Thirty Years On
During March 1980, just thirty years ago, I took early retirement from the post of Public Relations Officer to the Tendring District Council, severing a service to local government that had begun way back in 1937 at the age of 16. I hadn’t intended to retire early, but a proposed reorganisation by the Council’s new Chief Executive (Mr Richard Painter) devalued my services to a degree that I couldn’t accept without losing my self-respect.
On the day I left the Council’s service we had a splendid unofficial party in my office. I bought the drinks, my colleagues the food! My colleagues gave me a ‘professional’ tripod for my camera and life membership of NALGO – now UNISON. The official farewell from the Council (see above) took place a few weeks later. The Chairman of the Council (Mr Fred Good of Harwich), a councillor whom I had always liked and respected, presented me on behalf of the Council, with a pair of Greenkat Binoculars and Heather with a bouquet of flowers.
At the time early retirement had seemed a complete disaster. The press constantly tells us how good public service pensions can be, but mine amounted to just half my far-from-generous salary (I was never one of those ‘highly paid officials’ one reads about!), and I wouldn’t be entitled to my state pension for over six years.
Like many of the apparent disasters that have overtaken me in my life, my early retirement turned out to be one of the best things that have ever happened to me. I immediately obtained a part-time job as an advertising feature writer with what was then Essex County Newspapers (they evidently felt that since, as PRO, I had managed to ‘sell’ Tendring Council, I could sell anything!) and another part-time job as advertising feature writer to a regional magazine Look East, devoted to promoting East Anglian enterprise. I was also invited to write a weekly comment column Tendring Topics in the Coastal Express, a task that I carried out for twenty-three years and am continuing, on line, in this blog!
I became a part-time lecturer and publicity consultant for the Further Education Colleges in Thorpe-le-Soken and Frinton, I wrote half a dozen or more commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, as well as the plumbing sections of a number of diy manuals, together with a great many feature articles on local government, environmental health, do-it-yourself plumbing, camping, caravanning, continental travel and so on, for specialist and general interest publications. It was nice to discover that my services were appreciated in the commercial world if not in that of Tendring Council’s Chief Executive!
I have sometimes wondered if Mr Richard Painter, who didn’t stay very long with Tendring Council after my departure, ever realized how much I had benefited from his insulting assessment of my duties.
A Perennial Problem…..and possible Solution
Britain is said to be a nation of dog-lovers – but that love is by no means either unconditional or universal. Nobody likes walking on dog-fouled pavements. Today there does seem to be less of that particular nuisance in Clacton’s streets than there was when I was personally involved with the problem as a Public Health Inspector and later as Tendring’s first Public Relations Officer.
Exercising dogs on some of Tendring’s beaches is prohibited, and they’re not welcomed in other recreational areas. Elsewhere in any town, they are expected to be ‘under control’ – on a lead at all times. Where, say exasperated dog-owners, can we exercise our beloved four-legged-friends freely? A solution may have been found in Ipswich which (despite the fact that I have lived in Clacton over three times as long as I ever lived there!) I still think of as my ‘home town’.
A correspondent to the East Anglian Daily Times writes:
While visiting friends in the vicinity of Ipswich’s Britannia Road, they suggested that I visit the dog park with my dogs and take theirs as well.
This turned out to be a most worth-while visit, as next to the fenced off playground for all the different ages of children with different sports facilities for each, was an enclosed area for dogs and their owners to come at any time of the day or evening.
This area was perfect for the dogs and their owners, where they could let their dogs off their leads to run free. They couldn’t escape so both they and their owners could relax, the owners sitting on the benches provided. There was a paved path round a grass area, complete with water bowls and dog bins.
The owners enjoyed the company of other dog lovers while the dogs ran free and played with each other. I have to say there is almost never any dog mess about; no doubt the owners want to keep it that way.
It sounds idyllic though the image of a number of dogs playing happily and quietly together does strain my credulity just a little. I certainly feel though that it is an experiment that deserves further investigation.
First Class Travel
A recent edition of the Daily Gazette carried a picture of Colchester’s Lib.Dem MP, Bob Russell, travelling up to London in a 1st Class carriage; the implication being that he should have travelled 2nd Class.
During my almost-seven-years with the then-new Tendring District Council my status was just high enough to qualify me for 1st Class travel on the very rare occasions that I had to go up to London on official business. I had never before in my life travelled first class, though in my days as a POW I had considerable experience of cattle truck travel!
Anyway I did travel 1st Class for the Council on one or two occasions*. It meant that I could read the relevant papers on my way there and back and that I didn’t arrive at Liverpool Street or back in Clacton, already exhausted. It was certainly worth it to me and I hope that it may have been to the Council. In these days of lap-tops and mobile phones I can see that 1st Class travel could have other advantages for ‘official’ travellers.
Thus, while I am appalled by many of the extravagant claims for expenses made by some MPs (including my own), I don’t grudge any of them 1st Class travel between London and their constituencies. They are entitled to this privilege and I am sure that most of them have a far better reason for taking advantage of it than MP Sir Nicholas Winterton who, when asked why he chose 1st Class rather than 2nd, replied that ‘you get a totally different type of people’. I bet he doesn’t mind accepting the votes of ‘the other type’, even if he doesn’t care to travel with them!
