Bourne Diary - December 2001

Saturday 1^st December 2001

We can also expect much of the same in the coming years after the spending measures were revealed on Tuesday by the Chancellor Gordon Brown who warned of increased taxes to fund the National Health Service while other ministers are also demanding more funds for their projects. In addition, we have the war in Afghanistan to pay for and so the days of low taxation appear to be coming to an end. Those in work can pay their extra taxes by demanding pay increases but this is sad news for old people on fixed incomes who will see their money slowly dwindling away in the face of rising inflation and lower interest rates.

But the immediate worry is the council tax charge which for Lincolnshire County Council rises annually, while that for South Kesteven District Council has remained unchanged for the past two years and we are grateful for small mercies. This respite however, is also likely to end in April because more money is needed to fuel that ever-hungry ogre called public spending. The district council wants more cash to combat flooding and to prevent fly tipping by opening more waste re-cycling centres. These are commendable objectives but the problems that prompted them have been with us for decades and so why are they only being addressed now?

We can therefore expect a substantial increase when the demands for our council tax drop through the letter box next year although the council does not tell us whether attempts have been made to recover this increased expenditure by cutting back in other quarters. The current spending budget for the district council is almost £47.5 million pounds and although the various services on which this money is spent can easily be identified from the authority’s literature, from arts activities, housing and land drainage to transportation, car parks and waste collection, you will not find a single figure attributed to its most expensive outlay, staff salaries, pensions and holiday entitlements, because it is here that savings could be made.

You can be assured that those employed by the council will have their salaries increased each year and that their welfare will be the first call on the public purse before a single penny is spent on anything else that might benefit the council tax payer. But this is a situation of diminishing returns, one in which less real money is being spent on public services, and therefore we would expect that fewer workers would be needed to administer the budget but that is not the case and it is almost certain that more will have been taken on before the year is out. This is called bureaucracy and it is something we will have to live with until our government decides to do things differently.

While the salaried staff toils to spend our money, we have another tier of authority overlooking their labours, that body of men and women known as the district councillors. There was a time where they fulfilled their duties free of charge, fired by a sense of duty towards the community, but that is no longer the case. Their ranks are usually filled by old men who have retired and as they are now paid for the job, it has turned into what Arthur Daley would call “a nice little earner” with some of the senior posts worth up to £20,000 a year once the new cabinet system gets underway. We would have no complaints with such remuneration if those small tasks to which they were assigned were carried out with even a modicum of efficiency but not so. We are still waiting in Bourne for a decent block of public toilets while the saga over the bus passes still rankles and charges for car parking are most likely to be on the way soon.

How better then can these councillors celebrate their year in office than by having a Christmas lunch at the expense of the council tax payers whose very money they have been spending because that is what is now planned. Council leader Phil Taylor explains: “This is a once a year tradition that allows not only all elected members to meet each other in an informal setting but also for them to meet and talk to our staff in a relaxed atmosphere. I therefore view it as a valuable event, one everyone looks forward to and one which has not been called into question before.”

So there we have it. Our council tax bill is going up and so, it seems is everything else, but the freebies will continue. They are as sacrosanct as the staff salaries and expenses and the allowances for our councillors. There is one question however: as the lunch will be an official council engagement, will the councillors be claiming an attendance allowance as they tuck in to their turkey and plum pud?

The fire brigade in Bourne has taken delivery of a new £100,000 water ladder rescue tender and I am sure they will be taking particular care of it because the vehicle replaces a previous appliance that was destroyed in an unfortunate accident. I relate the incident here not for any reasons of Schadenfreude, and I hope that Sub-Officer Tony Baker and his boys will forgive me for repeating it, but because the delivery of the new vehicle coincides with my short history of the fire brigade in Bourne.

The brigade was called out on the afternoon of Friday 25th August 2000 when sparks from farm machinery set light to 50 acres of standing wheat near Lound village. The blaze was slowly heading for nearby farm buildings and an electricity sub-station as firemen from Bourne and four other local stations tackled the flames with their tender parked on the field. The wind suddenly picked up and changed direction and burning straw was blown underneath the appliance and set fire to it, causing the brakes to seize and the crew were unable to move it and watched helplessly as the £80,000 appliance was burned out. It had served only eight of its 12-year life cycle but as Assistant Divisional officer Mick Green said afterwards: "This was an absolutely rare incident. The engine was insured and will have to be replaced."

