Bourne Diary - March 2009

Saturday 7^th March 2009

Beech Avenue - see "What the local newspapers are also saying . . . "

Council leaders are warning that England’s high streets are in danger of becoming ghost towns because of the increasing numbers of empty shops hit by the recession and are seeking new powers to allow local authorities temporarily use them for community projects.

This information comes from the Local Government Association (LGA), a voluntary lobbying body formed in 1997 to represent some 465 organisations which includes our county and district councils. Their latest statement suggests that these empty premises should be used for libraries, youth clubs, training centres and even bring-and-buy sales which on consideration by even the most ill-informed is little short of brazen effrontery.

Retail outlets such as shops close mainly because they can no longer afford the overheads, the business rate being the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the most iniquitous of all our local taxes for which those who pay it get nothing in return. It is this one factor that is largely responsible for the empty premises now appearing in our town centres yet year after year the councils are squeezing tenants for more. If those premises that have been forced to close because of the excessive burden imposed by local councils are now to be used for community projects then it is those very councils which will organise, finance and staff the new ventures, all of which are already well catered for in most towns at an extremely high expense indeed. In Bourne, for instance, we have a youth club which opened in 2005 at a cost of £430,000 yet is open only four times a week for a total of ten hours which would appear to be a waste of money and resources. To turn an empty shop in North Street into another such facility will solve nothing and only add to our financial difficulties.

The LGA has cause to be worried about the present crisis because its members have played their part in creating this climate of economic gloom. Instead of dreaming up new ways of chasing the rainbow they should be advising its members to cut costs and staff to a more acceptable level and at the same time budget for a business rate that will stimulate retail growth rather than condemn small shopkeepers to inevitable closure.

What is really needed is a massive clear out of the Augean stables of local government, a powerful purgative that will cleanse this bureaucratic system of its waste and excess that has also been costing the people dear through a rising council tax which is now forcing those who have been economically impoverished to chose between paying their taxes and settling the bills for heating and groceries. At the present rate, not only will there be fewer shops but also insufficient people with the means to frequent those that are left.

Meanwhile, the Buy it in Bourne campaign which was launched three weeks ago continues with a progress report in the columns of The Local (February 27th) relating the efforts of one of our county councillors, Sue Woolley (Bourne Abbey), to purchase rare items suggested by readers and claiming success after finding CDs of a Beehoven recording at the Salvation Army charity shop in West Street but had the grace to admit: “It is true there is not a huge choice for music lovers in Bourne.”

Nor for many others items either which is why this campaign began. Shopping should not be a game of chase the thimble but of easy choice from available outlets and if what is wanted cannot be found then customers will go elsewhere. Charity shops may have their place, and Bourne has more than its share with five of them in the town centre, but to equate them with traditional traders is little short of ridiculous. The Buy it in Bourne campaign may have been a bright idea in that it appeals to shoppers to purchase locally whenever possible but it has now deteriorated into little more than a parlour game.

If councillors wish to help in the current crisis, then it is their duty to use their powers as elected representatives to keep down the spending budgets of those councils to which they belong to ensure that the business rate does not run out of control. In that way, small shops will not only stay open but others will be persuaded to open and so the variety of goods on offer will be increased. This is an elementary lesson in economics and one that will succeed if put into practice rather than the histrionics of chasing commodities in a town where they do not exist.

What the local newspapers are also saying: “Traffic calming to cost £120,000”, proclaims a front page headline in The Local with the information that 57 speed humps or cushions are to be installed in three streets in Bourne in an attempt to slow down motorists (February 27th). Those affected will be Beech Avenue (30), Austerby (10) and Mill Drove (17) despite protests from the town council whose members insist that this is being done without their sanction and even to the layman, this amount of artificial deterrent may be construed as overkill.

“I am exploding”, said the mayor, Councillor Shirley Cliffe. “There are far too many. I am dead against them. I know we wanted traffic calming but this is ridiculous. They are frustrating for drivers and residents and people in all of the areas affected will go mad with the noise they will cause.” There are many more objections, notably old age pensioner Steve Townsend, aged 76, who lives in Beech Avenue where most of them will be laid, who points out in a letter to The Local that his front bedroom is a mere eight yards from the road and that the future appears to be one of continuous noise and fumes once they are in place (March 6th).

