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ELEVEN COLUMNS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE ROYSTON CROW

5/5/2013

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1: I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about speed and straight lines of communication. It strikes me that as the world has grown up the shortest distance between two points has somehow got shorter. I was thinking about this as I strode out one freezing morning along the byway which runs parallel to the railway between Royston and Ashwell – the ancient Icknield Way.

In the lea of the hills on which Therfield Heath lies, the railway runs straight and true. Next to it, the A505 has not a single kink. The telephone lines follow a linear path too. I have no doubt that, somewhere beneath the tarmac, gravel, sod and scrub, fibre-optic impulses whizz their supersonic way in straight lines arriving breathlessly at their destinations almost before they departed.

No extra space is commandeered and, crucially, no second is lost – unless, of course, there is the wrong kind of snow. Or there’s a crash, often euphemistically called an accident, as though the perpetrator hadn’t been texting as they drove, or distracting themselves some other way, or falling asleep at the wheel because of the pace of their massively busy lives. Or the server has crashed.

As I walked I began to think about the cost of all this mania for speed and directness. We can all relate to those poor people whose lives have been taken over by Blackberrys and iPhones. The technological revolution is here to stay and we have all got to speed up or drop out. We talk to each other less and text and email each other more than was the case in the bygone era – whenever that golden era was. If it ever was.

As we sit on trains, fuming at their tardiness, or sit, motionless, on a traffic clogged dual carriageway, we count the lost seconds in terms of the significant impact of the delay.

The simple pleasure such as walking down a pleasant path to one’s destination has been compromised by the intersections with busy roads and usurped by other, more frantic means of getting there.

But perhaps these are not costs at all. Perhaps they are just indicators of progress. I love getting to London in 35 minutes on the train. I love having broadband Internet access in my tranquil village so that I can watch programmes I have missed in astonishing HD. And frankly, if I want to go for a walk, what’s wrong with taking a circuitous route?

2: I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about shops. Specifically, empty shops. More specifically, empty shops which once had been occupied. There are very, very many of them. The television proclaims that in Wales 18.5% of all shops stand vacant and idle. London’s figure is 9.5% with the West Midlands topping the league at 18.5%.

The variation is significant and I’m trying to understand it and relate it to my own little patch. My impression is that many shops in Royston are shut. Similarly Letchworth and Baldock appear to be unable to keep their shop rosters full. Each town’s historic core seems to be withering, starved of its lifeblood, whilst siege is being laid to its outskirts by the big guns of well known chains of supermarkets and other warehoused pile-em-high-n-sell-em-cheap concerns with ever increasingly fanciful names like Bedulike and Ladderama.

Yet let us take the villages of Ashwell and Bassingbourn. The former, whilst its pubs are cast down into the Slough of Despond, seems not to have a single retail premises standing empty. The village supports a butcher, a baker, a general store, a post office, a greengrocery, a hair salon, a chemist, an estate agent and a number of other businesses to be found squirrelled away in barn conversions. Bassingbourn has fewer shops but, to the naked eye, no property opportunities for thrusting retail entrepreneurs.

So to what does this all of this portend? A resurgence in the village economy? It would be nice to think so and, to a degree, it is comforting to know that some villages are still able to support a vibrant retail infrastructure. The cynic in me whispers that this is only a temporary lull before there is a further degradation of local supply. Increased suburbanisation of our locality, proliferation of out of town retail will gradually drain even more life from both our towns and villages until … well, until what?

I cannot help but think that there is an opportunity to redefine the character of our town and village centres. I was surprised when Royston kicked up such a fuss about the arrival of Costa Coffee. A place where people can meet and socialise is no bad thing at the heart of a community. Although there are valid objections to the mass colonisation by the international conglomerates, is there not an opportunity for local initiatives to spring up.?

Shops cannot, perhaps, continue to exist using the traditional model of 20th century operation. It shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to come up with a new and vibrant model of community usage for the 21st century. The challenge is there before us. We should meet it head on.

3: I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about new houses. Prompted by the arrival on my doorstep of a letter from … well I don’t know who it was from as it was unsigned. Some rampant activists I presume. Except that unlike most activists these folk don’t want to change the world. Quite the reverse in fact. They don’t want anything to change.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a little. There is a proposal to build thirty-three new houses on the beautiful Claybush Hill above Ashwell. This appears to be in addition to the forty-five new homes already either approved or at the pre-planning stage.

The letter is a call to arms to defeat the proposal by bombarding the planning authority with objections on the grounds of intrusion on the landscape and exceeding the capacity of the village services. The school is mentioned, as is the sewerage system. Odd bedfellows I thought.

The counter argument is that people have to live somewhere and, as the agricultural industry declines in this country, why not develop the land from which the rural economy is conspicuously failing to earn a living?

But of course, it’s not that simple. What we are dealing with here are really intractable problems. The potential development of our green and pleasant land raises emotive issues surrounding national identity, the population explosion, and the inherent right of the individual to live where he or she wants to live. The much-heralded influx of further Europeans migrants adds fuel to the flames of controversy and what initially seemed to be a local issue becomes one of national and international resonance.

The trouble is that, for the fair-minded, there is no immediate solution. The absolute positions of the Not In My Back Yard-ers and the It’s the Only Answer-ers are both untenable. Good old British compromise seems to be the way it will have to go. Perhaps fewer houses will be built, mollifying some and enraging others. Nothing will really change. Yes, the view will be slightly spoiled. Yes, there will be pressure on the village infrastructure. But we’ll all rub along again once the fuss has died down.

By reaching this compromise we will however be solving nothing. We’ll simply be laying down a further stock of intractable problems for our sons and daughters. The population of the planet is reproducing at a massively alarming rate and consumption of natural resources is out of control. Is there anyone brave enough or capable enough to attempt, like Canute, to stem the tide? Or is that attempt, like Canute’s, ultimately doomed to failure?

As I write this I look out of my window up towards Claybush Hill, the site of the proposed development. The irony of the road marking is stark. Between two ancient buildings, the oldest in the village, is a narrow lane. On the tarmac is written “No Entry”.