You can see a photograph of the new tender in my history of the fire brigade that is added today to Bourne Focus. But how things have changed over the years. The only appliance they had when they were formed in 1890 was a horse-drawn pump that was kept underneath one of the arches at the town hall and it was such hard work to operate that bystanders were often recruited at one shilling an hour to keep the water flowing. An improved model arrived in 1928, pulled by a pair of greys, but they were shared with the local undertaker who used them to pull his hearse and so the firemen often had to cadge a tow from a lorry at the nearby knacker’s yard.

The brigade has been motorised since 1930 and now the Bourne station is part of the Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue service that has an establishment of 750 staff and is equipped with around 100 vehicles. The biggest turnout in modern times was over 40 years ago when Grimsthorpe Castle, four miles north west of Bourne, caught fire. It was Lady Ancaster herself who raised the alarm when the blaze started soon after midday on 23rd May 1960. She telephoned Bourne Fire Station and told Jack Moody, the officer in charge: "The castle's on fire. Please come quickly."

Grimsthorpe Castle dates back to the 12th century and is the grandest stately home in the county. It was then owned by the Earl of Ancaster who was Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire. When firemen arrived, the blaze had already taken hold in the top storey rooms of the west wing and a rescue operation was underway with staff and servants trying to save valuable furniture, fittings and decorations. Villagers from nearby Grimsthorpe and Edenham also rushed to help after seeing thick black smoke billowing up from the building into the afternoon sky. Firemen from Bourne were eventually joined by four other brigades from Stamford, Corby Glen, Grantham and Spalding, and by late afternoon they had the outbreak under control.

They had to smash holes in the slated roof to reach the seat of the fire that was burning fiercely through the timbers between the roof and ceilings. Water cascaded through two floors, soaking carpets and causing considerable damage to the contents. At the height of the blaze, fire fighters faced a shortage of water and supplies were pumped in from the fishing lake half a mile away. The fire was eventually confined to the roof of the west wing above the library, drawing and living rooms while the work went on to salvage as much as possible. Lord and Lady Ancaster and their agent Mr Stirling Lee helped in the operation by handing rare books and precious ornaments through windows on the ground floor to waiting staff who stacked them on the lawn or in the entrance hall. But the damage was extensive and ran into several thousands of pounds and affected not only the structure of the house but also paintings, furniture, linen and carpets. An investigation later revealed that the outbreak had started in part of the roof where painters had been at work.

We in Bourne, like the rest of Britain, are busy preparing to celebrate the Queen’s Golden jubilee next year when she will have been on the throne for fifty years. Four previous monarchs have passed the half century, Henry III (1216-1272) with 56 years, Edward III (1327-1377) with 50 years, George III (1760-1818) with 59 years and the last, Queen Victoria (1837-1901) with an astounding 63 years and her jubilee was celebrated on 21st June 1887. Our allegiance to royalty has somewhat diminished since those days and many think that the time has come for them to take a less public role in our national life.

I therefore asked the question in our web site poll last week whether the Golden Jubilee should be a public celebration, expecting a resounding “Yes” but instead, the answer has been a deafening “No”. Whether opinion will change between now and next June remains to be seen but perhaps most will be happy to accept it provided they get a day off from work because a public holiday is usual on such occasions. In the meantime, the special committee that has been appointed to organise our celebrations here in Bourne continues with its work and is looking for ideas. These will be difficult to formulate because we look to similar occasions in the past for inspiration and so we can expect the usual round of street parties, sports events, dances at the Corn Exchange and jubilee mugs all round.

Bob Currell, a regular visitors to the web site, has come up with a very good idea that I have passed on to the committee because it receives my wholehearted support: “I would like to see a permanent commemoration and would suggest a scheme to provide attractive lighting along the paths in the Wellhead Gardens, thus prolonging the times at which this facility can be enjoyed.”

The committee may burn the midnight oil between now and next summer but it is doubtful if they will come up with a brighter idea than this.

Thought for the Week: “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” – Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815-98), the first Chancellor of the German Empire.

Saturday 8^th December 2001

He made no mention of the fact that most people already pay hefty National Insurance contributions and that some have done so since the NHS began in 1948 but this seems to be of little consequence in his current calculations. If more money is required, then the milch cow of income tax will provide. But is this fair when public funds are being squandered elsewhere, not least on foreign adventures and he still needs to fund the costs of the war in Afghanistan, money that would have secured the future of the health service for many years to come?

