Dribble. Dribble. A straightforward flight home on Monday via Washington, where a storm delayed the departure, landing Tuesday morning. Dinner with Toyah on Tuesday evening, back from rehearsals for her new play "The Shagaround", which features Toyah & Cicely Tyson among others.
Deepest Dorset.
After dinner with the Little Wonder, on the way to Dorset, I tuned into London News Direct which had a short news feature on the car bomb from Monday evening. The story confirms what we were told in Toyah's local corner store coming back from dinner: apparently, a businessman has been parking his car in the (nearby) local street to avoid parking charges. After two months of looking at the car, a resident had enough and called the police, reporting a suspicious vehicle. The Bomb Squad arrived, evacuated local residents, sent in the robots and blew up the car. I guess parking would have been cheaper after all.
All along Toyah's street a car dealer regularly parks his fleet of expensive German cars on a rotating basis, which is a nuisance for residents who lose their parking space. Toyah reports that the German cars are nowhere to be seen today. Or rather, yesterday. Dribble.
In Deepest Dorset there is a wave of change underway in the village. This has always happened when I move somewhere, both as a single & married man. I arrive in a Dorset village, enjoying the "unchanging" nature of the West Country, and then it immediately changes. As always, I trust the process, even where "the outcome" is unclear. For example, Martin the ex-Wonder Barman has found a new job, as a teacher in nearby Beaminster. This is a very good move for him, although the village eaters & drinkers have lost what the local children have gained: a genuinely lovely, warm man. Martin has been over for a cup of tea, and reports that he has never been happier working since he left the record pressing plant in Leicester 20 years ago. He pressed "No Pussyfooting" and one of Toyah's albums before the plant burnt down (which Toyah remembers). However, Martin has been given notice to leave his lodgings of 15 years. It would be a major loss were Martin to leave.
West Dorset is not directly affected by foot & mouth, although President Blair was in the West Country yesterday catching flak in Devon from those whose livelihoods are threatened by the epidemic. Like, where a country pub's access has been barred, even where there is no local outbreak. There is the widespread perception in the West Country, and probably "the countryside" generally, that political interests in London have little sympathy with or connection to rural issues.
Billy Bragg lives nearby, in Burton Bradstock, and while sympathetic to "the countryside" is fiercely anti-foxhunting, I learnt from a recent "Any Questions". The political attack on foxhunting, and whatever its merits and failings - this is such an emotive issue it is difficult to get impartial information to form a judgement - this is perceived from a hunting viewpoint as an attack on class interests, and symbolising much more than the issue itself. (I have seen more foxes in cities than I have in the countryside).
What is not in doubt, is that the farming industry is in crisis. I would add "rural living" to this as well, to the degree that I understand living in the country. Like, it is current (but undeclared) Post Office policy to close village post offices: village POs lose money. For a village, this means that the existence of their village store (which depends financially on the small but reliable income as a PO) is prejudiced. Once the village store closes, as nearly all the stores in our surrounding villages have done, then the village becomes a residential zone, but not quite properly a living village. Sometimes, the pub closes too. This is about the end for village life. The sister village to this, on the other side of the Big House and its deer park, is an example. Now, purely residential with echoes of what it might have been.
When asked why landscaping was so important, Jellicoe replied that it was because humankind would spread over all of the earth's surface.
The Inn opposite has had its cellar worked on while I was away. This is where once Judge Jeffries sentenced local men to death for their part in the Monmouth Rebellion. They were hung not far up the road. Judge Jeffries has an ongoing and even worse reputation than the VHRPPAL. The Judge had a bad press too, with not many good reviews of his work to balance out. Jeffries suffered terribly from kidney stones, probably suffering more from this than reading the reviews. But at least he died before his biography came out.