4: I WAS JUST THINKING …
… about the Arts. It’s the ever so slightly pretentious terminology used by those who work in the professional creative industries for what they do. The capital A is important to them. It gives the activity political credibility. Like the H in Housing, the D in Defence or the E in Education. It makes the activity feel important, worthy. The problem is that, unlike the three comparators, the Arts is not a statutory service. No government, whether on a national or a local level is obliged to provide them or to cause them to be provided.

For many years now the local authorities on our patch have been able to point, with some justification, to the proximity of Cambridge and London and the proliferation of Arts opportunities in those places, to justify the lack of facilities on our own doorstep. Now, with public expenditure under the cosh, North Hertfordshire District Council and Hertfordshire County Council are no doubt breathing heartfelt sighs of relief that they don’t have to justify such a non-statutory spend.

From the relative security of a community which has no professional Arts provision it is instructive to look at those communities which are losing theirs. Somerset County Council has ceased to provide any money at all to fund the Arts. One theatre has already closed, depriving the county town of a much-cherished service.

So should we be smug and think how lucky we are in having nothing to lose? Or should we be wondering what we are missing and what we have been missing for a very long time?

Royston, Baldock and Letchworth have a pitifully small number of professional Arts institutions which are able to provide our communities with that vital cultural counterbalance to those ever speedier, target-driven, value for money lives which we all live. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if the amateur scene is vibrant. Who needs those flouncy professionals in their cravats swanning around calling each other darling and displaying far too much tactile familiarity in public?

Yet there is an overwhelming feeling that as disinvestment in society becomes an ever-increasing reality and as the state shrinks and local authorities struggle to maintain their own credibility, we need the Arts more than ever. They entertain, they divert, they stimulate and they provoke. They provide original ideas. They are dissident, they are seditious, they are joyful, they are occasionally disgusting. More than anything they are a running commentary on how we choose to live our lives and on how we choose the people who tell us how to live our lives.

Perhaps now is the time for North Hertfordshire District Council to be in the vanguard and do something dynamic like provide a new Arts facility for us all to enjoy. Some hope!




5:  I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about invaders from Mars. The stuff of childhood nightmares induced by the images accompanying the release, perhaps, of the Jeff Wayne/Richard Burton version of the H G Wells classic “The War of the Worlds” all those years ago. I remember the red eye, the death ray, the inexorable march across our green and pleasant land and the total destruction of everything which we hold dear. I remember and I shiver involuntarily. I can’t help it.

A fantasy of course. It could never happen. There is no life on Mars, despite the very recent geological finds. Yet there is an emerging phenomenon that is making me look nervously about me as I traverse the countryside. Tall, unworldly, colonising, huge arms, supported on one massive leg. Already a danger to low flying aircraft and who knows what else in the future? Yes I’m speaking about wind turbines of course.

As Royston casts nervous glances towards Litlington and the proposal to site wind-harvesting turbines on the flat of the plain, I am at war with myself. On the one side sits my stupid, childhood irrational fear of the invading colossuses. On the other is my passionately held belief that as a society we have greedily consumed so many of the earth’s resources that we have done it and ourselves irrevocable damage. We have laid down a stock of problems with which succeeding generations will have to grapple. We are duty bound to investigate potential solutions to those problems now so that our children’s task will be microcosmically easier.

Thus wind farms, solar energy, nuclear and wave power are all options that we should feel obliged to explore, trial and then utilise if they prove effective. And what of the ‘blot on the landscape’ merchants? Those folk who want to preserve England’s countryside in aspic. Is what they aspire to be preserved, in any case, anything but the result of centuries of change? We, as a generation, have lost the right to dig in our toes and resist. It is we who have already precipitated climate change, mass over-population and the rapine of fossil fuels and other natural resources. We may not like the fact that we’ll be able to see the monsters from the road, the railway and probably the Heath at Therfield but we have only ourselves to blame.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate it when I drive through the Fens or up the A11 towards Six Mile Bottom and see the field acre-devouring monsters. I hate the notion of more farms being turned over for their use. I am instinctively against them coming to Litlington. But just like my childhood fears of Martian invaders this is irrational. They won’t kill me and if they help reverse the degradation of our planet I’m all for them.

6: I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about accountability. Actually I was really thinking about corruption but it’s best to whisper that word quietly because it tends to ruffle feathers. Especially if the accusation is leveled at Government or its contractors. But hold on a second or two, I seem to remember seeing an article in last week’s Crow … Yes, there it is hidden away on page nine. The headline declares that there are ‘Claims of record falsification by former council contractors’.

Conveniently for Hertfordshire County Council the law appears to have been contravened not by any Council employee but by an employee of the highways contractor Amey LaFarge – if it has been contravened of course. Which it might not have been. What they have or haven’t done is shrouded in a mist of non-specificity. Probably something to do with it all being under investigation by the police – again. Yes we’re going round this loop for the second time it seems.

We know that some employees of Amey LaFarge have already been investigated for falsification of records, use of inferior materials and false closing down of jobs. According to Councillor Chris White, who is getting quite hot under the collar about it, the cost is likely to be in the millions. That’s quite serious isn’t it?

What is slightly odd is that the County Council has already undertaken an investigation, the results of which were reported to the police who told them that it was a civil not a criminal matter. Interestingly, nowhere does it say what the result of that initial investigation actually was. One can only presume that having referred it to the police there must have been something awry.

It doesn’t really add up does it? Millions of pounds gone missing, an investigation carried out and the results reported to the police who wash their hands of the affair and give it back to the County Council who say that the police are investigating the situation once more. It feels like an endless loop of buck passing.

We elect our Councillors to be accountable to us. In turn they should be holding Council employees accountable. In their turn all external contractors should also be held accountable. It’s not rocket science is it? And anyone who has had any dealings with a Local Authority is only too aware of how draconian they normally are with anything from non-payment of parking fines to serious mismanagement of public money.

So what’s going on here? If the roads in Hertfordshire are substandard because someone’s got their fingers in the till, if someone is walking away with millions of pounds of public money, if records are being falsified, if there has already been an investigation, who is being held accountable?