*Some blog readers will recall that, last July, I travelled 1st Class between Brussels and Dresden. Once again it was well worth it – all the more so because my grandson had bought the tickets for specific trains, well in advance. We thus managed to travel 1st Class at 2nd Class prices! The picture above shows me travelling 1st Class and in unaccustomed luxury on the Deutsch Eisenbahn.
A recent edition of the Daily Gazette carried a picture of Colchester’s Lib.Dem MP, Bob Russell, travelling up to London in a 1st Class carriage; the implication being that he should have travelled 2nd Class.
During my almost-seven-years with the then-new Tendring District Council my status was just high enough to qualify me for 1st Class travel on the very rare occasions that I had to go up to London on official business. I had never before in my life travelled first class, though in my days as a POW I had considerable experience of cattle truck travel!
Anyway I did travel 1st Class for the Council on one or two occasions*. It meant that I could read the relevant papers on my way there and back and that I didn’t arrive at Liverpool Street or back in Clacton, already exhausted. It was certainly worth it to me and I hope that it may have been to the Council. In these days of lap-tops and mobile phones I can see that 1st Class travel could have other advantages for ‘official’ travellers.
Thus, while I am appalled by many of the extravagant claims for expenses made by some MPs (including my own), I don’t grudge any of them 1st Class travel between London and their constituencies. They are entitled to this privilege and I am sure that most of them have a far better reason for taking advantage of it than MP Sir Nicholas Winterton who, when asked why he chose 1st Class rather than 2nd, replied that ‘you get a totally different type of people’. I bet he doesn’t mind accepting the votes of ‘the other type’, even if he doesn’t care to travel with them!
*Some blog readers will recall that, last July, I travelled 1st Class between Brussels and Dresden. Once again it was well worth it – all the more so because my grandson had bought the tickets for specific trains, well in advance. We thus managed to travel 1st Class at 2nd Class prices! The picture above shows me travelling 1st Class and in unaccustomed luxury on the Deutsch Eisenbahn.
Crematorium Services
Last week in this blog I commented fairly light-heartedly on the fact that Colchester’s burial and crematorium services were in difficulties because there simply hadn’t been enough local deaths, and indignantly on a suggestion that farming the services out to a private firm would solve the Council’s problems.
This week though, I have been giving some thought to our own, Tendring District's cremation service. We have a first-class crematorium a little over 20 years old, on the outskirts of Weeley,standing in a peaceful, spacious and well-kept garden that, remote from the district’s cemeteries, has nothing about it of the inevitably melancholy atmosphere of a burial ground.
Since its opening in 1986 I have attended a great many funeral services there. I have said my final farewell to former colleagues and acquaintances for whose passing I felt no more than mild sadness, to dear friends whose deaths caused me great distress and, nearly four years ago now, to my own dear wife who had shared my life for sixty years and whom I shall never cease to mourn.
A feature of every single one of those funerals has been that of anxious haste. The crematorium authorities permit only 30 minutes per funeral, and that includes the mourners filing in and sitting down, and their departure. In effect, that means that the funeral service itself can last little more than twenty minutes and that as one group of mourners leave another group is preparing to enter. Twenty minutes may well have been fine when the greater part of most funeral services took place in a church or chapel, coming to the crematorium only for the brief committal. This is much less likely to happen today.
The whole operation has an unfortunate resemblance to an industrial assembly line. This isn’t the fault of the Crematorium staff. My experience suggests that they are unfailingly helpful and understanding. It is simply that our Crematorium is usually operating at maximum capacity.
A week ago, a kind friend drove me to the funeral of another dear friend at Ipswich Crematorium. Here the atmosphere was very different. We arrived half an hour early and, to my surprise, were able to take our seats in the crematorium chapel (appreciably larger than that at Weeley) right away. I was glad that we were early because my friend had clearly been well loved by a great many people. Every seat was soon occupied and there were people standing at the back. The service was unhurried, reverent and, I am sure, helpful to my friend’s bereaved husband and other close relatives. There were two hymns and two personal testimonies to my friend’s life as well as a Bible reading and a contribution from the officiating clergyman. At the close of the service it took some time for us all to file from the well-filled chapel. I estimate that that one funeral must have occupied the chapel for at least an hour and a half.
How was it done? Well, Ipswich has two crematoria both on the same site, each with its own chapel, waiting room and toilet facilities. Perhaps, I thought, Ipswich has a much bigger population than we have. I looked it up on ‘the web’. The population of Ipswich is 128,000, that of the Tendring District 138,000 and that of Colchester 156,000. It is, of course, likely that Ipswich’s crematoria also serve the surrounding countryside as Colchester’s crematorium did before we had our own facility at Weeley.
That said, I still think that the Tendring District Council needs to consider the provision of a second crematorium if we are to make our final farewells to our loved spouses, relatives and friends with the dignity and solemnity that the occasions deserve.
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