Certainly, speed humps have not had a good press and contributors to the Forum where the issue is being discussed have pointed out that they create excessive noise and vibrations likely to damage nearby properties and are not popular with the drivers of ambulances and fire engines. Worse still, they can wreck your car and a long list of potential hazards including broken springs, damaged steering, suspension and tyres including blowouts, are likely while motor cycles and cycles can be destabilised if they hit them and even elderly pedestrians have been known to trip and break bones.

All of this evidence is in the public domain yet our highways authority insists on spending money on installing more speed bumps and 57 of them in three streets does appear to be a sign of bureaucratic insanity. Why then should we have them and the answer is, as usual, that they are second best, a stopgap for the real thing. It is no coincidence that these installations have another name, sleeping policemen, now little used because it reflects the reason why they were introduced in the first place, as replacements for uniformed officers out on the streets. Unfortunately they are becoming a rara avis progressively being replaced by new technology, in this case a somnolent version of the bobby on the beat, while public confidence wanes with the parish council at Billingborough, for instance, passing a vote of no confidence in the police force on the grounds that their presence in the village to deter speeding is non-existent (The Local, March 6th).

Anyone with a memory of things as they were in past times will know that the sight of a constable on patrol was sufficient to deter anyone with his foot on the accelerator and a clear road ahead because there is nothing to straighten the mind quite like the sight of authority and this will not be achieved by a few piles of rubber in the road. Lincolnshire County Council which is responsible for our highways has promised that their effectiveness will be reviewed after twelve months but there is a distinct feeling abroad that yet another slice of our council tax is disappearing into the black hole of futile public spending.

They should also serve as a warning to those in authority who insist in installing them. In 2003, following a flood of complaints about damage to vehicles and even the death of a cyclist, 146 speed humps were removed from the streets of Derby at a cost to the taxpayer of over £460,000 and also brought about the downfall of the city council.

There was a time some forty years ago, before we moved to live in Bourne, that a favourite weekly excursion was to drive here for lunch at the Angel Hotel. This was a popular outing because a pint of beer in the wood panelled bar was an enjoyable experience, especially on market days when the world and his wife called in for a drink, followed by an excellent meal in the restaurant, a room in the traditional style of the country inns at that time.

The Angel was much the same as other hostelries in similar towns of this size, former coaching inns surviving in the age of the motor car simply through plain and simple service in surroundings uncluttered by the fads and fashions of the modern age and they succeeded because that is what the customers wanted. Unfortunately, the owners of these attractive inns did not recognise that they had a winning formula and tampered with the décor and style of service, trying to emulate what was on offer in the big cities little realising that it would have no appeal in small market towns such as Bourne where the old order was preferred. The hotel bars with all of their wainscoting and rustic charm have therefore gone, replaced by counters with coffee machines or something similar, while the restaurants have suffered the same fate with the solid oak of past times being replaced by a minimalist modern style and the customary meals of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding have given way to a selection of unpronounceable dishes from a long and usually expensive menu.

Older people who once ate there now stay away and dropping in for a pint on market day is no longer a pleasure. The traditional inns that once appealed to them now aim for a different, younger clientele and in doing so compete with a dozen other such places in the vicinity. After failing several times in recent years, the Angel Hotel is now reopening with new owners and its restaurant will soon become a brasserie style eatery while the coffee bar across the cobbled entrance is already in business. We wish them well but cannot help hankering for the ambience of past times when a half of bitter followed by lunch in surroundings reminiscent of The Pickwick Papers was an experience which reassured the customer that some of the traditions of old England were still alive and well and likely to remain so.

Shop watch: “Fair daffodils, we weep to see you haste away so soon”, wrote Robert Herrick (1591-1674) in his much-loved poem about the delights of our favourite seasonal flower (To Daffodils) and his words have had a particular resonance in our household this week. We bought two bunches from Sainsburys in Exeter Street last Thursday yet by the weekend they had faded and gone which is hardly the value one would expect from such a renowned national supermarket.

One of the pleasures of living in the fen is that we get daffodils early, sometimes in December, because large quantities are grown under glass but by this time we would be buying the outdoor variety that are hardier and last longer. This year however, their growth has been delayed by the cold weather, long spells of snow and ice that has held back the crops in Lincolnshire and down in Cornwall for several weeks. But production must continue and so they are been harvested anyway, bunches of tight buds that have been reluctant to burst into flower and when they did the blooms were desultory and soon withered. One would have thought that experienced buyers for the High Street stores would know this but commercial life must go on whatever the weather with the result that customers have had poor value for the money they have spent to bring a touch of spring into their homes.