Not the police, their job is to investigate and not to take the rap. Amey LaFarge? Certainly it was one of their people who was and possibly still is under investigation. They, sadly, feel unable to comment because of the second investigation. So there is only HCC left. Come on chaps, step up to the plate and tell us what has been going on and what you’re going to do about it.


7: I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about McDonalds. Well it’s coming, like it or not. Soon what used to be the Little Chef and more recently the car wash site will blazon some triteness about ‘lovin’ it’ across the North Hertfordshire landscape. Come to think of it the blinking lights atop the new Litlington wind turbines will probably combine with the orange neon glare emanating from the new Drive Thru’ [oh whatever happened to the ‘ough’?] to create a little oasis of garish light on the town’s outskirts. No doubt there will be a litter problem. There’ll probably be a traffic problem as the young people discover that the site is too far to walk and will have to persuade the old people to drive them there.

Hold on, hold on! Isn’t there something a little odd going on? Royston town centre, if we are to believe the prophets of doom, is in its final death throes. There are many retail properties standing empty. Surely Ronald should bring his calorie-laden, carbohydrate-filled offer to the centre of town thereby re-invigorating the area with the mellifluous sound of young people’s voices prattling of their pleasure, whilst their elders sit glowering behind their net curtains muttering about the way ‘things have gone down’ in the days since they were young.

Ah no. That would upset the fish-fryers and other purveyors of other choice exportable hot food! The take-away industry in the town would suffer should the double arch be erected anywhere within walking distance of the town centre. So how could anyone propose such a damaging thing? Possession, after all, is nine tenths of the law.

An intractable problem seems to face us. Drawbacks everywhere. Yet the proposal brings the prospect of sixty or more full and part time jobs with it. So what to do? Out of town development with its collateral damage or in-town development with its concomitant problems and confrontation with vested interest? The little battle is being fought, or has been fought, in many small rural towns across the land. The one thing that is sure is that whilst communities may or may not get it right in terms of location, the one party that never loses is MacDonalds.

In Royston it’s obviously a done deal and there is little point in speculating about a different future but the world is an odd sort of a place when the community cannot find any sanction other than allowing the lesser of two evils. Perhaps development should only be allowed if the planning gain associated with such an application was known about and openly debated. If Ronald wants to service us all on a regular basis with food that is probably not great for us what is he going to give us in exchange?

If Royston is in need of re-invigoration what is it that we really need and want? What would drive our self-respect higher? What would occupy our young people more? What do other demographic sectors of the local society crave in order to help change the town’s image and reverse its declining fortunes? Is Macdonalds really the answer? Has the community been consulted and has Ronald been asked to think about supplying an alternative or additional civic facility ?

Perhaps he has and perhaps he will do so and everyone will be happy. But somewhere in the recesses of what used to pass for my brain I wonder if there is really a need for an out of town fast food service on a road which already has the same facility at Baldock services as well as one a mere twenty miles away at Duxford. Surely no-one can be that greedy? Except Ronald himself of course.

8: I WAS JUST THINKING …

…about austerity. As the Chairwoman [her choice of word not mine] of the East of England Ambulance Service Trust resigns due to the failure of the service to achieve the required response times, she, as people tend to do these days, quotes the cutbacks in public expenditure as one of the root causes of the problem. This is inevitable at a time when we are all being instructed to tighten our belts and modify our expectation of what the state can deliver adequately. The bankers, the politicians, the economists have made a hash of things and the state looks to the populace to make amends for their mistakes. It may be unfair. It may be reprehensible. But it is a fact of current life.

So the Age of Austerity is upon us. Just as other generations have lived through ages characterised by more positive adjectival qualification – the Golden Age, the Age of Reason, the Age of the Enlightenment etc. – ours is a grubby, greedy, self-interested little Age. The dictionary definition of the word Austerity gives us the choice of shortage, scarcity, hardship, poverty, lack, undersupply and restriction. No wonder we live in such depressed times when everything is about want. We were taught to want by Mrs. Thatcher and now, the people we have trusted with our financial wellbeing having been found wanting, we are in want under Mr. Cameron.

Yet the dictionary also offers self-denial as a synonym for austerity. This is decidedly awkward. The implication is that we are in charge of our own destiny. It has been so convenient to blame everyone else for our current misfortunes. We can bash the politicians because they are bashable. Indeed isn’t that what they’re mostly there for? We can bash the bankers because the politicians bash them and double bashing is a] fun and b] distances us and exonerates us from any kind of responsibility. We are but poor, put-upon, innocent victims of a cut-throat world we do not really understand. Are we not?

Simply, no. We need to ponder about the level of our expectation. We expect the state to provide for more and more of our needs and more and more of our wants. Hospitals, schools, street lighting, dropping bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan, flowers on roundabouts, football pitches, museums, theatres, dog waste clearance [have you noticed the new phenomenon of carelessly abandoned little plastic bags with topknots in hedges?], pot-hole filling, care for the elderly and at risk, police, fire and, of course, emergency ambulance services. The list is literally endless and ever-extending as our reliance on ‘them’ to provide grows exponentially. But have we been prepared to exercise a bit of self-denial to moderate the growth of our expectation? Do we look past the conscience-salving donations we make to good causes to the root cause of our problem? I think not.

The state is primarily there to make and effect laws. At our behest it has gradually accreted responsibility for providing what is regarded as social necessity. As the balance of payments becomes a contradiction in terms, it must be time to readdress our priorities and moderate our level of expectation. The Age of Austerity is an unwelcome but natural descendant from a previous Age of Greed.

9: I WAS JUST THINKING …

…about the politics of grief and the grief of politics. Inevitably, far too many column inches have been devoted to the recent demise of a once all-powerful colossus. Tributes have, no doubt, been flooding in to wherever tributes flood. There have probably been an equal number of negative words written and spoken. Depending on your view and on your experiences of the 1980s, you will either mourn Baroness Thatcher’s passing or join in the chorus of ‘Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead’. And, whatever your view, you will doubtless feel quite deeply about her, especially if you lived through her premiership.

