Week 44a.08

                             Tendring Topics – on Line

 

Helping the Homeless

 

            Christmas is less than eight weeks away and already the Christmas catalogues, and Christmas appeals from all sorts of worthy charities, are dropping on my doormat almost daily.  Clacton is to have its decorative street lights.  There are special offers in all the supermarkets.  Santa Claus is on his way and it's tempting to say, 'God's in his Heaven and all's right with the world!

 

But, of course it isn't! Britain, and so it seems the rest of the world, is in the midst of a financial crisis.  What is going to happen during the next few months is anybody's guess but one thing is certain.  There will be many more homeless people and homeless families as the year comes to an end than there were at the end of 2007.  This makes Christmas, which has at its very heart the story of a temporarily homeless mother-to-be and her husband, particularly poignant this year. For the new homeless 'the Festive Season' will be far from Merry!

 

Both I, and my two sons, have been involved in public housing administration and have seen the demoralising misery that homelessness can bring; the loss of hope, the break-up of families, sometimes vain recourse to the bottle or to drugs to ease the pain. 

 

Heather and I always supported to the best of our ability Quaker Homeless Action, a Quaker Charity that doesn't spend time, energy and money on persuading local authorities and housing associations to provide more affordable homes.  It goes to the heart of the matter, working with homeless people, helping them into new homes where possible and striving to make their lives less miserable while they are without a home.  It provides a 'Quaker Open Christmas' in London for those actually living 'on the street'.  As well as giving them a few days' warmth, comfort and Christmas fare, it points them toward the public and voluntary services that may provide a more permanent solution to their problems.  Throughout the year it helps to fund voluntary agencies nationwide that offer similar help and support to local homeless people.

 

When Heather died in 2006 I asked that there should be only family flowers at her funeral but said that she would have been pleased if friends and relatives made donations to Quaker Homeless Action in her memory.  There was a magnificently generous response and over £800 was raised by that means.

 

This year I have made another quite different effort to help QHA.  Over the years Heather and I wrote together a number of 'Nativity Monologues' by people mentioned in the Gospels as having been involved in Christ's nativity and infancy, together with a number of imaginary  'witnesses' whom we thought might well have been there. We wrote them primarily for use at our annual Quaker Meetings for Carols but they have been used in at least two other Clacton Churches and at  ecumenical events.  Three of them were published in Christmas issues of 'The Friend' a Quaker Weekly Journal.

 

This year I have gathered these monologues together and had them printed and published as 'In the Beginning……' (Ten witnesses recall the Nativity')  I am selling these at £5 each for Quaker Homeless Action.  I have already raised over £200 by this means but would like to make the sum much, much more.

 

I am, of course, prejudiced but I think that the many people who already have a copy have found it to be an entertaining read.  Have you ever wondered how Jesus' grandparents must have felt when they discovered that their teenage daughter was pregnant, and that the father wasn't her highly respectable boy-friend? How a professional guide and bodyguard of the Magi would have regarded his 'wise' clients when they were unwise enough to tell Herod that they had come along to pay homage to a new king in his little kingdom; and how a worldly-wise but warm hearted Innkeeper's wife might have found a way of helping a couple in a desperate plight even though there was 'no room at the inn'?  In writing the monologues Heather and I used modern language to bring to life the character of each 'witness'.  We assumed that, whatever else may have changed, human nature is much the same now as it was 2,000 years ago.

 

You already possess a copy?  'In the Beginning……', fits comfortably into a C5 envelope and would make an original and welcome alternative to the Pictorial Calendar that you were thinking of sending that distant friend or relative this Christmas. They'll probably already have one or two of those!  Think about it.

 

If you'd like a copy send a crossed cheque for £5 made out to Quaker Homeless Action to me, Ernest Hall at 88 Dudley Road, Clacton-on-Sea, CO15 3DJ and you will receive, post free, a copy of 'In the Beginning….' if not 'by return of post' at least within two or three days.

 

I have written the above after a great deal of hesitation because I do value the good will of all who read this blog.  I know very well that many readers have limited means and have other equally deserving causes to which they must and should contribute.  If you're one of those please ignore this appeal.  It wasn't intended for you.

 

………………………………………

 

 Preaching to the Converted

 

            During the past few weeks there have been reports of Clacton householders summoning the Police on seeing total strangers inspecting the contents of the green boxes that they put out for the collection of recyclable refuse. The 'snoopers' were suspected of being identity thieves searching for bank statements and so on among discarded papers.  They were, in fact, carrying out a survey on behalf of the County Council in preparation for a forthcoming publicity and advice campaign.