Thought for the week: If I am depressed, or think the world’s a filthy place, I just go and look at a flower. - Geoffrey Smith, gardener, broadcaster and writer, who died last week aged 80.

Saturday 14^th March 2009

A memorial plaque from the Great War of 1914-18 awarded to the family of a young lad from Bourne who lost his life during the conflict has been found during a house clearance in the town.

It was originally sent with a letter from King George V to Frederick and Annie Baldock who ran Baldock's Mill in South Street, and the plaque bore the name of their son Harold. He was serving with the Royal Navy as a boy 1st Class and died with the sinking of HMS Natal on 30th December 1915 at the age of 17, two weeks after he had been home on leave. The ship, a 13,500-ton armoured cruiser, was destroyed by an accidental internal explosion in the harbour at Cromarty in Scotland that caused the death of 421 men out of a complement of 704 and his name was subsequently included on the Chatham Naval Memorial and the war memorial in Bourne.

The plaque was one of thousands made to remember our war dead. In 1916, the government decided that some form of memorial should be established for presentation to the next of kin of those soldiers and sailors who had died and the scheme was first made public in The Times on Tuesday 7th November 1916 under the headline "Memento for the Fallen - State Gift for Relatives" and a committee was appointed to consider what form it should take.

In August 1917, it was decided that it would be a bronze plaque, the design to be selected by public competition with a winning prize of £250. The announcement aroused tremendous interest, especially from overseas, and by the closing date of 31st December 1917 there were more than 800 entries from all parts of the Empire, the Western Front, the Balkans and Middle Eastern theatres of war and from many artists based at home in Britain.

The winning design was chosen by the committee at its meeting on 24th January 1918 and subsequently approved by the Admiralty, the War Office and the King. The winner was Edward Carter Preston, of the Sandon Studios Society in Liverpool, who received the first prize for a plaque measuring 4¾ inches in diameter (121 mm) and depicting the figure of Britannia, classically robed and helmeted, standing and holding a laurel wreath crown in her extended left hand and supporting a trident by her right side with a lion in the foreground. There were also prizes for the entrants in second and third places while another nineteen were given honourable mentions and all of the prize-winning designs were exhibited for a time during the spring and early summer of 1918 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Production of these next of kin memorial plaques began at Acton in West London in December 1918, later transferring to the Woolwich Arsenal and other munitions factories. Over one million were made, commemorating the sacrifice of men and women who died while serving at home establishments or in Western Europe and the dominions between 4th August 1914 and 30th April 1920, and were sent to next of kin through the post in stiff card folders. They were inscribed "He died for freedom and honour" and bore the name of the recipient and were accompanied by a signed letter from the King saying: "I join with my grateful people in sending you this memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War".

Today, they have become rare and collectable items and occasionally appear at auction, often with the campaign medals of the recipient, and fetching between £50 and £100. But they are also a reminder of a conflict which became known as the war to end all wars, a promise made by politicians amid the jingoism of the time and a phrase which now has a hollow ring while the memorial plaques serve as a reminder of the sacrifices that were made in the futility of the fighting by many who did not even know what it was all about.

Ironically, Harold Baldock’s plaque has now been handed over for safe keeping to the Heritage Centre in South Street, formerly Baldock’s Mill run by Frederick and Annie Baldock and where it would have been originally delivered by the postman ninety years ago. Sadly, the family also received a second plaque in respect of another son, Frank Baldock, who was killed in action at Gallipoli on 9th August 1915 in the vicinity of the Scimitar Hill area of Suvla and is commemorated on the Helles Memorial in Gallipoli and the war memorial in Bourne. He had enlisted in the 6th Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment and was soon promoted lance corporal and posted to the Dardanelles where he took part in one of the early engagements but little is known about his death other than he was posted missing for several months before being presumed dead.

There has been no formal announcement yet that Bourne Preservation Society has been granted a lease of the Victorian chapel in the town cemetery which it is pledged to restore and so we may assume that the transfer is still bogged down in legal niceties which will be no surprise to anyone with a knowledge of the law’s delays. It is therefore almost a year since conservationists banded together to save this Grade II listed building and while their efforts are continually thwarted by the paper work, volunteers become frustrated and the fabric continues to deteriorate.

The chapel, which was built in the mid-19th century by the distinguished ecclesiastical architect Edward Browning (1816-82), has served this town well but recent neglect has brought us to the present impasse in which the town council wanted to demolish but conservationists wished to preserve and despite an inconclusive survey loaded with red herrings this would appear to be the wish of the people.

