Here yesterday, gone today

Well, it makes a change from "Here today, gone tomorrow". But we need to go back to the day before yesterday for the start of the story. That was the day I read my emails after getting back from a week away. (France, and yes, thank you - very nice.) Along with 2000+ spam messages were 82 that warranted at least checking out. Several of these were about an influx of travellers who had arrived on Withdean Park, where I walk the dog every morning, late on Thursday evening last week. That was on Sunday morning. After lunch, I went to the kennels to fetch Fern and on the way home we stopped at Happy Valley, another Brighton park which just happens to be on the route home, to give her a run. I noticed several travellers' caravans parked on the far side of the park and, while I was getting out of the car, one of their vehicles was driven out of the park. It was an 18-month old BMW no less! Anyway, back to Withdean.

Yesterday, I went as usual to the park, making sure Fern stayed well away from the travellers and their mess. When I fired up the computet later, one of the emails I read contained an attachment. This had been sent to a local councillor by a member of Brighton & Hove Council Traveller Liaison Team and he, the councillor, had sent it on. Part of the attachment read:

The current Traveller situation is as follows:

Happy Valley

A group of English Gypsies, with 5 trailers, vacated land at East Brighton Park, and moved onto land at Happy Valley in the evening of Thursday 26 May. A joint visit, with the police, was made on Friday 27 May, and health and welfare checks were carried out. The presence of this encampment is not having a significant impact on the settled community, and therefore, no immediate action is required today.

Withdean Park

A group of Irish Travellers and English Gypsies, with 14 trailers, vacated land at East Brighton Park, and moved onto land at Withdean Park in the evening of Thursday 26 May. A joint visit, with the police, was made on Friday 27 May, and health and welfare checks were carried out. The presence of this encampment is not having a significant impact on the settled community, and therefore, no immediate action is required today.

The councillor's response to the autocratic bureaucrat was:

This encampment IS having a major impact on the settled community and I have had numerous complaints regarding this issue. On the opposite side of the A23 there are a number of blocks of flats occupied by hundreds of residents, all of whom live in my ward (Withdean) that directly overlook this encampment. Withdean Park is actually in Patcham Ward and I had spoken to Geoffrey Theobald who has also had numerous residents contacting him complaining about this group of travellers.

This group must be removed from this site immediately as this is a highly sensitive area and is extremely well used by large numbers of residents from across the city, especially at weekends such as this bank holiday.

Well, something happened as the travellers\gypsies were gone this morning. I wish I could say they have gone without trace but, of course, they have left behind the remnants of fires on the grass with litter and rubbish blowing everywhere. They have probably fouled the woods as well. But this morning, also, there was a council van on site to start the clear-up.

I have nothing against people wanting to live a life of vagrancy, but I do wish they would respect other peoples' rights, refrain from causing damage and not expect local councils to spend money on them when they pay neither rates nor taxes.

An English tradition

I really couldn't say how long it has been established but it is now well and truly a part of English life. It's not something that anybody here in England can control; indeed, there is nobody anywhere who can exert much influence over this tradition. The time might come, many years from now, when that situation is altered but it certainly won't be in my lifetime and I doubt very much that it will come in the lifetime of my children or even my grandchildren.

Today, the last Monday in May, is a bank holiday in England and, true to tradition, the weather is grey and dull and there is a damp feeling in the air. Traditional bank holiday weather. Having said that, tradition went out of the window for the Easter bank holidays when the weather was glorious.

It doesn't seem so very long ago that the then Government changed our May bank holiday from Whit Monday to the last Monday in May. It must have been at the same time that they introduced an extra bank holiday on the first Monday in May. We had a Labour government at the time and they wanted to make May Day a bank holiday but rather than have a holiday occurring on a different day of the week each year, they decided to fix on the first Monday of the month. That means that when Easter is late, as it was this year, we have four bank holidays in very quick succession. This year, though, we have had five as the day of the royal wedding was declared an extra holiday.

We don't get another one until August. That one - August Bank Holiday - used to be on the first Monday in the month but that was moved (at about the same time as Whit Monday was cancelled and the Late Spring Bank Holiday introduced) to the last Monday. Then that will be it until Christmas.