 

            This campaign was launched on Wednesday of this week (29^th October).  Essex County Councillor Tracey Chapman, told reporters that the campaign will give residents information and encouragement to start recycling or to recycle even more. 'A team of recycling promoters will speak to residents, answer questions, address concerns and give straightforward advice and support on how to recycle more through their kerbside recycling collection'.   The event began at Coppins Hall in Maldon Way from 9.00 a.m. till 12 noon and moved on to the Welcome Centre at Pier Avenue Baptist Church from 1.00 p.m. till 4.00 p.m.

 

            I hope that the campaign is proving successful. I think it likely though that they will have been preaching mainly to the converted.  Those who believe (or prefer to believe!) that recycling is a waste of time will have stayed well away.

 

 The whole effort could surely have been organised and planned more effectively from the beginning.  To discover what people are putting into their green salvage boxes (said to have been the purpose of the 'council snoopers') it would have been better to send observers round with the recyclables collecting vehicles, to take a quick look at what is tipped out of half a dozen or so boxes in each street.  This would have given a better cross-section of the public's habits without alarming and antagonising those householders who are already taking recycling seriously.

 

            At the same time, a note could have been taken of the addresses at which no green box or plastic bag containing recyclables was to be seen but where there were quite possibly two, three or four well-filled black plastic bags of refuse.

 

            It is on the residents of those premises that the campaign's interviewers should have concentrated all the powers of persuasion that they were able to muster.   If this proved ineffective then, in fairness to those of us who are responsible citizens, the Council should consider seriously what sanctions may be available to persuade the 'non-co-operators' to change their minds.

 

………………………………………

 

The Voice of the People?

 

            Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell is surely treading on somewhat dangerous ground when he blames Tendring Council for preferring the advice of some 'little official' from the Health Protection Agency to that of the 'voice of the people' when they decided to close down that famous (or should it be infamous?) water feature in Clacton's town centre.

 

            I have said before in this column that Health and Safety is taken to absurd lengths these days, not least over the question of the purity of the water circulating in the water feature.  For goodness sake; the thing is there to be looked at, not to be a source of drinking water, or even for washing up the dishes.  It would seem to be almost as reasonable to worry about the purity of water standing in pools on the highway after a heavy rain!

 

            However, the Health Protection Agency is a government-appointed body and I think that the council would ignore its recommendations at their peril.  Would Mr Carswell be willing, or able, to help if the Council ignored the Agency's advice and an outbreak of Legionnaires Disease (I take it that that is what they are worried about) resulted.  It's very unlikely but not absolutely impossible.

 

            Only once has one of my relatively rare visits to that end of Pier Avenue coincided with one of the even rarer occasions on which the water feature has been in operation. Even then the water jets wavered and died while I was still trying to get my camera out of my pocket to record this rare event!

 

            When the Victorians installed a water feature they incorporated it into a piece of statuary, usually beautiful, sometimes amusing and a little risqué, like that of the rude little boy in Brussels. Our 21^st Century idea of a wonderful water feature is something that looks for all the world like a burst and furiously leaking water main!  Clacton's water feature can't even manage that!

………………………………………

 

The Voice of the People…….again?

 

            Just four months ago Tendring Council did, as Mr Carswell suggests, heed the voice of the people (some of the people anyway) rather than their own professional experts, and will, I think, live to regret it.  Bowing to vociferous and well-organised local opposition, their Planning Committee voted unanimously against the recommendation of their Planning Officer, to reject an application for a small wind farm of just five turbines on Earls Hall Farm between Clacton and St. Osyth. 

 

'Too close to homes', was the slogan of the protestors .  The turbines would, in their words, be 'less than a mile' from occupied houses.  That could, of course, have been rephrased as 'almost a mile', which seems much further!

 

I don't believe that there would be either noise or visual nuisance from those turbines.  They are much less ugly and intrusive than, for instance, electricity pylons or many modern buildings and would, I believe, blend into the landscape within weeks. Our region, and our nation, needs all the wind power that it can get.

 

At the time I said in this blog that I thought that the developers would appeal, and would probably win. They have decided to do so. I still think that they will win and that the Council, which ultimately means us, will have to pay the costs.

 

Never let it be said though that I do nothing but criticise Tendring Council.  I think that they should be congratulated on their handling of their finances.  It isn't always realized that every local authority has to have millions of pounds available to meet current and oncoming commitments and that government guidelines require this money to be safely and profitably invested until required. Tendring Council, which has nearly £30 million, by far the greater part of which is already committed, has been focusing much more closely on its treasury activity for the past year because of the 'unprecedented and increasing volatility of the financial markets'.  As a result of this, and on the advice of their experts, they withdrew a substantial sum from an Icelandic Bank earlier this year.