A single estimate commissioned by the town council instead of the usual three advised by local government has suggested that restoration would cost £400,000, a figure which in itself condemns its stewardship, the building having been in its care for the past 35 years, yet an independent expert assessment by the BPS has concluded that the work could be completed for £250,000 which is considerably less and as it is anticipated that this money will be raised through grant aid, a swift handover of the building without undue obstacles being placed in its path would appear to be totally justified.

The alternative, already the subject of speculation in the town, may be that some councillors still prefer to see the chapel pulled down rather than restored. Perhaps this is history repeating itself. The Red Hall, our most important secular building dating back to the early 17th century, was once destined for demolition by the local authorities yet the vigorous efforts of conservationists saved it for the benefit of the town. The man responsible, Councillor Jack Burchnell (1909-73), who led the fight to preserve this fine building, is remembered for his energy and dedication in saving it and is well documented in the history of Bourne. Those who opposed it are totally forgotten and hardly rate even a footnote.

The campaign to save the chapel is now being emulated elsewhere in the county with the Boston Victorian Cemetery Trust being formed to preserve not only the chapel but also the cemetery itself together with the gatehouse and mortuary building, the entire 12-acre site to be leased at a peppercorn rent and turned into a community and conservation based trust. The volunteers recognise that the cemetery and its environs are not only of historic interest but also of environmental value through the wild flora and fauna to be found there and funding is now being sought from a wide range of statutory and charitable organisations as well as forming links with nature, conservation and historical groups.

We hope that their efforts will result in a speedier settlement than at Bourne although progress does appear to be equally slow because an email from the trust informs us: “At present we are awaiting a decision by the cash-strapped Boston Borough Council on whether they are prepared to begin negotiations.”

What the local newspapers are saying: South Kesteven District Council continues to make suitable noises about the £27 million redevelopment of the town centre yet no one actually believes that the project will be going ahead in the foreseeable future, if at all. The Stamford Mercury reports that the authority is setting aside £3 million over the next three years while the original boundary of the core development area is being revised to take in another 11 homes (March 6th).

This may be window dressing for a scheme that has been on the cards since August 2001 without a single brick yet being laid and at the same time keeping some of the staff at council headquarters in Grantham in gainful employment. But just to recap on the story so far, another 38 properties need to be acquired before work can start and despite losing one developer (in August 2006) after several years of planning, the council suggested in January that the scheme could be underway by 2012, thus adding another eight years to the original timescale which projected a start in 2004 and completion within 18 months.

Certainly something must be done to justify the thousands of pounds already spent although this would not appear to be a good time to be pressing ahead with such an ambitious scheme, given the economic climate and the downturn in the building industry, but then we bow to the superior knowledge and experience of the local authority. Yet, the words of one of our old and respected senior citizens keep coming back because he said at the outset: “It will not happen in my lifetime” and anyone over 60 even today will be inclined to agree with him.

Neighbourhood Watch has come to out street and it is only with the arrival of an information pack from the police that we realise how at risk we are from the criminality that prevails in the outside world. The formation of our own group was prompted last month by two burglaries at houses across the road, both broken into during daylight in a similar fashion, a rear window being smashed with a rock to enable the intruders reach inside and open the doors with the keys that had been left in the locks.

The various leaflets provide expert guidance on protecting ourselves and our property from those out to break the law such as security tips for cyclists on how to keep their machines safe, hidden and locked, how to deal with bogus callers, protecting your mobile phones, your home and belongings and even advice on tackling identity theft, the latest scourge of the technological age. There are also useful cards to fill in and hand to a neighbour when going away on holiday, incident report forms for when necessary, a practical guide to crime reduction and stickers for the front door to remind you to keep it locked and as a warning that this is a Neighbourhood Watch area.

Our group is now up and running with a co-ordinator and an assistant, ready to circulate alerts and report on strangers or suspicious activity in our close and hopefully deter any future break-ins or thefts. But it does need constant vigilance because apathy is the ally of the wrongdoer who will take advantage of the slightest lapse and at the same time spread alarm among householders, particularly the elderly and especially if they live alone. Unfortunately, we have no control over the punishment for those caught and if the victims were to have their say over retribution for delinquents, then a slap across the wrist and two weeks of table tennis in a young offenders’ institution would be very low on the list.

Thought for the week: He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca (circa 4BC-AD 65), Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist and tutor to the emperor Nero.

