Week 8.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

‘If winter comes…….

Can spring be far behind?’ This was the rhetorical question with which Shelley ended his ‘Ode to the West Wind’. The answer surely is ‘I suppose not’. In 2010 though, it is not an affirmation that I can make with conviction. I was surely tempting fate when, a fortnight ago in this blog, I drew attention to the fact that the weather on Candlemas (2nd February) was ‘dull with rain’ and that weather folklore insisted that ‘winter had gone and would not come again’.

Hardly had I posted that blog on ‘the web’ before the temperature dropped like a stone and we woke up to see once again a sprinkling of snow on our gardens and on the roads and pavements. It didn’t last. Since then, although we have had some sunny days, the temperatures have hovered around freezing point day and night and the threat of snow has refused to go away. There is another piece of weather folklore (there is something to suit every situation!) that certainly has been all too accurate. ‘As the days grow longer, the cold gets stronger’.

The days are, at least, getting longer. It is now light at 7.00 a.m. and darkness doesn’t begin to fall until after 5.00 p.m. I am an early riser, particularly on Sundays when I usually go to the 8.00 a.m. service at St. James’ Church. Backing my mobility scooter out of the shed in the dark at 7.00 a.m. and, muffled up in winter coat with fur hat and sheepskin gloves, driving on it through Clacton’s almost deserted streets in semi-darkness at 7.30, was a less-than-cheering experience.

What’s more, I notice that (whatever may have happened to the green shoots of economic recovery!) the green shoots of daffodils are appearing round the apple tree in my garden and there are two or three snowdrops in flower. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, was on 17th February and Easter is now less than six weeks away. Be it never so tardy, spring really is on the way!

You can just see the daffodil shoots at the foot of my apple tree and, to their left, you can just see two or three snowdrops. Photo taken on 12th February.

Save our Circus!

‘Save our Circus’, is a slogan that nowadays, could usually be guaranteed to raise the ire of Animal Rights activists. When used in Colchester though, it has nothing to do with performing animals and everything to do with the preservation and exploitation of a unique archaeological discovery in ‘England’s oldest recorded town’.

Archaeological excavations in 2004 and 2005 revealed a Roman ‘circus’ or chariot-racing track within the area of the garrison, south of the town centre and outside the town wall but. This is the only such reminder of the four hundred years of Roman occupation that has been found in Britain and is therefore of unique archaeological and general interest.

The circus’s starting gates are buried within the garden of the now-derelict Victorian Sergeants’ Mess. This belongs to a property developer who had intended to build flats on the site. He is however, prepared to sell it to the Colchester Archaeological Trust for £200,000. The original deadline for this sale was the end of January but this deadline has been extended to the end of this month.

The idea is that the starting gate area should be properly excavated, preserved and opened up to the public under a protective covering, and that there should be a heritage centre provided where there could be a plan of the original circus, a description of its use and, of course, information about other historical and archaeological sites (the Balkerne Gate, the Castle, the Town Wall, the Siege House and so on) in and around the town. By mid-February the appeal was only £27,000 short of its target and several more fund-raising events were planned. I have every hope that the appeal will succeed.

I certainly hope so. It is a splendid idea and a very worthwhile cause. I have often thought that more should be done to exploit the tourist potential of northeast Essex and the Stour Valley as a European Tourist Region. Colchester, with its Roman and Boudiccan archaeological heritage and its reminders of the English Civil War, is a natural centre for the region. Within half an hour’s drive is the ‘Constable country’ of Dedham Vale with the unforgettable villages of Dedham and East Bergholt (with Flatford Mill). Next there’s the beautiful tidal Stour beginning at Manningtree, England’s smallest town, and terminating at historic Harwich. Then on round the Tendring Coast, with its high sunshine records and low rainfall. Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton, Clacton-on-Sea, St. Osyth and Brightlingsea, each has its own unique character and atmosphere. Together they offer everything that could be asked from a seaside holiday.

I believe that the local authorities from that area should get together to publicise the attractions of the whole area as the ideal holiday destination from the rest of Great Britain and from the European mainland.