 

Our MP, Mr Carswell remarked a few week ago that he didn't think Tendring Council 'was capable of running a bath'!  What a pity that other Essex local authorities, with political compositions more to Mr Carswell's liking, weren't astute enough to follow Tendring Council's example.

………………………………

 

 

Week 44.08

                          Tendring Topics…….on Line

 

A Voluntary Curfew?

 

            Could a voluntary curfew for teenagers make a contribution towards eliminating antisocial behaviour?   It doesn't really sound very likely but Brightlingsea's Neighbourhood Specialist Police Officer, PC Danny Harris, thinks that it will and he is certainly in a better position to know than most of us.

 

            He is writing to all parents, and to every carer and guardian in the town and in the neighbouring rural parishes of Alresford and Elmstead Market requesting help in 'assisting Essex Police address various antisocial problems which typically involve young people.  Noise, disturbance, under-age drinking and petty criminal damage can be particularly distressing for elderly members of our community'.

 

            The police suggest that ten to twelve year olds should be off the streets by 7.30 p.m. on weekdays and half an hour later at weekends.  For twelve to fourteen year  olds the curfew hour should be at 8 p.m. on weekdays and 9.30 p.m. at weekends, and for fourteen to sixteen year olds 9.00 p.m. on weekdays and 10.30 p.m. on weekends.

 

            There were it seems 161 incidents if antisocial behaviour in Brightlingsea between 1st April and 30^th September this year.   Town Mayor Graham Steady, who is backing the idea, is reported as saying that Brightlingsea is not as bad as other areas. 'What the Police do say is that there are problems in certain areas at certain times.  It is a case of asking parents "Do you know where your kid is?"  People blame kids but are the parents more to blame?' 

 

            The suggested curfew times seem eminently reasonable to me, generous in fact.  I'd have certainly been worried if either of my sons had, at the age of fifteen, made a practice of staying out until 9.00 p.m. on weekdays and 10.30 p.m. at weekends.  But that, I realize, was forty years ago!

 

            Will it work?  Experience elsewhere suggests that it may.  A similar pilot scheme that ran for six weeks in Redruth, Cornwall during the summer is said to have reduced antisocial behaviour by 60 percent and crime overall by 50 percent.

 

            I have a feeling that it will work best with kids who really only go out with their mates in the evening because it is expected of them. They get into trouble either because they get bored with just 'hanging around', or because they feel they must demonstrate their machismo by carrying out some reckless or unlawful act.  Such young people may well have the kind of caring and responsible parents whose co-operation is essential to the scheme's success.

 

            The delinquent minority, whose only leisure interest is that of making trouble for other people, will probably regard the voluntary curfew as a challenge.  They'll make a point of staying out every night beyond the time of their curfew.  The sad thing is that they are the very ones whose parents don't care, who may in fact even encourage them in their defiance.  Let us hope that they are a very small minority!

……………………………………

 

Incentives to Loyalty

 

Among the side effects of the application of 'the values of the market place' to public services is a scarcity of staff experienced in the particular circumstances with which that service is dealing plus, I think, a loss of any sense of loyalty between employers and employed.

 

In local government, for instance, it was not unusual before World War II for a school leaver to enter the service as a junior at the age of sixteen and carry on in the same department of the same council until he retired.  During the course of that half century he might well acquire qualifications in the particular field in which he was working and be promoted several times, possibly even retiring as the head of the same department that he had joined as an office boy.  I have said 'he' because most girls who then entered the local government service hoped that their ultimate career would be home-making with a husband and a family.

 

In those days no-one became rich serving the public in a Town Hall. However the service offered safe and, at least in some cases, satisfying jobs that paid an adequate salary with a pension at the end. It also offered, except for those who seriously misbehaved themselves, complete job security. Local government officers moved from one authority to another only for promotion and rarely more than two or three times during the course of their professional lives. 

 

I have been an exception in having worked for six local authorities and having been a junior clerk, public health inspector, housing manager and public relations officer.  However even I managed to clock up twenty-five years service with Tendring District Council and two of its predecessors before taking early retirement to pursue yet another career as a freelance writer!

 

Nowadays, we are told, no-one can expect a 'job for life'. Many local government officers are employed on relatively short-term contracts.  Others know that they could at any time face redundancy as a result of political upheavals, local, regional or national re-organisation, or 'modernisation and down-sizing'.

 

As a result of this, local councils continually get 'fresh blood'; eager, forward looking young men and women who bring new ideas and energy into dusty municipal corridors as they elbow their way 'to the top'.  They rarely stay more than a year or two before dashing on to pursue their ambitions elsewhere.