Saturday 21^st March 2009

Trouble at Elsea Park - see "What the newspapers are also saying . . . "

The proposed expenditure of £2,000 by the town council on repairing the mayoral chain of office has provoked some indignation in the letters column of The Local especially as the annual grant to the Butterfield Centre which looks after the welfare of the old and needy is to be cut by £1,000 (March 13th).

Some of those who have recently served as our leading citizens claim that the chain is heavy and cumbersome, too weighty to be worn round the neck by the ladies and even liable to damage the suiting of the gentlemen because it not only contains an enamelled replica of the town crest but also 25 silver medallions inscribed with the names of past mayors. The consensus is, however, that spending of this magnitude, especially in the present economic climate, is an unnecessary luxury and one reader condemned it as non-essential work, a description with which few could disagree. “The position of town mayor is one of privilege”, wrote Jack Slater, of Beech Avenue. “Surely a little discomfort while wearing the chain for a short time in carrying out their duties is quite acceptable and a lot less debilitating than the effect of reducing funding for a very important facility which benefits many disadvantaged people.”

Public opinion therefore, sees the mayoral chain as being low on our list of spending priorities especially when the role it plays in our affairs is considered. How many people have even seen it and how important is it to the civic life of the town? There is also the question of whether the chain of office is even necessary in its present form or could be replaced, even modified, to something simpler.

The 25 silver medallions creating the weight complained about seem to be superfluous. The names of past mayors cannot be read at a distance and imagine the scenario at a civic function when a curious member of the public, anxious to acquaint himself with our past history, seeks to do so, especially if the office at that time is filled by a lady, a situation liable to cause an incident and might even result in the police being summoned. Also, as the total capacity of the chain is 25 medallions, one has to be discarded each time another is added and so the spare ones end up in a drawer at the council offices, a reminder that some of our mayors have made such little impression during their year in office that they are forgotten as soon as their term is up. A quarter of a century is therefore quite unnecessary to record the names of those who went before, especially as a list of our first citizens since the council was formed in 1974 can be found inscribed on the mayors’ board in the Town Hall and on the CD-ROM A Portrait of Bourne.

As discussions over the future of the mayoral chain are now taking up so much time in the council chamber, this would be an opportune moment to dispense with using the present one altogether. By all means keep it on display in the Town Hall as an example of the way things were but replace it with something simpler and less ornate yet a reminder of the authority it represents, perhaps a red or blue velvet ribbon supporting the town medallion, a tasteful sartorial addition for any function and one that can be worn with ease by both sexes.

If councillors accept that the office of mayor is not intended as a boost to the ego but a symbolic token of the office and town it represents, then the decision will be simple and speedy. But if councillors insist on feeding their own vanity, then the current unease about unnecessary spending on civic gewgaws will persist and letters critical of these trifling debates continue to appear in the local newspapers.

What the local newspapers are also saying: There has been another skirmish in the Battle of Elsea Park with angry protestations from residents about the continuing lack of promised amenities and an admission from the developers that they are at fault. The Local reports (March 13th) that Daniel Brown, a director of the Kier Group, told the annual meeting of the Elsea Park Community Trust at the Corn Exchange last week that their commitments had been unfulfilled and the credit crunch was now putting them under additional pressure but added: “Even when times were good we were not performing on this estate.”

This development has been the most controversial in Bourne in recent times, causing widespread discontent when it was first mooted in the spring of 1999, mainly because of its massive size, a total of 3,000 homes which would virtually double the size of the town over a ten year period. The public attitude from the outset was that expansion of this magnitude was too much too soon for such a small market town that had been growing steadily and naturally over the previous half century, from a population of around 5,000 in 1951 to 10,000 in 1991, and that this momentum was sufficient and acceptable if maintained.

A new estate covering some 300 acres on prime agricultural land to the south that would bring in 6,000 newcomers within a very short space of time was regarded as both unnecessary and unwarranted and that the bulk of South Kesteven District Council’s new housing quota was being pushed into Bourne much against the will of the people. It was also stressed that the town, which had already lost many of its vital amenities, notably its hospitals and railway service, would be unable to cope.

But the die was cast as Bourne was to find out and no matter what objections were raised, the development was soon on its way. A public exhibition was staged at the Red Hall in October 1999 in an attempt to allay these fears but most of those who attended came away totally dispirited by the experience claiming that there was insufficient information about the provision of the additional facilities that would be needed to cope with this massive influx of people. One of the major critics was our M P, Quentin Davies, who warned that SKDC should have been more careful “about handing out planning consents like so much confetti” without due regard to existing roads, traffic flows and the infrastructure and his forebodings were shared by many. But despite the mounting opposition, the council’s planning and development control committee met on November 2nd and voted by 15-1 in favour of granting outline planning permission and this was subsequently ratified by the full council, the first new homes being completed in 2002 and the estate has now reached a formidable size.