There has for some time been talk of the possibility of introducing another holiday between August and Christmas but nothing seems to be coming of the idea. We will have an extra holiday next year to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The suggestion is that the Government will soon announce that the Late Spring Bank Holiday in 2012 is to be moved to the first Monday in June and the Tuesday will be declared the Jubilee holiday. I wonder if there will be an alternative plan in case something happens?

The latest news

Every morning I pick the newspaper up from the door mat (or pull it from the letter box if the paperboy has, as he usually does, failed to push it all the way through) and immediately scan the front page, especially the lead headline. Every evening, shortly before going to bed, I religiously watch the late night news on television (unless, of course, I'm doing something else). Why? What can be so important that I need to know about it at that instant? Why can I not just eat my breakfast and then look at the newspaper, or wait until the morning to find out what happened the day before?

I have just returned from a week at our house in France. No television, no radio, no newspapers, no email or internet. And you know what? I didn't miss any of them one little bit. But when we stopped at a motorway service station I had to read the headlines and as soon as we reached the Channel Tunnel terminal, I walked into the bookshop and read the (English) newspaper headlines as well - just to make sure. Then I watched the television news as usual.

So did I miss anything of immediate importance by being cut off from the news for seven (eight) days? No, of course not. It mattered not a jot that the news of the arrest of a Serbian war criminal - sorry, alleged war criminal - was two or three days old before I heard it. I had gathered that the Apocalypse failed to arrive as predicted. And I don't suppose there was anything else happened that will affect me unduly. But I will still watch the late evening news before I go to bed tonight.

Scenic Saturday - County Durham

Number 43 in the series.



This is the only English county with the word "County" in it's title. The official county tourist board says, "With its iconic Cathedral and Castle World Heritage Site - Durham City is the jewel in the crown of an extraordinary county. The Durham Dales and Vale of Durham are diverse landscapes, dotted with market towns and picturesque villages. The Durham Dales and North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty are home to moorland and forest, whilst the stunning Durham Coast begs to be explored."

In the city of Durham, the cathedral stands on a bluff high above the River Wear.

Scenic Saturday - Cleveland

Number 42 in the series.



Cleveland - part North Yorkshire, part County Durham - is largely urban, consisting in the main of the old steel towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Hartlepool and Redcar, although Redcar is also a seaside resort. I have found little scenic value except for the small town of Saltburn-by-the-Sea, which is the subject of this week's picture.

My Fab Five

I was asked a difficult question the other day. What, my interlocutor wanted to know, was my favourite book of all time? Did I describe the question as difficult? Belay that: it is actually impossible to answer. Other people - and you, dear reader, may well be among that happy band - might have no problem coming up with an answer. I am not so fortunate. For a start, there is no way I can remember all the books I have read or that have been read to me. Yes, I did write "read to me". Well, the question did say "all time" so I reckon it must cover the books that were read to me when I was too young to read them for myself.

The one book I do remember having read to me was Robin Hood. It was fully illustrated with colour pictures on just about every page but what I remember most was my father having great difficulty deciding whether the word "bow" was pronounced to rhyme with "how" or "hoe". Later, I thoroughly enjoyed the Secret Seven and Famous Five books by Enid Blyton as well as all the Swallows and Amazons titles. All ripping stuff, but not really among my all-time favourites.

For a book to be selected as my favourite of all time it would have to be one that I can and have read time and again, enjoying each reading as much as or more than those that went before. There are many, many books that pass that test simply on account of my age. As I get ever closer to my allotted three score and ten (less than a year to go now) I find that I can pick up a book and start reading only to discover on page 7 (or 23 or in chapter 3) that I have read it before. Not that I necessarily recall all the details of the plot, far less who "dun it". But that doesn't automatically mean the book in question can be regarded as a contender for the title "All-Time Favourite". For a book to be in that position it would have to be one I know I have read before, one whose plot I remember and in which the denouement comes as no surprise. That still leaves me with a fair few from which to choose.

On further consideration, I have decided I just cannot pick out any one book as my all-time favourite but I can make a short-list of five titles. I will also restrict my selection to no more than one title by any author. There are several titles I considered but which failed, in some cases very narrowly, to make the cut. These include Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and - much to my surprise as I don't usually enjoy fantasy - Lord of the Rings (I know - that's three books but I couldn't separate the three titles). So what is on my short-list? I am slightly surprised that three of the books fit into the genre "war" although, in fact, two of them are concerned not so much with the action but with the reaction of men caught up in war; with their courage and cowardice, their loves and hates, and with what sustains them in almost impossibly difficult situations.