In our region, apart from Andrew Lansley, Oliver Heald and Les Baker, very few of us will actually have had anything to do with the Iron Lady. We will all have have laboured under her policies, we will all have experienced the much-vaunted benefits of her tenure of the nation’s top political job but none of us actually knew her. Yet as an eighty-seven year old grandmother breathed her last every one of us reacted.

Margaret Thatcher was unarguably the single most effective leader this country has either enjoyed or endured. One of her continuing legacies is the one that has imbued the individual citizen of this nation with a sense of their own entitlement. This has bred self-reliance and self-determination. It also has bred a rank selfishness and lack of respect for anyone else’s property, person or reputation.

The scale of the reaction to the Blessed Margaret’s death has been enormous both in its trumpeted significance and in the extremity of its range. Whilst some folk have spoken in hushed and reverent tones about her political achievements others have literally danced on pictures of her face. The respect and tastefully decorous decency of previous eras, swept away on a tide of Thatcherism, have failed to protect its eponymous creator from its own excesses.

Never, before 1979, would the kind of boorishness which sees celebratory street parties have been tolerated. A brief cynical side-swipe, ‘thank goodness that’s over with’ kind of thing, perhaps. A dusting down, a taking stock, maybe even a ‘never again’ but then on with life. Now we feel justified in a glut of reactive behaviours. We are entitled, thanks to Maggie.

Simultaneously, however, while her family grieves as only a family can, the human cost of what she achieved becomes clear. Think what you will about Carol and Mark [and, frankly, who doesn’t?] they are having to mourn in the public eye. And that eye is at the heart of a vicious storm of political opinion. In the ex-colliery desert towns of north, in the wastelands of what used to be the heart of industrial England, any respect which may have been due to her family has been subsumed into a fully self-justified stream of vitriolic invective. In the affluent south of the country the round-voweled beneficiaries of some of her policies treat her passing as a national tragedy.

Neither point of view is entirely wrong nor is it completely right. But now, as we are being asked to contribute eight million pounds to see her mortal remains paraded before the nation, the grief of politics is, to my mind, clearly eclipsing the politics of grief.

10: I WAS JUST THINKING …
… about Running – the capital is intentional. It seems to be very much in the public consciousness at the moment what with the horrific events in Boston, the massive London Marathon, the Royston Fun Run and those well-intentioned folk who periodically jog past my window in pursuit of fitness and inner self-satisfaction .

We divide into two camps. Those-of-us-that-do and those-of-us-that-don’t. Those-of-us-that- don’t cast envious, sideways glances at the svelte-limbed, healthy-glowing faces of those-of-us-that-do. Running is so very obviously good for you. Physically and spiritually.  It was Chris Brasher, the father of the London Marathon who said "To believe this story you must believe that the human race can be one joyous family, working together, laughing together, achieving the impossible.” And he was right. Believe in the story and you can benefit yourself whilst benefitting others. From the high profile city marathons to the little local fun runs the selflessness of the participants is a constant reminder of our ability to achieve extraordinary things. The money raised for a plethora of charities is testament to the philanthropic power of Running. And when something awful happens as it did in Boston, the Running community closes ranks and supports its own constituents. The perpetrators of the atrocity picked on the wrong community. They are resilient, brave and generous human beings who, as soon as one week after Boston, had reunited in London to carry on their work.

Yet those-of-us-that-do look at those-of-us-that-don’t lounging by our firesides sipping tea and eating toasted muffins with something akin to fury. Heart pumping, breath catching, eyes blinded by the horizontal rain, they can be excused for wondering why on earth they are out there pounding the streets in all weathers. I know because I used to be a Runner. Perhaps I exaggerate. I used to put one foot in front of the other slightly more rapidly than a walker. As I limped about the lanes and tracks of North Hertfordshire my face reddened as my breath quickened. My knees degenerated as my musculature hardened. Only my Dalmatian, Bailey, who accompanied me on my daily torture, understood my pain but he was particularly unsympathetic. He could see a sixteen-mile training run as nothing more than a gentle stretch. Before I knew it I’d given up with a whimper and without having been able to join the those-of-us-that-do community. Missing out on the ability to participate in Brasher’s ‘story’ my charitable deeds are restricted to doing good deeds, donating to several well-chosen charities and sitting potato-like on my couch, phone in hand, in front of Children in Need and similar money-giving fests. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, but it’s not Running.

The essence of Running is something to do with a liberality of character and a freedom of spirit that is a unique attribute of that particular community. The massive crowds that lined the streets of London in the aftermath of Boston were a response from the heart of the community and everyone who appreciates what that community stands for. So my admiration and applause goes to Royston folk Kelly Smith, Guy Musson, Laura Thompson, Amanda Rutter and the tens of thousands like them who have taken themselves to the very edge of endurance to help others endure whatever life is throwing at them.

11: I WAS JUST THINKING …

… about Front Page News. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think what I write should be front page news. Far from it. But, and I have to be a mite careful here as I really shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me, I was wondering what on earth the Crow was thinking when it agreed to feature UK Independence Party on the front cover of last week’s edition. Yes, yes, I know it says Advertising Feature in a nice little purple band above the article [purple, along with yellow, being the UKIP colours] but it certainly feels like an endorsement of the party by the paper. It couldn’t really be, could it? Surely not.

UKIP? Aren’t they that party that suggests that the root of this nation’s problems is the influx of European Community immigrants? Isn’t UKIP the party suggesting that if we stop immigration all our problems will be sorted? Isn’t that a policy dangerously close to those of other exclusionist groups who are generally thought of as being a ‘bad thing’? I must obviously be wrong. Things must have changed and I must have missed them changing. Maybe that nice Mr. Farage has found the secret to reverse the economic meltdown and the drastic reduction in social services that has eluded everyone else, without manning the barricades in order to repulse all of those wicked Bulgarians and Romanians. My distaste at the selling off of the front page may then have been precipitate.

The only way to find out whether I was wrong or not was to take a deep breath and read what UKIP were saying in their Front Page Advertising Feature. So I sat down and read it. It wasn’t very long. Well I don’t suppose they have that much to say. The nice Mr. Hughes and the equally nice Mr. Robbins, the two UKIP representatives standing for County Council elections on May 2nd, start by telling us how disappointed they are in the Coalition’s failure to address the mess left by the last Labour Government. This felt promising as maybe the secret to a reversal of the parlous state of the nation was to be contained in the succeeding paragraphs.