Throughout the planning stages, both the developers and the council were insistent that the town would benefit from the planning gain, the Section 106 agreement (S106), a legal contract that formalises what will be provided by the developers, and it is up to the local authorities to ensure that they do eventually materialise although it was evident from elsewhere that these agreements have been difficult to enforce, often drawn up in a sloppy fashion and incapable of delivering what was expected. Yet it is the planning gain that has been at the very heart of the current problems on the estate which surfaced at last week’s meeting because despite being required to pay an annual community charge of £236, residents have complained that few of the promised amenities have materialised and council enforcement officers were now pushing the company to meet its obligations which may well be whistling in the wind.

The original package agreed with South Kesteven District Council included a primary school for local children, a multi-purpose community hall, sites for a doctor's surgery and crèche, cycle, pedestrian and vehicle links and a shuttle bus route through the development, sports pitches, toddler play facilities and nature conservation areas, links to Bourne town centre and existing public footpaths to the surrounding countryside, retention of the majority of existing site features e g hedgerows, ponds, etc, a south west relief road to reduce traffic congestion within Bourne town centre and measures to safeguard and enhance the ecology including the protection of Math and Elsea Woods, a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The relief road is the only tangible benefit so far, eventually funded with the help of a £700,000 loan from SKDC and opened in October 2005 after 18 weeks of enforced closure by the developers who were in dispute with Lincolnshire County Council although the terms of the settlement have never been revealed. Now, with around 600 houses completed, the promised amenities appear to be just as far off and residents want value for their money and they are also demanding improvements to the roads, sewage and drainage systems.

The meeting was told that work is due to begin soon on two play areas for children at a cost of £85,000 and planning permission is being sought for a community centre but Mr Brown warned that because house building on the estate had been frozen as a result of the recession, maintenance costs would fall on fewer residents. “If no more homes are built it will also require more money to run the community centre”, he said.

It is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs yet despite these problems, SKDC continues to entertain planning applications which involve various provisions under a S106 agreement. It may be argued that each project must be judged on its merit but past performance of developers should also be a factor when making a decision and both councillors and council officers would do well to remember this if situations similar to what we now have at Elsea Park are to be avoided in the future.

One of the coveted jobs of my boyhood seventy years ago was a newspaper round but vacancies were few and far between and to get one meant joining a waiting list even though there were several newsagents serving the neighbourhood. Pocket money was always short and so any task however small was eagerly sought and regular employment such as this was the ambition of every youngster in the street but the problem was that there were too many of us chasing the few that were available.

Some lads waited months or even years before being taken on and then it meant getting up early in the morning to have every copy delivered by 8 am, usually on foot because owning a bicycle was a luxury, and after collecting the morning’s newspapers from the shop some rounds involved several streets and often fifty or sixty calls with the prospect of only a few pence in wages. Nevertheless, it was paid work which gave us a degree of independence and the feeling that we were achieving something worthwhile and at the end of the week we were able to spend our earnings on ourselves, whether it was sweets, comics or going to the pictures.

These memories came flooding back one morning this week when I looked out of the front window and saw a car driving up and down outside, stopping occasionally to allow a young lad alight and dart up to one of the houses and drop something through the letterbox and then I realised that he had recruited his father to help deliver the newspapers which, I thought, rather defeated the object.

The first objective of a newspaper round is to earn money of one’s own volition and the second is to understand the value of work, that the labourer is worthy of his hire. To seek help in the shape of a reluctant mum or dad and then to be driven from door to door not only negates anything that may be learned about the work ethic but is also a sign of irresponsible parenting and a waste of petrol. We read every day of examples where youngsters are being mollycoddled and to collude in making their part time jobs easier by practically doing it for them sends a wrong signal. If a boy or girl agrees to deliver newspapers and is paid for it then they should do the round on their own, however long and whatever the weather. By all means help the kids out where necessary but to take over the very job they are being paid to do will give them a totally wrong impression of what to expect when they leave school and go out into the world of work to fend for themselves.

Thought for the week: If I ruled the world, ev'ry day would be the first day of spring. - first line from the popular song from the 1963 musical Pickwick, words by Leslie Bricusse, music by Cyril Ornadel.