 

What councils no longer get is the wisdom that comes with experience, with knowing the strengths and weaknesses of colleagues and subordinates, and gives the ability to say.  'We tried that idea out twenty-five years ago, and it didn't work.  Perhaps if we amend it in this, that or the other way it will work this time'.  Nor do they get the loyalty that comes with a feeling of security in the trust and goodwill of one's employers.

 

I was pleased to see that Tendring Council is recognising those qualities by offering its staff loyalty and long-service awards.  In particular a long-service award of £18.50 per year of service, will be given to all who have completed at least twenty years service at the time of their retirement.

 

When I retired in 1980 after 25 years with the Tendring District and its predecessors I was presented with an expensive pair of binoculars, and Heather with a splendid bouquet of flowers, by the Council, and a sturdy tripod for my camera plus life membership of NALGO (now UNISON) by my colleagues.

 

I was very grateful and felt that I had been treated generously.  However, even allowing for inflation since 1980, I don't think that that was quite the equivalent of 25 x £18.50 = £462.50.

…………………………………….

 

'…gathering winter fu-u-el!'

 

            In northern Europe keeping warm during the winter months has been a problem for the old and elderly since long before good King Wenceslas spotted that peasant on a Boxing Day evening gathering a few fallen boughs to try to get the chill out of his tumbledown hovel. Then, you'll recall, 'the frost was cruel', and the 'snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even'.

 

            There's no good King Wenceslas to help us out today but we oldies have got Age Concern batting for us.  George Gibbs of Age Concern, Clacton recently told a public meeting that his organisation is concerned at the fact that more and more elderly people are struggling to pay for gas and electricity.  He told his audience that if anyone knew of a no-longer-young friend, neighbour or relative worried about their fuel bills to please urge them to contact Age Concern on 01255 475913.  'We can't'. he said, 'pay their bills for them but we can have a word with energy companies on their behalf'.

 

            Well, I am nearer ninety than eighty so I'm definitely one of the 'Aged' that George Gibbs and his organisation are concerned about!   What's more, today (20^th October) I received an energy bill that at first glance, and at second glance too, nearly knocked me for six!

 

            I have my gas and electricity on an Age Concern account from e-on and pay monthly by direct debit.  Until six months or so ago my monthly payment was £100 per month.  Then I was told that my account was in the red and that they were increasing my monthly payments to £110 a month.  Fair enough!  I paid up and made a real effort to economise.

 

            Today (20^th October) I received another communication from e-on giving me the welcome news that I now had a credit balance of £45.75 and the much less welcome information that they intended to change my monthly Direct Debit payments to £170 per month from 1^st November!  Luckily no-one approached me with a proverbial feather!

 

            Should I phone Age Concern and ask for help and advice?  I thought that I'd see what I could achieve on my own first.   I phoned the supplier's help-line printed on their communication but didn't really expect much help.  Past experience suggested that, after a long wait, a mechanical voice would give me anything up to ten choices of problem, not one of which would fit my particular concern.

           

            I'm very glad to be able to say that it didn't turn out like that at all.  After a very brief wait a friendly (and clearly audible to my ancient ears!) voice answered me and asked how I could be helped.  I said my piece while he listened patiently

 

Most householders expect to have a credit balance at the end of the summer, he said. It would probably quickly be absorbed as the central heating was turned up.  Increasing fuel prices had resulted in increased direct debit payments but he agreed that mine seemed excessive. 'Do you mind holding on for a few minutes while I investigate?'   A couple of minutes later he was back.

 

            Yes, he said, there had been an error, for which he apologised.  My monthly payments would be going up to an unwelcome but I hope, manageable £125, not to the astronomical £170 originally demanded!  I would receive written confirmation in a day or two. Before ringing off he gave me his name and suggested that I should ask for him if I had occasion to phone again.  

 

            It was I think, quite the most helpful 'helpline' that I had ever contacted.  The outcome, though not all that I had hoped for, was better than I had expected.

 

            So, if you too are elderly, or even if you're not, and your fuel bill seems outrageous, it really is worthwhile contacting your supplier.  If you are elderly and don't think you could manage to do that, contact Age Concern.  They'll be happy to help and/or advise.  If, like me, you live in the Clacton area, the number to ring is 01255 475913.  Otherwise, you'll find it in your local phone book.

……………………………

 

The NHS – the Final Chapter (I hope!)

 

            I went to Clacton Hospital's Minor Injuries Department as advised, on 21^st October and duly had the stitches removed from my ear.  All went smoothly though it threatened not to at one stage!