With mounting excitement I read on. Messrs. Hughes and Robbins, I read, believe that our young people are pressurised and facing unparalleled levels of student debt and youth unemployment. Well, yes. But we knew that didn’t we. What was the secret to relieving them of the pressure and reducing their debt? Read on. Our standard of living has fallen apparently as our food and travel costs have risen. Yes, yes. Come on. Where’s the answer? Pensions have been devalued and retirement ages delayed [can you actually delay a retirement age?]. The list is very recognisable and I expected they’d talk about the value of my savings [not that I’ve got any] and negative interest rates any moment. Oh yes, there it was.

And then, suddenly, there it is. An insidious sideswipe at the Bulgarians and Romanians and we are told, categorically and in inflammatory fashion, that our ‘very way of life is under attack’.

No, no, no. I’m looking for an answer, not a hypothesis about what may, or probably may not, happen. So Nigel, Mark and Peter, where’s the clever answer to all of the problems? I look again. It’s not there. Some stuff about libertarianism and small Government. Some stuff about ‘non-whipping’ policy – best passed over without comment - and the Advertising Feature ends by saying that because they don’t use the bloc-voting system UKIP is best for North Herts.

I shouldn’t read Advertising Features written by political parties. It only raises my blood pressure. But I just wish it hadn’t been so prominent in the paper. Because people might believe what they read in the paper and then where would we be?



 



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NIMBYism

3/10/2013

1 Comment

 
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I was just thinking about new houses. Prompted by the arrival on my doorstep of a letter from … well I don’t know who it was from as it was unsigned. Some rampant activists I presume. Except that unlike most activists these folk don’t want to change the world. Quite the reverse in fact. They don’t want anything to change.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a little. There is a proposal to build thirty-three new houses on a beautiful green field site above my village. This appears to be in addition to the forty-five new homes already either approved or at the pre-planning stage.

The letter is a call to arms to defeat the proposal by bombarding the planning authority with objections on the grounds of intrusion on the landscape and exceeding the capacity of the village services. The school is mentioned, as is the sewerage system. Odd bedfellows I thought.

The counter argument is that people have to live somewhere and, as the agricultural industry declines in this country, why not develop the land from which the rural economy is conspicuously failing to earn a living?

But of course, it’s not that simple. What we are dealing with here are really intractable problems. The potential development of our green and pleasant land raises emotive issues surrounding national identity, the population explosion, and the inherent right of the individual to live where he or she wants to live. The much-heralded influx of further Europeans migrants adds fuel to the flames of controversy and what initially seemed to be a local issue becomes one of national and international resonance.

The trouble is that, for the fair-minded, there is no immediate solution. The absolute positions of the Not In My Back Yard-ers and the It’s the Only Answer-ers are both untenable. Good old British compromise seems to be the way it will have to go. Perhaps fewer houses will be built, mollifying some and enraging others. Nothing will really change. Yes, the view will be slightly spoiled. Yes, there will be pressure on the village infrastructure. But we’ll all rub along again once the fuss has died down.

By reaching this compromise we will however be solving nothing. We’ll simply be laying down a further stock of intractable problems for our sons and daughters. The population of the planet is reproducing at a massively alarming rate and consumption of natural resources is out of control. Is there anyone brave enough or capable enough to attempt, like Canute, to stem the tide? Or is that attempt, like Canute’s, ultimately doomed to failure?

As I write this I look out of my window up towards Claybush Hill, the site of the proposed development. The irony of the road marking is stark. Between two ancient buildings, the oldest in the village, is a narrow lane. On the tarmac is written “No Entry”.


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Poor Old Cambridge

2/26/2013

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Cambridge is a unique place. The city straddles the river, glowing in its glorious academic, historic, cultural and commercial reputation. It has shops which cater to every taste and pander to every idiosyncrasy. It is an individual place. In fact it is everything a city should be and has everything a city should have.

Except a cathedral. Despite its size, the ancient settlement casts a jealous and eastwardly focused eye on the much smaller towns of Ely and Bury St Edmunds. Both of these much tinier conurbations boast cathedrals.  Indeed where Bury’s cathedral is grand, Ely’s is positively grandiose.

Every school age child used to know the incontrovertible fact that every city has a cathedral. In fact having a cathedral defined its very city-ness. When the first city planners did their planning in Cambridge, did they just forget? Or was it a conscious decision to omit the one thing that would proclaim the burgeoning city’s important status across the land? And if so, why?

Whisper it quietly but even Oxford has its own cathedral which presides over that other golden hued ancient academic city. There is a security about having a community’s spiritual wellbeing cared for on the spot. Oxonians must be very pleased. Cantabrigians must be a little irked to have to don their flippers and waders and, taking their courage in their hands, venture into the murky darkness of the Fens for their town based centre of worship.


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Now You See it ....

2/21/2013

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It may not have won prizes for the beauty of its external architecture but Taunton has lost a uniquely valuable cultural asset. The Brewhouse Theatre has for years attempted to survive the winds of change and ever decreasing amount of available public money to remain a haven for those thousands of people every year who have sought nourishment within its walls. And now it's gone. Just like that.

Having been Director there between 1993 and 1996, I am very sad. I joined it a shoe-string operation and left it not much better off. My predecessors had been on the same journey and subsequent Directors have fought the same battles that I had done. During the years of its existence as a theatre purveying a diverse programme of both professional and amateur work there have been some extraordinary highlights. There was much to entertain, divert, inform and move a wide demographic. Theatre, music, dance, visual art, children's work and a participation programme that was the envy of many. And now it's gone. Just like that.

Founded by volunteers and having undergone a gradual transfer to a professionally staffed organisation, the place had a unique quality. I arrived to a staff of 10 paid workers and some 250 volunteers. They ran the Box Office, the Front of House, the Catering and some of the office functions. More recently the theatre had swelled in importance as an employer and the figures we are offered show 55 full and part time people in danger of losing their livelihood. The remaining volunteers will certainly discover a hole in their lives. If ever there was community ownership of a theatre, here was living proof of its existence. The importance and predominance of performances by amateur companies was also testament to that sense of being at the heart of things. And now it's gone. Just like that.