I therefore asked the question on the web site mini-poll last week whether we should have to pay higher taxes to fund the NHS and the answer was a resounding “No”. It also produced this perceptive comment from one of the voters:

Despite the protestations of the “cuts culture” in the NHS, every government since its creation has poured more and more cash into this foolish organisation. In the same time, the mandarins whose offices are so luxuriously furnished on this budget and whose cars are so grandly subsidised from our taxes, have done their best to destroy the provision of health care in the country. In my grandparents' day, hospitals were built by the local community and run by philanthropists and volunteers. No one above the rank of matron was paid. I can recall tales of my grandfather getting home after ten hours at work and then being sent straight out to repair windows or drains at the hospital. Hospitals are no longer part of the community: far too often they are not even in the community. If we have an accident around here we are taken to hospital at Peterborough or the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham which are not even in the same county. Is this for the convenience of the patient? Of course not. It is for the convenience of the doctors.

When I first married, it was possible to go down to Bourne Health Centre unannounced, wait twenty minutes and see a doctor. Since then the number of doctors in Bourne has tripled, practice nurses have been added, but the population has less than doubled. So why does it take so long to see a doctor? Has anyone any good stories of the Weldoc scheme after hours? I've not heard one. It seems to me that the health profession is blackmailing us. "Pay us more or your granny dies'. It is time to cry "Enough!" and demand that they return to the levels of care and compassion we experienced in the 1950s and 1960s without their mechanisms and litigation-frightened technologies. We are continually being told that a charitable contribution of a couple of pounds can treat a foreign village for some ghastly disease or the eyesight of some youngster. Why does it cost a small fortune to fix the teeth or squints of someone in the UK? I suggest we review the practices of the NHS with some cynicism. Why are all children born in hospitals now? Pregnancy is not a disease. Come to that, why is child care free? Parents do not expect us to buy school uniforms or footballs. Why should we pay for pregnancy care or inoculations?

A consequence of closing the waste recycling facility at the Rainbow supermarket car park in Bourne on Saturday mornings has been a reduction in the number of metal containers placed there for the disposal of bottles and newspapers. All have been moved further down towards the store but there are fewer than before, space is cramped and those devoted to old newspapers and magazines has been reduced from three to one and that has been perpetually full for the past month with piles stacked up around it. The only other waste paper bank is in the Burghley Street car park and so this facility is now totally inadequate for a town with a population of around 12,000 people.

I have been wondering why Anglia Regional Co-operative Society Ltd who own the supermarket have moved these containers, leaving the top end of the car park completely clear. It is this site that was the subject of a recent planning application for the location of a new nursing home that was subsequently refused by the district council. We can be forgiven for thinking that perhaps the Saturday waste skip facility has been ended by the supermarket owners in order that they might try again for re﷓development but of course, if that were the case, they would have told us in the first place instead of saying that they banned the dumping because of the nuisance it was causing their customers. Well, wouldn’t they?

As we will soon be into the season of goodwill, this seems to be a suitable time to tidy up the Bourne Forum and perhaps approach it with a renewed resolution. I have been unhappy for some time about messages that are either signed with only a first name or with no email address and these will no longer be allowed so unless contributors are prepared to reveal themselves, they should not waste your time.

In addition, there have been many cases of personal abuse simply because the correspondent does not like someone else's opinions and these too will be deleted in the future. Those who think that their views are the only views should also think again before contributing because arrogant and dictatorial messages will also be consigned to cyberspace.

There are many good and able writers out there with valid points of view who have been deterred from leaving messages because of the response they are likely to get from some of the more aggressive correspondents and to them I say that you may now file in confidence, knowing that you will be treated with courtesy and your views respected and you will not be vilified merely because your opinions conflict with theirs.

Please therefore, let us have some interesting contributions on the topics of the day. There is room for humour but not for spite, for debate and dialogue but not for bile. Those who cannot find it in their hearts to respect others, then please stay away because there is no place for you here.

Since this web site was launched in 1997, I have been diligently researching the history of Bourne in the hope that one day it might be published. There have been previous attempts to chronicle the life and times of this small Lincolnshire market town but none are now in print and they would be hopelessly out of date if they were.