Saturday 28^th March 2009

A mole trap at the ready - see "If you go down to the cemetery . . . "

The retired banking boss Sir Fred Goodwin whose windows were smashed and car vandalised this week as a reprisal for his gargantuan and unearned pension payout should count himself lucky for had he been living in this part of the country 100 years ago then the consequences would have been far more severe. Instead of a foray lasting a few minutes by angry anti-capitalist protestors outside his Edinburgh home, he would have found himself at the mercy of the mob for several days, anxious to vent their wrath by what was known as ran-tanning, a particularly nasty form of social punishment prevalent in the South Lincolnshire fens until the early years of the last century.

Ran-tanning was a notorious method of expressing public indignation whenever someone transgressed the bounds of what was perceived to be good behaviour but as with all illegal gatherings the definition was usually confined to that laid down by the ringleaders and often closely resembled a riot. If a person had committed some act of which the other villagers disapproved, they would congregate near their house carrying an effigy of the persons who had incurred their displeasure and making a terrible commotion by beating with sticks, tins, cans, pots, pans, buckets and kettles, playing mouth organs, booing, shouting and singing and on occasions lighting bonfires. The demonstrations were carried on for a number of nights in succession, usually three, after which the effigy would be burned.

This was a form of vigilantism likely to provoke social disorder, doled out to anyone who breached the local code of what was right and what was wrong and was particularly likely in the case of sexual misdemeanours such as adultery and domestic incidents such as wife beating. In fact, cases became so frequent and so serious during the late 19th century that they eventually attracted the attention of the authorities and ran-tanning was banned under the Highways Act of 1882. Yet cases persisted. Illicit sexual liaisons were particularly prevalent in this country during the Great War of 1914-18 when husbands had either volunteered or been conscripted into the army to fight in the trenches of Flanders and France leaving wives behind who were vulnerable to temptation although always wary of what the neighbours might say.

Not all of the soldiers were sent home immediately after the Armistice and by the following summer, hundreds had still not been reunited with their loved ones and in 1919, a case came before the magistrates at the town hall in Bourne when it was alleged that a woman and her lover had been ran-tanned by a group of men at Rippingale on August 29th on the grounds that she had been carrying on with a sergeant-major on leave while her husband was still away from home serving with the army.

Eight men were summoned to appear for unlawfully joining in a brawl and the case created so much interest that the courtroom was crowded with villagers for the entire two-hour hearing when the police described how they had been called out to quell a riot in which a crowd of men were causing pandemonium outside a house by beating drums, tins, buckets, plough shares, old pieces of iron and playing instruments, shouting and yelling, later gathering in a nearby field where two effigies were burned. The disturbances continued for three nights by which time the entire village was in a state of commotion and the noise could be heard two miles away but the men refused to stop despite warnings that they were guilty of disorderly conduct.

Solicitor Cecil Crust, who appeared for the defendants, argued that the men were not guilty of a brawl and quoted the dictionary definition as “a noisy quarrel” and whilst he admitted that there had been some noise, insisted that the men were not quarrelling. His argument was overruled by the magistrates and Superintendent Herbert Bailey, head of the Bourne police, told the bench: “The conduct of these men was disgraceful and it is abominable that people should be subjected to such rowdyism.” After some discussion, the magistrates agreed to the charges being withdrawn provided the defendants expressed regret for their actions and undertook not to repeat such incidents under any circumstances in the future although they were ordered to pay costs.

Ran-tanning was by then dying out and the last recorded case in these parts was at Quadring Fen, near Spalding on 15th February 1928 when the victim was a woman alleged to have made remarks scandalising her neighbours. Police intervened and 23 people were charged with disorderly conduct when the court was told that ran-tanning was perhaps the only survival of mob law which existed in this country. All of the defendants were fined between five and ten shillings and ordered to pay costs and there have been no further cases of this nature since.

Perhaps the case of Fred the Shred has provoked a return to this old but effective method of castigation because we hear that banking fat cats in London have been warned to be on their guard during the G20 summit next week in case of revenge attacks by militants for the collapse of the financial system. We wonder if ran-tanning is likely to spread to the capital and if this is why the police are being issued with dozens more taser guns.

If you go down to the cemetery today you had better tread carefully because metal traps have been placed at strategic points to catch Mr Mole who has been condemned as public enemy No 1 and the hunt is now on to seek out and destroy. No matter that this little furry creature is beloved by generations of children of all ages who were brought up on that classic of English literature, The Wind in the Willows, the town council has blamed him for creating havoc among the tombstones and even damaging graves, a likely story.