Blame is an ugly word. It usually causes more strife than the original problem. The repercussions of blame tend to rumble on toxically for years. I should know, having been, in my turn, blamed for some of the difficulties that the Brewhouse encountered following my departure. Even now that blame, totally unwarranted in my belief, still colours the history of my tenure. Deep in the recesses of Arts Council England there is a black mark against my name. I can't even smile about it now, some 20 years later.

Thus let us not blame anyone for the demise of Somerset's cultural flagship. Let us cooly and rationally try to work out why it has been allowed to die. It can't be the staff's fault. They have loved it and nurtured it as all arts workers tend to do for the buildings and initiatives they subsidise with their own time and extraordinary goodwill. Similarly the volunteers are spotless beacons of selflessness and commitment. It can't be the tens of thousands of audiences and participants in workshops who have eagerly consumed the programme of work and entertainment on offer. On occasion there could have been more of them, but in the main they were loyal and numerous.

The problem is systemic and social. To offer professional arts to a wide demographic implies that they must be affordable. By their very nature they are expensive to produce. The gap can be, and is, filled by a medley of income streams. But it is never truly filled and public funding, like it or not, is always necessary unless the arts is to become a football economy and tickets grow so expensive that the work exceeds the reach of most pockets.

I do not blame the individual members or officers Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council or Arts Council England in particular. They are writhing about in the snake filled pit of social demand versus available financial supply. When faced with closing hospitals and the rationalisation of essential public services how can a case be made for a theatre and arts centre?

But, God damn it, how can a society that prides itself on its culture and its heritage allow it to happen? The demise of the Brewhouse is the most recent nail in the coffin of the live arts experience which, like the continued existence of the topical black rhino, is in real jeopardy. Society's seeming indifference will result in people turning around to demand "Where has it gone?" And it will, by then, be too late.

Where is the political leadership that dares speak the unspeakable and really champion the arts? When will the lily-livered, besuited, uninformed, craven, fork-tongued people find someone from within their ranks to drive though a different sort of change which recognises both the relative importance and the real cost of what we do? 

In the case of the Brewhouse, Somerset County Council has already abnegated its responsibility in this respect. Bewilderingly, Arts Council England did so some years ago. Taunton Deane Borough Council appear to have joined the bandwagon of playing Pilate, shrugging their shoulders hopelessly, washing their hands and walking away.

It may already too late to do anything about it. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: The funders found out that the Brewhouse could not live, that is what I mean — so the Brewhouse died.

Much play will be made of returning the building to the community. On the one hand this is probably true and possibly laudable, though fraught with difficulty. It is, however, also a massively convenient excuse for a total dereliction of a social duty for which we must all take responsibility.


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Invasion

2/20/2013

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I first became aware of them in Germany. Whizzing through the countryside in the south not so very long after the reunification of Federal and Democratic states, out of the mist they came. Like great colossuses striding across the landscape. The physical embodiment of those terrifying creatures from the psychological recesses of H. G. Wellsian fantasy The Way of the Worlds. Huge single legged and multi-armed white monsters with their one blinking red eye.

And they seemed to be proliferating at an alarming rate. The Teutonic prospect was full of them. Logic and rationality were thrown out of the window as the legions of them advanced, ever closer to the autobahn. However fast one drove, and in the days of no autobahn speed limits our driver was ripping up the asphalt, the monsters were inescapable. It was the stuff of childhood nightmares, but it was no dream. The creatures were real.

And now they’re here. They first appeared on the television, comfortingly far away from our cosy rural location in the centre of the landmass. They had obviously mutated and developed sea legs. There they stood off the shore line. Seemingly permanent and unmoving. A multitude of malevolent now sea monsters putting down their anchors and laying siege to our coasts without ever being able to quite make landfall. This island race of Churchillian we-shall-never-surrender-ness had halted their progress and an uneasy truce had clearly been made in the corridors of Whitehall. We would tolerate them if they wouldn’t harm us.

It was never going to be enough and they must have made land one dark night and begun to reproduce like wildfire once more. They have marched inexorably across our green and verdant land. They have indeed invaded our own dear region. They have colonized hilltops in Suffolk, the vast expanse of the black soiled Fens and there are even some brazen enough to be visible in great numbers by the side of the A11 near Six Mile Bottom. They stand their, blinking. One day they will receive the signal and attack.

I’m terrified of them. For though they may only be wind farm turbines to most people to me they’ll always be Martian invaders.


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Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

1/14/2013

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It’s been a long time. A very long time indeed. Nearly 20 years. So long that I thought I had kicked the habit and consigned what had once been a pernicious addiction, to those annals which posterity has identified as the records by which my future judges shall assess me.


Yet how easy has it been to discard the greedily accreted days, weeks, months and years of abstinence? How simple once again to try, fruitlessly, to satiate oneself on the subject of one’s addiction? How pitiful comes the realisation, too late, that all that effort, all that pain, all that self denial, generating in equal parts self congratulation and self loathing, has all turned to dust?

It’s difficult to determine why it’s happened. I have not been particularly stressed, which is oft cited as a common cause. I have not changed my house nor my life partner although I did change my job. This last may be causal but I’d like to think of it as being coincidental. I can’t plead any particular provocation which makes my failure understandable. It simply happened. One day I didn’t, the next  I did. More properly, I suppose I should record that one day I wasn’t, the next day I was, once again, hooked.

And how did it make me feel, this descent from the pinnacle of propriety? As with every fall back into the abyss of addiction, my guilt at falling was only exceeded only by the pleasure experienced during the act of the fall. The high offered by the fix was instantaneous, enormous, gratifying in the extreme, as welcome as a long lost friend and accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of “this is how it should be!” The subsequent low was equally all-consuming, disappointing, filled with self condemnation, as welcome as a particularly grim spectre at the feast and accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of “how could you have just done that?”