 

            The Department, in shiny new premises opposite Cl;acton Hospital's Outpatients' Department, opened at 9.00 a.m. and I was there on the dot. 'Didn't your medical practice inform you that we do renewal of dressings, including removal of stitches, between 2.00 p.m. and 4.00 p.m.?' asked the receptionist, pointing to a notice to that effect.  They hadn't.  I sighed  'OK', I said, 'I'll come back at 2.00 p.m.'

 

            Luckily for me the nurse, who was standing by, heard our conversation and my sad sigh.  'Never mind', she said, 'I'm not busy for the moment.  Come on through and I deal with it now'.   And so she did, quickly, efficiently and almost painlessly, commenting as she did so on the speed with which my wound had healed.

 

            All's well that ends well.   I can't help feeling though that there ought to be better communication between the NHS' hospital services and those of its medical practices.  I really should have been told not to turn up before 2.00 p.m.

……………………………

 

Week 42.08

                           Tendring Topics……on Line

 

Prayers before Debate?

 

            Members of the House of Commons begin their proceedings with prayer.   Tendring District Councillors begin their Council Meetings with prayer.  How extraordinary that there should have been such an acrimonious debate over whether or not Frinton and Walton Town Council Meetings should begin with prayer.

 

            'Keep God out of it!' thundered a headline in the Frinton and Walton Gazette. It was quoting Town Councillor Evans who, determined not to have prayers before debate, had described religion as 'mumbo jumbo claptrap'.  In defence of religion, Olive Dent said in the columns of the Gazette a week later that the world would be a better place if the ten commandments were adhered to.   This evoked a response from Norman Jacobs of Clacton in which he quoted no less than six separate verses in the Old Testament that advocate or condone courses of action that would clearly not make the world a better place.

 

            It was, I presume, Christian prayer that was proposed as an introduction to Frinton and Walton's Council meetings, and the Christian religion that was being attacked and defended in the correspondence columns of the Gazette.  Why ever then was it that both defenders and attackers went back to the Old Testament for their arguments, rather than the New? The latter fulfils the promises of the Old and proclaims a Gospel of love, forgiveness and reconciliation rather than one of prohibited activities and dire punishments.

 

 Jesus Christ said that the first and greatest commandment was that we should love God with all our heart and mind and strength and the second was very similar, that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves. The first of these surely includes a demand that we cherish the works of God in the natural world that we see all around us; and the second that we care for the needs of our fellow men and women.   Those, I think, are precisely the ultimate aims of every public authority and it seems absolutely right to pray, at the beginning of their meetings, that members should be guided to pursue those aims honestly and wholeheartedly.

 

Jesus also said that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament 'The Law and the Prophets' could be summed up as 'Treat other people in exactly the same way that you yourself would wish to be treated'.   I have no doubt that the converse is at least equally true 'Do not treat other people as you would hate other people to treat you'.  I think it unlikely that either Town Councillor Evans or Norman Jacobs would really like their deeply held beliefs to be publicly derided as 'mumbo jumbo claptrap'.

 

Oh yes – I believe that Frinton and Walton Town Council did decide that their meetings should begin with prayer.  I'm glad about that.

…………………………

 

 

 

 

                    …………….where Angels fear to tread

 

            Angels, I am inclined to think, tread with extreme care when discussing the current world financial crisis!  So many assessments have been found to be flawed; so many confident prophecies confounded by events.  Less than a year ago, with the spiralling rise in house prices beginning to decline, those-who-ought-to-know assured us that though house price inflation might well decrease to a more realistic level, there was no possibility of prices actually falling, no risk of home buyers falling into negative equity as in the '90s.

           

            Who would have forecast that the giant HBOS would get into financial difficulties?  Certainly not me!  I had inherited some HBOS shares and my first  (and last!) venture into the stock market had been to accept the 'special offer' to existing shareholders of a limited number of additional shares at what was then a low price.

 

A cynical relative of mine (oh dear! Is it possible that cynicism can be inherited?) suggests that the principal skill required by 'financial experts' is the ability to multiply by twelve.  They look at trends during the current month and predict that they'll develop in much the same way for the coming year.  Quite often they do, and they rarely vary sufficiently widely from the prediction to attract much notice.  This year they most certainly have though and, as a result, thousands are likely to find themselves jobless and homeless.

 

I am not a financial expert but, like my parents, I have a profound dislike of debt.   'If you want something badly – save up for it', they used to tell me.  I well remember the long discussion they had before they hesitantly bought a new radio on HP.  Whenever Heather and I owed money, on our mortgage or to buy a car for work for instance, we paid it off at the very earliest opportunity. We sold Heather's engagement ring to raise the deposit we needed for the bungalow in which I am living now.  Only my son could tell you whether or not he would have still gone to Cambridge had it involved him in the debt with which students are burdened today.  We certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to go.