We oldies again!

Yes, we oldies are getting the blame again. On his death-bed King Charles II is said to have apologised for being, ‘an unconscionably long time dying’ - and it seems that that is just what we octogenarians and nonagenarians are doing. The Daily Gazette reports that, Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium are facing financial problems because, so the council claims, 'fewer people are dying’.

Councillor Tim Young, who is responsible for the provision of burial and cremation facilities in Colchester is reported as saying, ‘Staff have told me they think it is partly down to the introduction of the winter fuel allowance. Usually in a cold winter like this here would be more deaths, but that has not been the case’.

Oh dear! We have clearly been ignoring the advice given one of the ‘commandments’ in 19th Century poet Arthur Hugh Clough’s satirical poem, The Latest Decalogue:

Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.

Colchester Council’s answer to this stubbornness on the part of the elderly, has been to make a modest increase of between one and three percent in cemetery and cremation charges. The opposition Conservative Group has a more radical solution in mind. They would hand over the running of the cemetery to a private company to save money.

I wonder how that would work? The usual commercial inducements ('Buy one, get one free') hardly apply.


The provision of the means of interment or cremation is a service entrusted to local authorities as representatives of their communities. It is the final service that they can render to their citizens. The idea of passing that service on to a commercial enterprise that will hope to make a profit from it and, simultaneously and miraculously, 'save money' for the Council is one that I find extremely distasteful; a 'vote loser' if there ever was one!

Time ('like an ever-rolling stream') will eventually solve Colchester’s problem. All that is needed on the part of the authorities is the exercise of a little patience. Nobody escapes the attention of the grim reaper forever. As Shakespeare put it:

Golden boys and girls all must
Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

So must I, and so must even the most resilient of OAPs!

Some good ideas

It is surprising how often Conservative Leader David Cameron seems to strike the right key with my sensibilities yet somehow fails to produce quite the right note.

I am, for instance, totally in agreement with his contention that children these days are being robbed of their childhood but (apart from the absurd conviction that more and ever-earlier sex education will reduce the number of schoolgirl pregnancies) I don’t really think that schools are mainly responsible for this. I would blame tv programmes, in particular tv advertising viewed in the home, and the break-up of ‘normal’ family life resulting from both parents being at work all day and returning home too tired to spend leisure time with their children.

The Conservative suggestion that Head Teachers rather than Education Authorities should be responsible for deciding what advertising and sponsorships should be permitted in schools is a ridiculous one. There is just a chance that a responsible education authority may make wise and disinterested judgements on this issue. A Head Teacher, desperately needing some item of educational equipment obtainable by giving way to commercial interests, would be much more likely to yield to temptation. The best answer would be to make a universal prohibition of any form of advertising or sponsorship within school premises.

Then there’s David Cameron’s idea of turning public services into co-operative ventures, managed and run by those who are engaged in them. It sounds a good idea to me – but why limit it to public services. The extremely successful John Lewis Partnership shows that the idea is at least equally, perhaps even more, appropriate for private enterprise.

I believe that the big mistake made by the Labour Government that I helped into power in 1945, was their belief that public ownership of the means of production and distribution could only be achieved by the creation of vast nationalised corporations, mimicking instead of replacing those of the commercial world.

They might have been more successful had they proceeded more slowly, accepting that public ownership could be achieved by municipalisation rather than nationalisation (many local authorities were successfully running hospitals, public transport, water supply, gas and electricity services before World War II) and by the creation of employee co-operatives and partnerships.

Such a policy would have been unlikely to create an earthly paradise. It would however undoubtedly have narrowed the currently ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest of our society that is responsible for many of today’s ills. Had Cadbury’s been an employee partnership (an outcome that I am sure its founder would have welcomed) it would never have been taken over by a foreign enterprise having no interest in its British employees. Nor, if Press and tv were run by such partnerships, would it be possible for foreign business tycoons, who do not share our history, culture and moral values, and do not pay our taxes, to own and control the sources of information and the means of popular persuasion in this country.