Since I did it last I have managed to stay clean in the hope that it was just a momentary lapse. A brief, bright conflagration which once extinguished will seem like nothing but a moment’s madness. Yet even as I write this I don’t feel in control of that vital resistance component – will power. I fear the greasy pole is beneath me and the inexorable slide has already begun. I must face my own weakness and my own devils and ask myself the unavoidable question.

You see, dear Reader, after 20 years of swearing never to do it again because it was so bad for me, I have once again started auditioning to be an actor. I can’t help it. I love it. More than ever. Thus the 20 years which have passed since I last did it only give credence to the maxim that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

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In Your Dreams

1/6/2013

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Sitting in the bar at the Disneyland Hotel Paris, I saw ... OK! OK! Let's get this straight right from the off. For those of my readers who know me, I realise the previous fragment might fill you with disbelief before the sentence's conclusion. For those of you who don't know me personally I should like you to know that the previous fragment should fill you with disbelief before the sentence's conclusion. 

Simply, being 56 and having a slightly sardonic mien, I am not archetypical Disney material. Nor is my partner, though she is markedly less sardonic than I. Our children are all grown up. We think that a cup of chocolat chaud is pretty exciting and if we want to push the boat out we will visit the theatre, the cinema, an historic house or read a particularly stimulating book. Disneyland, in the normal run of things, would not be on our radar. We were visiting because the eldest fruit of our loins and his sparkly, terpsichorean partner-in-life both work there. We were finishing off a week at our Norman hideaway in the rain [near the Mont St Michel - very peaceful, very beautiful, very wet] by visiting progeny in the big city. Clear? Good.

So, sitting in the bar at the Disneyland Hotel Paris, I saw a man who, for me, was a strident, defining voice of a generation. A man who, in my memory, invented the word 'farty'. A man whose comedy existed on the edge of acceptability, who wrote plays and books which pushed the boundaries before, miraculously and slightly disappointingly, he became adopted and ultimately absorbed by the very Establishment into which he was trying [and succeeding] to push deflationary pins.

The Young Ones, Friday Night Live, Blackadder, Popcorn, Stark, books for The Beautiful Game and We Will Rock You are all to his credit, both in artistic and financial senses of the word. I guess you're there by now. Yes I saw Ben Elton in Disneyland. Ben Elton in Disneyland - think about it. That should be like seeing Brigitte Bardot in an abattoir or John Prescott at a Tory Party Conference. But there he was, sipping his beer, playing 'Cheat' with two children and a lady [presumably to whom he is related] and looking for all the world as if he belonged there. No-one bothered him [yesterday's man perhaps?], they were all far too interested in the antics of Pluto, Goofy and friends. He didn't sneer at them, demand attention, shout, jump up and down or swear. No, he just continued to be mildly amused and look as if he was actually enjoying himself.

I am bound by our family's strict behavioural code not to misbehave in public. When I see things that upset my sense of perspective and what is right, there is an unwritten compact with my nearest and dearest not to find my high horse, mount it and sound off. I am allowed to think dark thoughts just so long as I don't spoil it for anyone else by opening my mouth and give voice to them. Consequently, I rely on others to do the complaining about bureaucratic ineptitude, exploitative pricing, systematic brain-washing and the like. And, Goddammit, Ben Elton was one of those voices through which I did my vicarious rebelling and complaining.

So how dare he be so mild in a place where the drinks cost the equivalent of Ecuador's GDP there is more manipulation of reality than anywhere else I have ever been? Perhaps he knew something that I didn't. Perhaps he had a deeper insight into what actually goes on at Disneyland than I do. And this is when I begin to waver and start to wonder whether this is just my being grumpy.

My son's beautiful dancing girlfriend briefly made friends with a Mum and a little blind girl whilst we were sitting having a drink. The little girl was quite literally in heaven. She couldn't really see her heroes and heroines but she was quite obviously supremely happy. Her dreams had been fulfilled by the Disney experience. They came over to our table whilst Ben Elton was being mild and tolerant of the place and its excesses. They spoke in glowing terms of their favourite characters, the experiences they'd had on this, and other, visits. They thanked my son's girlfriend for being so lovely and helpful and making this time special. And then, on leave-taking, the little girl kissed her new friend. Then she kissed my son. Then she moved to my wife. And finally she kissed me. 

That was finally, after too many years of cynicism, when the penny dropped. It doesn't really matter whether it's for me or not. For others it is life affirming and utterly fullfilling. That should be enough. Perhaps that's what Ben Elton knew and I have yet to come completely to terms with.
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Nailed On

12/17/2012

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    Funny things fingernails. Although they might appear functionless they have a purpose – to protect what is underneath them. There is also a major, widely-held misapprehension that they continue to grow after death. The macabre truth is, rather, that the flesh around them dehydrates and shrinks after death giving the appearance that they continue to grow. Another myth disappointingly debunked!

    For centuries angry people have scratched each other’s faces with their nails, the industrious have used them as tools and the most part of the female of the species has generally nurtured and decorated them. It is this latter activity, allied to some information I heard on the radio not so long ago, that holds something of a fascination for me, a self-confessed and guilty nail-biter.

    This country has been enduring the deepest recession most of us have ever known. The disposable income of many, many people has been decimated as, uncomprehendingly, they draw in their horns in order to be able to subsist. Pubs, clubs, theatres, leisure activities of all sorts have been feeling the pinch. Yet in the darkness there is a beacon of light.

    The phenomenon that is the Nail Bar thrives. It seems that all over the country people are throwing caution to the winds by priming, pampering and painting their fingernails. No, this is inaccurate. They are causing their nails to be primed, pampered and painted by others. It is a real boom industry my radio told me. A quick Google search confirmed this by showing up 9 salons in Royston and 8 in Saffron Walden where you can pay other people to do what you could do just as effectively and certainly more cheaply at home.

    I challenged my partner with this conundrum. Why didn’t she save her money and do it herself like, indeed, she used to do in the good old days before the newest sweat-shop industry had come into being? Well, I fervently wish I hadn’t asked. A look of irritation shadowed her usually sunny countenance. It was followed by a look of pity bordering on condescension. There are complexities that I, being a man, simply wouldn’t understand. Taking this sleight to my metro-sexuality as my due, I persevered nonetheless. I suggested that if she no longer liked painting her own nails, I could do them for her. It was an offer that was not gratefully accepted. It was not accepted at all. Apparently it’s about applying gel and things called acrylics, and that makes all the difference I understand.