 

            For years I have been convinced that there was something wrong with the 'buy now, pay later' culture of 100 percent (or even 125 percent) mortgages, multiple credit cards and crushing student debt.  I have said so again and again in Tendring Topics on line and in print.  It would, I thought, 'end in tears'.  And so it has.

 

            Similarly I have never believed that vital public services are best provided by private enterprise, by competing entrepreneurs whose duty to their shareholders demands that they should seek the highest price they can get for the least that they can get away with.  I must confess though that it hadn't occurred to me for one moment that it would be the world's financial services that would first collapse!   Weren't those services the very foundation stone of our society, run by super-humans who could demand incomes of millions a year; the 'going rate', we were told, for those with the exceptional skills that they possessed.  They weren't clever enough though, were they?

            No, I have no idea whether the measures that the government is taking will get us out of the mess we are in.  I can only hope so.  I hope too that we will all have learned that a society in debt is a society in trouble, and that the laws of the market place do not necessarily offer a cure for all the world's economic ills.

…………………………………

 

                                     All Hallowe'en

 

            I wonder how many children and adults disguising themselves as witches, warlocks and skeletons, and enjoying themselves at Halloween Parties realize that their Halloween is actually 'All Hallows Eve', the eve of All Saints Day.  Not many, I imagine, and even fewer care.

 

            Not, of course, that the witches and demons have anything to do with the saints. Halloween, as it is generally celebrated, is a revival of an old pagan festival of the dead which the Christian Church tried, not very successfully, to transform into a celebration of the lives of the thousands of Christian saints and martyrs.

 

            I'm not one of the fundamentalist Christians who condemn all traditional celebration of Halloween as being a dangerous revival of Satanism or Devil Worship.  That certainly isn't the intention of the revellers and I credit God with being capable of discerning that intention.   It may even be a good thing, just once a year, to have experience of the ignorance, superstition and fear that ruled our land before the advent of the Christian Faith.   Apple dipping and similar rituals are surely harmless enough.

 

            A practice that I do deplore though is the obnoxious 'Trick or Treat'.   I understand that in the USA, from whence 'Trick or Treat' has come to us, householders have some candies (sweets) or cookies (biscuits) handy as treats for their juvenile callers. I don't think that in this country many make similar provision.  In any case, I am not at all sure that that is what our home-grown trick or treaters want.  Many, I think, are just looking for an excuse to hurl an egg at the front door or the car parked in the driveway, or to pour flour into the porch of those who refuse, or are too bewildered, to provide an instant 'treat'. 

 

            The 'Coast Gazette' in co-operation with the Essex Police has produced a tear-out poster to be displayed in the windows those who don't want to be bothered with trick or treaters:  SORRY, NO TRICK OR TREATERS.  It is a well-meaning idea and I hope that it works.  I think that it would deter genuine young children, who possibly set out on their Halloween adventures with their parents.  I reckon though that it would just serve as a target for those out to cause mischief.

 

            I'd think twice about putting one in my window.

……………………………

 

                                    The NHS again

 

            My ear is healing nicely and I'm looking forward to having the stitches out in about a week's time.  Once again though, the apparent ignorance of the NHS's right hand of what its left hand is doing, has produced a minor flaw in an operation that was otherwise beyond criticism.

 

            You may recall that when I first required NHS transport to take me to Chelmsford to see the consultant about my ear, I was told that my own doctor's practice would make the arrangements.  That was incorrect.  I did get the transport in the end, and it was very satisfactory.  However it involved me in a great deal of unnecessary phoning and frustration that might have reduced someone less determined and less experienced in the ways of bureaucracy, to impotent despair.

 

            This time it is the removal of the stitches.  At the hospital I was told to contact  my local doctor's practice nurse to arrange an appointment for this in about a fortnight.  I was given an envelope addressed to 'the practice nurse' to hand over when I saw her.  Last week I phoned the nurse to arrange for my annual 'flu jab and asked if I could make an appointment for the removal of the stitches at the same time.

 

            I was told, 'Oh no, we don't do that. Just go along to the Minor Injuries  (formerly 'Accidents and Emergencies') Department at Clacton Hospital and the nurse there will do it for you'.   I can get there as easily as I can get to my local medical practice. It is therefore only a 'minor flaw' provided, of course, that when I get there they don't say, 'We don't do that here.  Weren't you told to go to your own medical practice nurse to have the stitches removed?'

 

            You'd really think, wouldn't you, that there would be a clear demarcation line, understood by all involved, between functions that are the responsibility of the hospital authority and those that the local medical practice is expected to perform.