The accepted definitive history of Bourne was published in 1970 with a second edition in 1976 by J D Birkbeck, a teacher at Bourne Grammar School. A History of Bourne runs to over 100 pages and contains several maps and ten pages of black and white pictures and copies can occasionally be found in second hand bookshops when the usual price is £15-£20 according to condition. It was published 60 years after J J Davies wrote his book Historic Bourne while a more modest work came from the pen of J T Swift in the 1920s entitled Bourne and the People Associated with Bourne, but both copies of works are now very rare indeed.

All have their merits but all have also been overtaken by events and the changes in the latter part of the 20th century have been so dramatic that a new history is now needed. In fact, Douglas Birkbeck himself, now living in retirement in Cumbria, told me last year with some modesty that although his book was adequate for the time, it is now beginning to look a little out-dated and so perhaps in due course it would be superseded.

My own version A Portrait of Bourne, is now complete but in producing it, I have had the benefit of new technology that has enabled me use text and photographs in a manner totally unknown to our previous authors. I have not attempted to replace what they have written, merely to supplement and expand their researches. I have also widened the scope of my study to include not only Bourne but also 60 of the surrounding villages within the area of the Aveland, Ness and parts of the Beltisloe wapentakes recorded in the Domesday Book, the great land survey of 1086 ordered by William the Conqueror. It is also a very different publication. Firstly it is not in book form but on CD-ROM that does not have the limitations of the paper volume and I have also managed without printers or publishers because I have done both jobs myself. Secondly, it runs to around 250,000 words of text and contains 800 photographs, a staggering amount that surprised me when I counted them, and so we have a sizeable undertaking that provides a pictorial record of Bourne from the earliest times to the present day.

The object of my endeavours has been solely for the dissemination of knowledge rather than for financial gain and copies are being sent to all schools in the town, the public library, the Town Council, South Kesteven District Council, the Family History Society, local newspapers, the Lincolnshire County Archives and any computer-based organisation that will benefit. There will also be a limited number for sale to help cover my costs over the past four years that have been considerable and the price will be £20, postage and packing free for the U K mainland and £2.50 for customers from overseas. If anyone out there would like a copy, please email me for details of how to order.

Quote of the Week: “What a wonderful web site and a wonderful town. I saw a picture of Bourne in a magazine from 1969 and wanted to learn more.” – entry from the Bourne web site Guest Book this week from Matthew Aamot, Bellingham, Washington State, U S A.

Thought for the Week: Police have seized 12 tonnes of frozen birds, mainly protected species, said to have been smuggled into Italy from the former Yugoslavia. The birds, which numbered half a million, would have ended up on dinner plates or sold to collectors. – news item on BBC Monitoring, Friday 30th November 2001.

Saturday 15^th December 2001

Job was of course the Bourne man (1550-1595) who sailed the Spanish Main with Hawkins and Drake in the 16th century after running away to sea when he was a lad and after many adventures under his illustrious captains, was captured and forced to become a galley slave for ten years before spending another 13 years in a Spanish prison. But despite these privations, Hartop managed to escape and he returned home to Bourne to tell the tale and to write of his adventures. This account is generally thought to be both naïve and unreliable but fascinating nevertheless and Dr Gillmeister is seeking information about his family, his character or the origins of his name.

Unfortunately, little is known about Hartop’s background other than that Bourne was his home town and that he died here at the age of 45, probably through the debility brought on by his long years of hardship and suffering. Furthermore, as he was born in 1550, his name does not appear in the parish baptismal registers because they did not begin until 1563 and I have not been able to trace the name Hartop in any of the subsequent directories relating to the district. Nor does it appear in any of the authoritative reference books on English surnames but the most likely explanation is that the name is a derivation of Hart or Hort and dating from 1060, which pre-dates the Norman Conquest and is therefore Old English rather than Norman and meaning “a clearing”.

There are other spellings in various publications, notably Hartrop, Horthrop and Hortrop, and after checking the maps on our web site, Dr Gillmeister, who is familiar with the idiosyncrasies of mediaeval and early modern English spellings, has suggested what he calls “an entertaining idea” that the last part of the name top might be a variant of the word Thorpe which is the Old Danish for a village or settlement and this could refer to Hawthorpe from where Hartop may have originated. This is an interesting theory and if anyone out there has any further ideas on the subject, please let me know and I will pass them on to Bonn.

