We have ways of making you talk…

Back in 2011, Lush Places was landed with the unwelcome addition of a mass of bright white street lights.

They appeared all around the village square and marched like War of the World aliens along the road to the primary school, and all without any public consultation.

Subsequent protests to the county council fell on deaf ears.

Our erstwhile leaders insisted the lights were necessary to illuminate new traffic calming measures, on which the village had been consulted although the new lights were never once mentioned, nor did they appear on the plans shown to residents.

Understandably, there was uproar and outrage.

I blogged about it at the time. Here’s the link.

We were all set to join forces, stop the traffic and have a game of football under the new floodlights, just to prove the point that they were brighter than anything the village had ever seen. And the hideous poles were more in keeping with an edge-of-town industrial estate than a pretty rural village where King Charles II once holed up for the night back in 1651 when he was on the run.

Despite numerous meetings, letters and the support of our local MP, we were given the brush off.

We put in blackout curtains to help us sleep at night and a shield was installed on the lamp outside my neighbour’s house to try to stop the glare piercing through their window.

Disquiet built up. I made a formal complaint to the council about how the lights had just appeared without anyone knowing it was going to happen.

The complaint was partially upheld, particularly the bit about lack of consultation. At the time, the council pledged to learn from its mistake and make sure the public was consulted on lighting schemes in the future.

New lighting schemes are being installed across the county as part of a private finance initiative and, according to Dorset Council’s website, the contractor is responsible for the ‘customer interface’. Whether this means public consultation, I have no idea. My proficiency in local authority jargon has lapsed in recent years.

But, anyway, it would not be unreasonable to assume that local residents likely to be affected by new street lights would at least be notified before installation, either by the council or the contractor.

It seems not.

These have recently appeared up the road.

It’s difficult to photograph accurately, but the three lights really are that bright, shining into windows at night like static searchlights.

The good thing is that the new lanterns are energy saving, and they were fixed to existing poles, although in some places in Dorset, streetlights are turned off at night to reduce costs.

The official line is that the lanterns do ‘appear different as they are now a white light which is remarked upon by some’.

Remarked upon? Screamed about, more like.

But there is no mention of public consultation. However, there are ways of making people talk…

Raise a song of harvest home

Tractors are hauling high-sided trailers full of maize through the village.

It’s the day after the annual village Harvest Supper which this year was held, appropriately on National Farmers’ Day. Until last night, I had never heard of it.

It was a question in a quiz about Dorset and countryside miscellany. Our table did rather well, despite not knowing the height of the Cerne Giant (180 feet), Britain’s tallest and best-known chalk hill figure, or the number of one of the loveliest routes in the country – the coast road between Bridport and Beaminster. (It’s the B3157.)

We did know the name of three assorted cauliflowers (an educated guess), where Dorset’s Chesil Beach starts and ends (West Bay to Portland) and where Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is buried (Bournemouth).

But nobody in the whole room knew the date of National Farmers’ Day, even the handful of working and retired farmers who turned out for the feast in our village hall.

Our table guessed Lady Day (25 March), when, traditionally, farm tenancies are renewed and rents are due, but we also thought it could have been Michaelmas (29 September), as that quarter day falls in the harvest season.

It was neither.

It was 12 October. Apparently.

When I got home I looked it up, suspecting National Farmers’ Day might be an American invention.

According to Wikipedia, it’s marked on different dates around the world. The article states goes on to say that it’s held on 12 October in the USA. But there was no mention of the UK at all.

That’s probably because every day is farmers’ day – they’re always working.

Anyway, it’s too late for a steward’s inquiry and we did have a wonderful evening, with fabulous food, served with smiles and grace by Mrs Bancroft and her hardworking team.

I was asked by The Parson’s Daughter to sing with her the opening note to Come Ye Thankful People, Come because our tuneful vicar was away.

We won a bottle of wine on the raffle, were entertained by our village Gallery Quire, resplendent in Thomas Hardy-era costumes, and bought a bag of squashes and Scotch Bonnet chilli peppers, which look beautiful and quirky but will no doubt blow our socks off.

Hats off to all those involved in putting on the Harvest Supper. Long may this lovely tradition continue.

The Geate A-Vallen To

With Covid or whatever it was having only just flown the nest (it took nearly a whole month), we’re now back in Dorset to lovely weather (I jest) and a warm welcome (I do not jest).

This morning, I walked out along the lane with Ruby and Edgar to a gate which reminded me of a poem by the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes (1801-1886).