    Bewildered and reeling slightly, I decided that it was probably better left alone as a subject, despite my overwhelming desire to ask why application of a different kind of substance needed her to scoot off on a regular basis to her favourite Nail Bar. On refection, however, I’m glad that such an unlikely growth industry is giving employment to so many in these dark and dismal times.

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The Hertfordshire Dream

12/13/2012

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On returning from the beautiful Peak District of north Derbyshire to my home county I passed a signpost which made me smile. The smile had ever such a slightly cynical edge to it as the signpost had one of those slogans which only a marketing consultant could have come up with and for which that consultant could only have been paid obscene amounts of money.

‘Hertfordshire – County of Opportunity’ was what I saw as I neared my journey’s end. It set me wondering what it actually meant. What are these opportunities that exist and where are they to be found? How are they quantified and why does Hertfordshire County Council feel justified in distinguishing the county in such a way as opposed to Bedfordshire, say, or Cambridgeshire?

This got me to thinking a little bit more as I remembered that Bedfordshire once displayed a county slogan by its roadsides which had me open-mouthed in astonishment at the mediocrity of the county’s claim. It read ‘ Bedfordshire – Central to the Oxford Cambridge Arc’. In other words, Bedfordshire County Council chose to describe its patch as being midway between two far more interesting places.

The more I looked into slogans the more aghast I became as I discovered a proposal for Suffolk to adopt a slogan defining it as ‘The Curious County’. What is the point in such delineation and, even worse, such homogenisation? I can perfectly understand using a pithy phrase to describe a place’s historical significance. That is, after all, how I know that Chard, in Somerset, is the home of powered flight. But really, such a non-specific claim as being a place where there is quite a lot of opportunity is almost as facile as boasting that one particular millipede has got quite a lot of legs.

I love living in North Hertfordshire. It has beautiful countryside, lovely villages, and good transport connections to urban centres. It offers access to arts, culture and heritage in abundance. And it has enough that is quirky to keep my sense of the ridiculous sufficiently occupied that I don’t want to live anywhere else. But to categorise the place as being a land of opportunity is getting dangerously near to comparing it to the New World. Are we soon to have ‘the Hertfordshire Dream’ as well?

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A PRICKLY SITUATION

11/21/2012

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If it were happening to any other species, there might be serious concerns. If it were happening to mankind there would be a world-wide outcry. COBRA would be meeting in Downing Street and its equivalents in every other nation in the world would be convened to contemplate the Doomsday scenario. With the panic-stricken species under threat of extinction, survival strategies would be rolled out as, inevitably, the most ‘useful’ members of society would be protected and preserved whilst the rest of us would be left to take our chances.


The statistics are truly worrying. Between 2001 and 2009 about a third of this country’s population of Erinaceus Europaeus simply vanished. Not the victims of aliens from outer space, nor of a new deadly virus or plague for which there is no known cure. They have not been wiped out by armed conflict, famine or policies of power-crazed dictators. They have simply slipped away as result of a combination of causes. Causes which are low-level in themselves, but which are apparently deadly when combined. An increase in road traffic, the loss of natural habitat, industrial chemical spraying of crops and downright human indifference, ignorance, selfishness and carelessness.


Because we are, of course, talking about the plight of the common or garden European hedgehog, beloved of so many of us. Mrs Tiggywinkle, Sonic and other less well known of their brethren are under threat and few humans seem to know what to do about it. There is no lack of goodwill. Plenty of folk seem content to take injured animals to vets, RSPCA centres and the like. But in reality, apart from treating the ones that have a chance and subsequently returning them to the wild, whilst destroying the too-badly injured ones, that’s as far as it goes.


Or rather that’s as far as it has gone until now. The problem is knowledge. To be more precise, the problem is a lack of knowledge about how the little critturs live. We know how they die in their thousands. Returning them to the wild only saves a minute proportion of them. The steady decline in numbers, typically a fifth of the population in every four year cycle, continues unabated. Evidently it is time that someone does something about it before it is too late and the animals we love so much, but rarely ever see, disappear for ever.


On the evening of Saturday 17th November Shepreth Wildlife Conservation Society (SWCC) officially opened its new Hedgehog Hospital. It was a bash-with-panache: music by Carolyn Causton and Claire Robson, a hedgehog art auction (that’s pictures of hedgehogs, not by them), magic by a lookalike Harry Potter, wine tasting courtesy of Yapp Brother Wines and even themed cupcakes with Hedgehog icing. This typically English village fête atmosphere tended to obscure the serious part of the ceremony where some ground-breaking technology was introduced and a new utterly scientific approach to hedgehog conservation was explained.


Established in March 2011 SWCC has moved swiftly. The new hospital, complete with bespoke facilities, will not only deliver state-of-the-art care but also embark on a programme of research and data capture which will better inform the experts’ understanding of the conservation issues.


Essentially, the same attention to detail currently afforded to white rhinos and snow leopards will be afforded to the humble hedgehog. Each animal returned to its natural habitat will be tagged and monitored, tracked by a specially devised GPS system. Information will be gathered over a period of time and a database constructed to further analyse the problems. Each dead animal brought into the hospital and each one that dies on-site will be subjected to post mortem examination to ascertain other necessary details. This new approach should provide the scientific and other special interest communities with the information they need to protect this at risk species.


From the outside looking in, it is superficially easy to wonder whether it is really worth the thousands of pounds along with the hours and hours of time it must have taken to get the initiative off the ground. But of course it is. However specific special interest groups may be in their focus, it is exactly that specificity which allows diversity to survive in this ever-increasingly homogeneous world we live in. So ‘Bravo’ say I and if you are minded to donate to the cause then visit the website at http://www.sheprethwildlifepark.org

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    Director, Writer, bad Husband and Father. Reached that part of my span where midlife crisis is a thing of the past. Follow me on Twitter: @ColinBlumenau

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