I have received a charming email message from Canada where Heather Nash (née Brake) and her husband Richard have been living for almost half a century. They married in 1951 and emigrated two years later and after living and working in Ottawa, the capital, they retired to Vancouver Island in 1989. Heather, who was born at No 49 North Street, Bourne, is a frequent visitor to the web site because it reminds her of home and keeps her in touch with old friends and this weekend they are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their wedding at Bourne Abbey. She has also sent me some of her memories of this town and of her family background that I found quite fascinating:

On my mother's side, my grandfather William Redshaw had a photography studio in North Street although when I left Bourne in 1947 it was a greengrocer's shop. We have several glass negatives taken by him including one of the Abbey interior. My uncle worked for Raymond Mays and I have a nice early photo of my Uncle Sid driving a 1910 automobile with my mother and Aunt Florence as passengers. My aunt went on to become a noted photographer with a studio in Birmingham. She took portrait pictures of British film stars during the 1930s and 1940s which we still have. On my father's side, my grandmother Redmile was a ward of a Miss Barber who lived in North Street. Photos of my grandmother taken in the T A Morris studios in West Street and taken in the 1870s hang in my bedroom while In our living room is a grandfather clock which bears the name Wilson of Market Deeping. It keeps excellent time after surviving the journey from my family home to the west of Canada.

Since receiving Heather’s message, I have researched some of the names she mentioned and my records show that W H Redshaw and Son, photographers, were operating from premises in North Street as early as 1913 and that Mrs Jane Redshaw (his wife?) also had premises nearby where she ran a "fancy repository". Prior to that, in 1885, William Henry Redshaw is listed in North Street as a "manufacturer of rustic furniture and studio accessories for halls, libraries, drawing and dining rooms, offices, lawns and gardens". John Redshaw was also operating in North Street as a florist and seedsman where he had been since at least 1856 when he was also listed as a musical instrument dealer.

If you recognise any of these names and can add any further information, then you will find Heather’s email address in the list of our Friends of Bourne.

We have a new visitor down under who has found the Bourne web site and enjoys it tremendously, especially between the changing seasons which are of course exactly opposite to us in the antipodes. David Rimmo, who works for one of New Zealand’s big corporations, stumbled across us while surfing the Internet during a boring afternoon in the office for places to visit on a forthcoming trip to Europe and our town is now added to his itinerary. In the meantime, he has been sending me some pleasing pictures of his own locality.

David lives right on the beach at Paraparaumu which is near a town called Waikanie that is famous for its sea food and he drives into work at Wellington each day, passing Capiti Island, a nature reserve containing animals native to New Zealand, except for cats and possums that are likely to prey on the others. “I am not married, a confirmed bachelor in fact, and so I have plenty of spare time to do whatever pleases me and that includes socialising, enjoying the scenery and spending lots of hours working on my Triumph 2500 TC, a magnificent machine, and there are plenty of them still running over here because the air is such that they do not rust.”

The weather where David lives is good but changeable. “I study your Pictures of the Week with great interest, especially the changing seasons”, he writes. “As your summer comes to an end and your mighty oaks and horse chestnuts shed their leaves when autumn kicks in, our spring is in full flow and we shake off the shackles of a cold winter. Remember, there is nothing between us and Antarctica. Equinoctial changes mean that the weather can be really unpredictable. Only this weekend, Wellington was basking in brilliant sunshine and a temperature of 28 degrees C but the following day we were sheltering under umbrellas and ducking the southerlies that race through the Cook Strait.”

David also sends us his warm greeting for Christmas and New Year from down under.

The new Bourne Forum has become a delightful place to visit for those who wish to leave an opinion about this or that now that the rude and aggressive element has been banished to the wilderness. Courtesy and civilised behaviour is the order of the day but I must tell you that the barbarians are still at the gates clamouring to be let in but on their terms and not ours and as their messages continue to be unruly and disruptive, they are immediately consigned to cyberspace. If they wish to participate in this forum then perhaps they might take a lesson in humility from one of our regular correspondents whose message on Tuesday moved me greatly.

James Pask is a young man with a wife and two children, twins aged four, and he lives in Spalding but has a high regard for this town where he was born and brought up. He lost his job in a cost cutting exercise by his American employers on October 11th, one of 130 workers across Europe to be so treated, but he has hopes of another position in the New Year and in the meantime, he has taken a temporary job in a factory to ensure that his family has the best Christmas possible.