 

………………………………………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 41.08

                          Tendring Topics …..on Line

 

Meeting the Mighty

 

            Introduced to the Oberbürgermeister of Zittau one week and to the Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Suffolk the next.  I shall definitely be getting ideas above my station in life!  Whatever next?  At my age quite possibly St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.  That, I'm afraid, is not an event that will be recorded in Tendring Topics…on Line!

 

            I have explained at some length how I came to be involved with Zittau's Mayor.  The very brief encounter with the Lord-Lieutenant was the result of an invitation to an open-air Civic Service to be held in Ipswich in celebration of the centenary of the Territorial Army. This was to be followed by a Reception in the old Corn Exchange.

 

            It was not really my cup of tea.  I had finished with all things military many years ago and am happy to be described as a peacenik.  However, I have had strong links with the Territorial Army. I had volunteered for a Suffolk TA Regiment at the age of 17 and had subsequently served in it until it was destroyed and I was made a POW at the debacle of Tobruk in June 1942.  I had had good friends in the regiment who were never to see Ipswich or Suffolk again.  Moreover the Territoral Army had been the reason that my parents had brought me to Ipswich at the age of five. I still thought of it being my 'home town'.  My father, a former Regimental Sergeant Major in 'the regulars', had secured an appointment as Permanent Staff Instructor, including riding instructor, to a local Territorial Unit.  It was a job from which, as a result of the mechanisation of the army, he was made redundant five years later.  While it had lasted though, it was a job in which he had been completely happy and fulfilled.

 

            Two Ipswich ladies Diana and Jane, to whom I had been able to offer a little help in researching the brief history of my old regiment (in which both their fathers had served), urged me to go along, and offered to transport me there and back again.  There would be, they said, only a handful of 67^th Medium Regiment RA veterans still alive and capable of attending.

 

            So, I gratefully accepted the offer of a lift, brushed down my best suit (usually reserved for weddings and, more frequently these days, funerals) and went along.  Sunday 5^th October, as you may recall, made a bid to be reckoned the wettest day of a very wet year, so the 'open air service' took place in the Corn Exchange behind Ipswich's old Town Hall instead of on Corn Hill as had been planned.

 

            There was, of course, a local Territorial Unit, that unlike ours had both male and female members, on parade there.  I found that I disliked the foot stamping and the shouted orders, accentuated by the board floor and the enclosed surroundings, as much as ever I had.  However, I did warm to the commanding officer when, before the parade actually began, he gathered his troops around him informally to explain  what was expected of them, and addressed them as 'Ladies and Gentlemen'.

 

            That simply couldn't have happened in my day.  'Gentlemen' was a title reserved strictly for commissioned officers.  'Ladies' were their wives, female relatives and friends.  It was in the army that I learned to be class-conscious!

 

            The service, I have to say, was very good.  Two bible readings from a modern but not too banal translation, a rousing hymn 'Guide me O thou great Jehovah', some prayers and a mercifully short sermon.  I am something of a connoisseur of Christian religious services and I enjoyed it.

 

            I enjoyed the music of the military band and the get-together afterwards too.  There were, as I had been told, just a handful of 67^th Medium Regiment RA veterans.  Goodness, I knew that I had become old and decrepit but somehow it hadn't really occurred to me that all my former comrades would be old and decrepit too.  There were only two that I could positively remember from the past.  With one of them I had really been very friendly at one time, but he didn't remember me at all!  His wife, a charming lady, assured me that, sadly, he was like that with everybody.  With the other, who did remember me and I him, I had never been particularly friendly though, on this occasion, we had enough in common to manage to chat without falling out!

 

            He had lost his wife, as I had mine, just two years ago after a long period of illness.  He too was finding it difficult to cope with the loss.  His experience as a POW in Germany had been very different from mine.  He had worked all the time in a stone quarry and, as a result of an accident there, had broken a leg and was still partially disabled.  What's more, he told me that he had never received any of the Red Cross Parcels that certainly had kept us fit and well.  I have never encountered another POW whose experiences in Germany were as positive as mine but, on the other hand, I had never met another POW in Europe whose experience had been quite so awful as his.

 

            The Lord-Lieutenant looked in on us veterans, and was introduced to, and spoke briefly to me.  He seemed a little startled when I told him that only the previous week I had been back to Germany and now had good friends there. 'Good show!' he said, and then, 'I expect you were jolly pleased when our chaps turned up to liberate you'.

 

.  Once again he seemed somewhat taken aback when I told him that in fact I had liberated myself with a great deal of help from the Soviet Army.  He passed quickly onto someone else who no doubt had a more predictable story to tell him.

