnshire" (Spring 1999), "Shaping the future" (Autumn 1999), "It's service that counts" (Summer 2000), "Planning Lincolnshire's Future" (Spring 2001) and "Taking Lincolnshire Forward" (Summer 2001). Bourne townsfolk will no doubt consider these empty phrases so much rubbish and we already have plenty of that, thank you.

Thought for the Week: I did not realise there was a war on. The television shows me the most powerful nation in the world daily pounding a Stone Age country from a safe distance. As the Afghans have no air force, navy or sophisticated weaponry with which to defend themselves, it looks more like a punitive beating than a war. - M H., Glasgow, in a letter to B B C Ceefax, 25th October 2001.

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