Despite these setbacks in the aftermath of September 11th, James does not dwell on his ill luck but looks for something positive to benefit mankind and not merely to improve his own position. He goes on:

Christmas holds the answer. Maybe that is why it has come earlier this year and I for one intend to enjoy it. Let us all stop being negative, stop moaning about the little things in life, stop taking things for granted and doing things because we feel it is right. This Christmas, the Christmas of 2001, is probably the most important we have seen for some time. For many people throughout the world it will be their first without loved ones, servicemen away from their families, rightly or wrongly. I think that we should all make this a Christmas to remember. I will also use this opportunity to wish every single one of the visitors to the forum a very Merry Christmas and a bright and prosperous 2002.

Despite his own misfortunes, James’ selfless opinions have given us all food for thought and we wish him well in the coming year.

My new CD-ROM on the town’s history entitled A Portrait of Bourne is now available and has been given generous coverage by the local newspapers, except that is the Stamford Mercury that purports to cover this area. Not a word has appeared even though the disc contains more than 800 photographs, 300 articles and 250,000 words of text narrating the development of Bourne from the early times to the present day. I also sent the editor a press release and a review copy.

Perhaps this has something to do with this picture that I used in the Diary on November 3rd after the newspaper’s billboards appeared throughout the area and I suggested that perhaps the staff might pop round to Bourne Grammar School for some extra-curricula work on their English.

Next time you go to buy a Stamford Mercury therefore, remember that although they boast at providing the biggest local newspaper for Bourne, it does not by any means carry all of the news, only that which suits them. Also, if the editor reads this, perhaps he can return my CD-ROM and I can pass it on to someone who will appreciate it. This is also a suitable opportunity to review the newspapers that purport to cover the Bourne locality that is added today to Bourne – The Town.

Thought for the Week: “My computer crashes too!” – Bill Gates, the world’s richest man and founder of Microsoft in an interview for BBC Newsround during his first visit to Britain for two years, Friday 7th December 2001.

Saturday 22^nd December 2001

My study is in an upstairs back room and while sitting at my desk facing the window on Sunday morning I spotted this marvellous bird perched on the fence in the garden next door, preening itself in the bright sunshine but always with a weather eye open for anything that moved, signalling either a meal or a threat to its safety. But all was quiet out there and so I had time to observe it through the binoculars that I always keep at the ready for such occasions and it gave me a good ten minutes of pleasure, perched there as though without a care in the world and simply enjoying the fine weather.

These are handsome birds with short, rounded wings and a long tail, the male with a breast of slate-grey and reddish bars below, gleaming eyes and a hooked beak and curled talons that mark it out as a raptor. The sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) is a predator, relying on surprise attack as a hunting technique, dashing quickly along one side of a hedgerow and suddenly darting up and over to burst on an unsuspecting cluster of tits or finches, snatch its victim and then dash away again. If its prey escapes, the hawk rarely tries a second attack, flying on instead until it sees another chance to pounce and this is what it did on Sunday. After watching it closely for some time, my sparrowhawk made such a move and after connecting with its victim in a cloud of small feathers, disappeared out of sight to eat its meal.

Such small tragedies are enacted daily in the countryside but they are part of life, or as our own Lincolnshire poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson observed: “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” Birds and animals kill to survive. Man does it for his own reasons.

I warned earlier this month (Diary December 8th) that the recycling containers in the Rainbow supermarket car park have been so drastically reduced that illegal dumping would become a problem, even on the same scale that prompted the owners, Anglia Regional Co-operative Society Ltd., to close the public waste recycling facility that had been held on the site on Saturday mornings for the past 16 years. So it has proved. I took this picture on Thursday morning, prompted by the remarks of angry customers who thought something should be done about the frequency these containers are emptied. One thing is certain: the situation will become much worse before the Christmas and New Year holiday is over. Recycling centres such as this are a very good idea but their success depends entirely on the containers being emptied regularly otherwise the site, as here, deteriorates into an eyesore and in this case it is on the supermarket’s own doorstep.

My wife and I are dedicated book lovers and our house contains several hundred volumes that fill bookshelves in every room including the bedrooms, the landing and the hall, for reading is our pleasure. There is an overflow in the attic and our loos always have a couple of suitable volumes on hand to pass the time. We have been indulging in this passion for many years and so we know where to find the best bargains. Forget the slick bookshops that offer new publications at exorbitant prices for it is here that you will spend your money unnecessarily.