And, at last, my fab five (in no particular order) - with brief reviews by other readers.

The Cruel Sea (Nicholas Monsarrat): "The story of the crew of a newly commissioned corvette, acting as an escort to merchant convoys during World War II. The crew is initially mostly inexperienced, from non-naval backgrounds. The plot focuses on their differing reactions to some of the horrifying experiences they have as the German U-boats attack their convoys with increasing success. Some will survive the war, and some won't - but all of them will be changed by their experiences."

Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks): The book's hero, a 20-year-old Englishman named Stephen Wraysford, finds his true love on a trip to Amiens in 1910. Unfortunately, she's already married, the wife of a wealthy textile baron. Wrayford convinces her to leave a life of passionless comfort to be at his side, but things do not turn out according to plan. Wraysford is haunted by this doomed affair and carries it with him into the trenches of the war. Birdsong derives most of its power from its descriptions of mud and blood, and Wraysford's attempt to retain a scrap of humanity while surrounded by it.

HMS Ulysses (Alastair MacLean): "When I first came across HMS Ulysses, I read it from cover to cover without putting it down - three times in a row. The story about the captain and crew of the HMS Ulysses, the story about men driven to the limit and far beyond by terror, cold and hunger, who somehow kept going because of their love and devotion to one extraordinary man, was one of the saddest, most capturing and most compelling stories I've ever read. I could almost feel the crew's desperation, feel the piercing cold, hear - and be tormented by - the captain's ripping cough. Not many books have the power to capture me that way. I know HMS Ulysses almost by heart by now - but whenever I read it, I still do it from cover to cover, without putting it down. Once I begin, I just can't let it go until it's all over."

In Pale Battalions (Robert Goddard): "The story is about finding and understanding your identity. A young lady raised indifferently by her grandparents learns the truth about her parentage in pieces throughout her life. She is lucky enough to find love with a wonderful man and have a fulfilling marriage enjoying motherhood but her past remains a mystery for most of her life. The title refers to a war and indeed World War I and it's terrible toll plays an important part of the story, [but] I believe that the root of the book is identity. The story is told through the perspectives of a few different people in the life of the main character. The truth only becomes clear at the very last pages. You do need to have patience. I found it heartbreakingly true and have read it 4 times. The writing is compared to Daphne DuMaurier but I don't think that is necessarily true. What is apparent is the way that layers of the story are similar to an onion. The more layers that are peeled away, the more story you find."

Under the Greenwood Tree (Thomas Hardy): "A poignant little novel. It is a tale of a traditional country community, it's choir, which is under threat, and a romance. The novel highlights the beginnings of change for such communities, through the travails of the "Melstock Quire", which is being threatened by the introduction of a new organ. Meanwhile Dick Dewey pursues schoolmistress Fancy Day - although he is not her only admirer. There is a gentleness and warmth to the characters we meet in Melstock, their traditions and concerns become ours, it is an absolute joy, a real timeless classic."

And there, in the words of others, you have them.

Vanity

Am I a vain person? I, like most other people, like to think not. But an email I received yesterday from our Lions District Governor Elect gave me pause and made me wonder.

I have been District Webmaster since the beginning of July last year and have been asked to continue in post for another 12 months. While I don't consider myself in any way expert in the production of web sites (the software I use was bought 11 years ago and has never been updated) I can produce something simple. The District site is not one of my best, especially when compared with the Brighton Lions site or my own Les Lavandes, but I agreed to his request although I would be very happy for somebody else to take the job on. Having put the background in place, to that email.

"Could you please also email a .jpeg passport-style head and shoulders photo of yourself asap to Lion X", it read. A photo? Of me?? I'm not sure that I have one that I would be happy for others to see. I generally stand behind the camera rather than in front of it and I'm certainly not a person who starts preening himself whenever a camera lens appears. Perhaps it's some kind of reverse vanity because I am only too well aware that I'm not the world's most photogenic man. In any case, he asked for "passport style" and I certainly don't have one like that.

Later.

I've found a group picture and cropped it to just me. This will have to do.


Actually, that's not too bad at all considering.