The Geate A-Vallen To was apparently Barnes’ last dialect poem and it’s one I love because it was a favourite of older family members who, although from rural south Somerset, could do a pretty good rendition of the Dorset dialect.

There’s a YouTube link at the end of this blog to a chap reading the poem. His voice is far too posh but you get the gist. But I recommend trying it out yourself first by reading it aloud:

The Geate A-Vallen To

In the zunsheen of our zummers
Wi’ the hay time now a-come,
How busy wer we out a-vield
Wi’ vew a-left at hwome,
When waggons rumbled out ov yard
Red wheeled, wi’ body blue,
And back behind ‘em loudly slamm’d
The geate a’vallen to.

Drough daysheen ov how many years
The geate ha’ now a-swung
Behind the veet o’ vull-grown men
And vootsteps of the young.
Drough years o’ days it swung to us
Behind each little shoe,
As we tripped lightly on avore
The geate a-vallen to.

In evenen time o’ starry night
How mother zot at hwome,
And kept her bleazen vier bright
Till father should ha’ come,
An’ how she quicken’d up and smiled
An’ stirred her vier anew,
To hear the trampen ho’ses’ steps
An’ geate a-vallen to.

There’s moon-sheen now in nights o’ fall
When leaves be brown vrom green,
When, to the slammen o’ the geate,
Our Jenny’s ears be keen,
When the wold dog do wag his tail,
An’ Jean could tell to who,
As he do come in drough the geate,
The geate a-vallen to.

An’ oft do come a saddened hour
When there must goo away
One well-beloved to our heart’s core,
Vor long, perhaps vor aye:
An’ oh! it is a touchen thing
The loven heart must rue,
To hear behind his last farewell
The geate a-vallen to.

Goodbye, Covid.

I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, attacked by the virus that is covid.

I can’t believe I’ve been laid so low by something that ought to be mild by now.

It’s been nearly a fortnight and I’m still not over it yet.

After running the gamut of symptoms like sinusitis, conjunctivis, aches and pains and non-stop coughing fits and having to sleep sitting up, now the lethargy has set in.

I wouldn’t wish what I’ve had on anyone. What I had in 202o was a walk in the park compared to this.

It’s pretty much ripped my mojo to shreds, I can tell you. It’s like my internal drive is a piece of pulled pork attacked with a hundred tiny forks.

It’s going to take some piecing together.

Still, things must be looking up because I’ve at long last started ticking off all the tasks on my to-do list, which has never been so satisfying.

Back to normal soon. Whatever that is.

Photo from Archives New Zealand poster.

Ironing made easy

It’s bizarre really.

I always used to hate ironing, really hate it, but since the advent of podcasts, I love it.

There is nothing finer, especially when it’s raining outside and you’ve caught up on all your freelance work and you’re not feeling particularly creative, than popping the pile of unironed clothes on one side and churning out neatly pressed garments on the other.

And all with the aid of the latest podcast.

There are several on which I’m hooked at the moment, with many more in the listened to and recommended pile.

The Rest is Politics is one of them, with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart but particularly the US version with broadcaster Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci, who was Trump’s director of communications for ten days in 2017 and is now a candid opponent of the former US president.

My brother put me on to that one. It’s laugh-out-loud brilliant, and hugely informative. The latest episode, in which the listener learns of Scaramucci’s surprising role behind the scenes for the Democrats at this week’s big debate, is revelatory.

From there, I went to The Rest is History, a programme hosted by two very amiable historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, whose banter is delightfully schoolboyish in its delivery.

I was glued to their series about The French Revolution, and also the one about the Piltdown Man. But the latest one about beards through history is astonishing.

For example, in 1698, Peter the Great of Russia brought in a beard tax, which men had to pay for the privilege of wearing a beard. To prove they’d paid, they had to wear a beard token featuring the lower part of a face with a beard.

Who knew?

I certainly didn’t.

Other fascinating podcasts to which I’ve listened in recent months include the BBC’s To Catch a Scorpion, a real-life search for a people smuggler who transports migrants from the European mainland into the UK; The Ratline, a story of love, denial and the Nazis, and Worse Than Murder, about the kidnapping and murder of Muriel McKay in 1969. The men who took her thought she was the wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Then there’s Marianna in Conspiracyland, about the rising tide of misinformation on social media, and The Gatekeepers, a truly terrifying account of ‘how social media allowed a new digital elite and their platforms to conquer the planet and control what we see’

I get through a lot of ironing.

Women Ironing, by Edgar Degas (1834-1917). I suspect the woman on the left is drunk on podcasts and the other one has earphones hidden under bonnet.