Shops such as W H Smith, Waterstones and others who try to emulate their sales, may stock the latest airport novel or bodice ripper, trivial paperbacks and turgid celebrity autobiographies, but for real reading at realistic prices you must seek out the second hand shop where you can revel in the amount of books on offer that are often piled ceiling high and your only problem when buying is choice and not cash. There has been such a place in the High Street at Billingborough, nine miles north of Bourne, for the past 20 years where bibliophile Alan Redmond amassed one of the largest and most varied stocks that I have seen in a lifetime of book hunting. He was open at weekends and Bank Holidays and we have been going there often on Sunday mornings ever since he started the business in 1981 when we were among his first customers who became regular callers. We never came home empty handed, always returning with at least a dozen or so volumes and we usually got such delights for under £10, a lot less than the so-called real bookshops that will charge you much more for just a single book.

Alan died suddenly this month at the age of 58, a shock to all who knew him, and our sympathy goes out to his wife Rebecca and their two teenage children Mary and John. His death comes as he was making plans to buy a new house and convert the entire property at Billingborough into one huge bookstore, or as he preferred to call it, his word garden. He found many titles for us that we had been seeking for years and he often handed them over without asking for payment. I remember him with affection, cherishing every book he sold us, cradling it in his hands as though reluctant to part with it, for books had been his life. He will be sadly missed both as a bookseller and as a friend.

Christmas past in Bourne had a distinctly Dickensian flavour, as I have discovered after reading how it was celebrated years ago. The shops were full of festive fare, particularly for the table, and most butchers hung their poultry outside on the pavement to attract customers while the buyers of the prize beasts at the various fatstock shows exhibited prime cuts in their window to entice the housewives shopping for their Christmas dinner. The poor were never forgotten as charities handed out seasonal gifts of coal and calico and the inmates of the workhouse were given meat with their meals, a rare occurrence, and sometimes beer and baccy. The churches had special services, particularly at the Abbey where Midnight Mass was disrupted by hooligans on Christmas Eve in 1975, and amateur stage shows were always popular and were in earlier times the beginnings of what we know today as the Christmas pantomime. Today, Christmas in Bourne appears to be centred entirely on the shops but of course it is now a very commercial occasion and so these retail emporiums that are becoming the new temples of worship must be illuminated for the occasion, no matter who foots the bill. My item on Christmas in Bourne – Past and Present is added today to Bourne Focus.

The most heartening announcement I have seen in our newspapers in recent weeks has been this from the Bourne Corps of the Salvation Army whose citadel headquarters is in Manning Road: “Don’t spend Christmas Day alone. If you would prefer to spend it surrounded by a number of people, why not join us.”

The Sally Ann, as we affectionately called this organisation in my army days of half a century ago, has planned a religious service at 10.30 a m, a Christmas dinner followed by games for those who wish to join in together with prizes, and after the Queen’s speech on the television, a packed tea to take home. Transport will also be provided for those who cannot get to the hall and there is no charge for spending the day with them.

This is selfless service for which the Salvation Army has been known since it was founded in London in 1865 and has since become a byword for caring around the world. They deserve our praise for acknowledging the problems of the old, the infirm and just as important, the lonely, when most of us will be at home amid the good cheer that our family and friends can bring. Remember them at this time.

We are taking a break for the Christmas holiday and so this is my last Diary of 2001. I began writing it on 28th November 1998 and there have been over 150 of them since, around one quarter of a million words in fact, or the length of three modern novels, commenting on life as I see it. Many local issues have been discussed here although my opinions have not always found favour with everyone but that is the way it is and will be in the coming year for free speech is one of the hallmarks of a democratic society.

The web site remains open over the holiday and as 1st January 2002 is almost upon us, I will be posting a notice on the Forum suggesting that contributors might like to add any New Year resolutions that they will be making or would like to see fulfilled in the coming twelve months. Such resolutions, we are told, are meant to be broken, but it might be an interesting exercise to discover some of the hopes and fears that are in our minds as the old year ends and the new one dawns.

Thoughts for the Week: (1) At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year. - Thomas Tusser (1524-1580).

(2) Christmas comes, but once a year is enough. – anon.  

Return to Monthly entries