Many believe that they could have implemented a more humane method such as those used by local authorities in other parts of the country but as with the cemetery chapel, councillors are intent on total destruction and will not be content until they are rid of him. This does seem to be a desperate measure and perhaps the council is making a mountain out of a molehill because there are plenty of alternative methods available today which will do the job equally effectively without the need to slaughter our wildlife. It is not as if moles are particularly widespread because the population has been estimated at a mere four per acre and so the problem in the cemetery cannot be as acute as has been suggested.

Killing them off is also an ill-informed method because scientists suggest that no matter what is used, gas, poison or traps, the mole is here to stay and therefore battery or solar powered electronic repellents which are guaranteed to work are a far more advisable solution and can be obtained for as little as £15 each (including delivery) and so half a dozen of them would not stretch the budget. Teachers are instructed to tell our schoolchildren to respect our flora and fauna but the unacceptable face of officialdom can at times be callous and cruel with no time for such niceties and in this case only death to the intruders will do. Perhaps those councillors who are also school governors will explain this to the youngsters next time they find themselves in the classroom although they will have a difficult time in justifying the murder of Mr Mole.

The birds in our garden are a constant delight and so we keep them well fed to ensure that they continue to visit but there is little doubt that their numbers in the twenty-five years since we moved here have drastically declined. There was a time when the bird table was visited by a dozen species a day but now we are down to just starlings with pied wagtails picking around on the floor and occasional calls from a robin and a wren who live in the laurel bushes and of course, the collared doves who are always with us, ready for a free meal.

In past times, blackbirds were predominant and we still hope to hear their early morning spring song as the season of dawn chorus approaches, but there were also thrushes about, blue tits, coal tits and long tailed tits, an odd linnet, yellowhammer and greenfinch, a few bullfinches and sometimes even a sparrow hawk, although the last time one called he made off with a goldfinch that was about the alight on the bird table.

But this constant variety has long since disappeared and we are grateful for any winged presence, even a wayward racing pigeon alighting on the lawn rather than pant its heart out on one of those long distance races from the north of the border back to its lofts somewhere in the south but preferring the easy life with soft touches such as us who spend a small fortune each week on sunflower and nyger seed just to keep them coming. These racing dropouts usually end up with the flocks of feral pigeons that inhabit the fen out there in front of my study window, taking it easy and mating with no further regard for the silver trophies they once pursued on behalf of their fanciers, identifiable only by the rings around their legs seen from a distance through binoculars that can pick them out among the bad company into which they have fallen, no longer competitive yet happy and contented.

The loss of the more attractive bird species from our gardens is highlighted this week by the results of the Birdwatch 2009 organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds which attracted a record number of more than half a million participants who monitored visitors to their gardens during a one hour period in January, logging visits of 8.5 million birds of 73 different species. As in previous years, house sparrows and starlings were the most numerous although both have suffered major declines since the survey began in 1979 and although recent mild winters have been generally beneficial, the numbers of other less frequent species was also down, particularly siskins and bramblings.

Survey organisers say that there is no longer much food in the countryside for sparrows and starlings and insect numbers are down because of pollution but the popularity of bird feeding is making a difference to their population. Dr Mark Avery, director of conservation for the RSPB, said that as a result many birds, such as the long-tailed tit, were now being attracted into our gardens and a change in what we give them could create a greater diversity of species that visit. The advice is that feeding the birds can be beneficial provided we become more aware of the different types of food available rather than sticking to the traditional bag of peanuts and so perhaps we must be more varied in our purchases next time we visit the pet shop although I fear that as we are on the edge of an expanse of land maintained through intensive farming practices this may not be quite so advantageous.

From the archives: Grizzly bear found - A geological discovery by Mr Henry Goodyear, a farmer of the Austerby, Bourne, in his fen field near the Bourne Eau bridge, proves to be very interesting. The skeleton of the animal found in the clay bed of the ancient forest under the fen land has been presented by Mr Goodyear to the Geological Museum in Jermyn Street, London. Professor E T Newton, the eminent geologist, pronounces it to be the skeleton of a large bear of the grizzly type. In thanking Mr Goodyear, he expresses the wish that equal care might be taken of similar geological remains when discovered. - news report from the Stamford Mercury, Friday 8th March 1901.

Thought for the week: In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. - Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician.

Return to Monthly entries