 

Diana and Jane, my friends, and the friends of all we 67^th veterans, had mounted a photographic exhibition graphically showing the history and travels of the 67^th Medium Regiment from 1939 until Nemesis caught up with us at Tobruk on 21^st June 1942.  It was a labour of love that attracted much well deserved interest.

 

Diana's husband Ray had driven me from Clacton to Ipswich and he and Diana kindly drove me home again at the end. 

 

I was grateful to them and had thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  However  the knowledge, unearthed by Jane and Diana in the course of their researches, that many more of my former comrades in the 67^th had died from 'friendly fire' than had ever been killed by the Germans and Italians, had cast a shadow over the occasion for me.  Fifty had drowned when, in November 1942, an Italian steamer SS Scillin, transporting them from a POW camp in Tripoli to one in Italy, had been sunk by a British submarine.  A mental image of those young Suffolk men in their early twenties, many of whom I had known, helplessly trapped in the hold of that sinking vessel, has haunted me ever since I learned of the disaster, just a few years ago.

 

'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old………'  but they would have loved to have had the opportunity to!

……………………………

 

 

Is it Art?

 

            I didn't exactly leap in eager anticipation when, a few weeks ago, a headlined story on the front page of the Clacton Gazette announced that a 'World famous artist' was on his way to Jaywick where he would in November build 'a structure' on a vacant plot in Brooklands Gardens that would stay there for three months.

 

            The artist is Nathan Coley, of whom I confess I had never previously heard but who is, we were told, 'A Turner-Prize nominated artist'.  The Turner prize?  Isn't that the one that in recent years has been awarded to an unmade bed, a light being switched on and off, a pile of bricks and an animal carcase preserved in formalin?

 

            An example of Mr Nathan's work was helpfully shown on the Gazette's front page.  It consisted of scaffolding on which, in capital letters the following words were displayed: HEAVEN IS A PLACE WHERE NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.  That is, no doubt, a very deep thought that has probably challenged thousands of 'seekers after Truth' who may have happened to see it.  Perhaps it is either because I am a hopeless philistine, or because words mean more to me than images, that I much prefer Omar Khayyam's vision of an earthly paradise

 

Here, with a book of verse beneath a bough,

A jug of wine, a book of verse, and thou

Beside me, singing in the wilderness;

The wilderness were paradise enow.

 

            Who can say though?  Perhaps the piece of art to be unveiled in November will bring the crowds flocking to 'deprived area' Jaywick.

 

            An indication of the public taste in art was suggested by a recent poll published in a national newspaper which found that over 60 percent of people questioned recognised a picture of Kate Moss by 'Banksie', the graffiti artist.  Less than 6 percent recognised Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa'!

…………………………………..

 

Local Issues

 

            Obviously the views of local people should be considered when building or similar developments are taking place in their immediate vicinity.  I fear though, that if local people were to have an over-riding veto, no new development would ever take place.  The needs and the interests of the wider community must take precedence.

 

            I am sure for instance that Tendring Councillors were wrong to yield to strident local protests and to refuse permission for a small wind farm to be established between St Osyth and Clacton.  I don't believe that it would have been a visual or aural nuisance to anybody – and we do need renewable sources of energy.

 

            Then there's the rejection of the proposed small travellers' site in Weeley.  I'm sure that everyone would say, 'Of course travellers have to have somewhere to stay – but that's just the wrong place'.  I wonder where 'the right place' could possibly be?  Anywhere near any existing residence produces instant protest and so does 'in the midst of hitherto unspoilt countryside'.   Perhaps the middle of an existing refuse dump would be acceptable!

 

            It would, I think, be more honest, and possibly kinder in the long run, to announce that there simply isn't a place for nomadic or semi-nomadic people in this over-populated island and make no provision for them whatsoever except in permanent conventional homes.  But I suppose that we wouldn't want to make that provision either.

…………………………………..

 

My Ear!

 

            I had another chunk cut out of my left ear yesterday.  All went according to plan.  This time I had accepted the offer of a good friend (I am indeed fortunate in my friends and relatives!) to drive me to and from Colchester, to wait with me for the op. and be there to welcome me when I came out of the theatre.  It was indeed wonderful to see a friendly face when I returned to the ward.

 

            I didn't have too long to wait when we got to the hospital.  The operation, again by a friendly woman surgeon, was even more painless than the earlier one, and  I am able have the stitches out locally in about a fortnight's time.

 

            I have to say that this time I did experience more pain as the anaesthetic wore off (it had been a bigger operation) and I didn't get much sleep last night.   However it seems much better this morning though it has left me feeling very tired.  I must try to remember that I'm much nearer ninety than eighty!

 

            Oh yes, enough of my ear is left to support my glasses but I do now look distinctly lop-eared!

………………………………….