Pubs and Plans

Things that Matter

Spring is certainly in the air in this remote and rural part of Essex. I rode my bicycle down the lane in which we live, to the old chapel, where I noticed that, one one side of the track, the daffodils were in full flower. The is also a tree covered in pale creamy blossom by the old pub, now closed. It seems very early for blossom season. I checked our orchard (anything over six trees is considered an orchard in the UK) and we don’t have any flowers yet.

I have watched that disused hostelry become more and more dilapidated since it ceased trading. A casualty of lock-down and the huge effort required to reignite interest once regular custom is lost. The couple that ran it retired and moved away. According to our local Councillor, the pub can’t be be re-purposed, because it is registered as a “Community Asset”, so it slowly declines. We already have a village hall, so we don’t need another one, but I feel there’s an opportunity there somewhere.

There are another two inns in the village, however, the one by the church is for sale. It hasn’t thrived since the former chef left to run a restaurant-and-event venue in a nearby town. The current leaseholders decided not to pay the wages for a decent replacement and have relied on agency staff and, consequently, the likelihood of having a delicious meal has become a lottery. They have also installed a huge television and several speakers, so it is no longer a quiet country pub. I hope the new people understand that a thriving village pub needs to be a ‘gastro experience’ with good food and a convivial atmosphere. I can direct them to several places that they can use as role models.

The third pub used to be our venue for Book Club meetings, but the landlord there has decided to serve food only at weekends, so we now meet at the Country Club, which sounds grand, but is a demountable building on the fringe of a mobile home site. Still, they owners try hard to make it work with various theme nights, including live tribute acts, dinner-dances and evenings of clairvoyance – an eclectic mixture.

Luckily, our Book Club thrives. We are currently reading “Jamaica Inn”, having finished the “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, which caused lively debate about abuse of women and whether it would have been as popular today as it was when it was publish. Nevertheless, something in it sparked David’s interest and he is now reading the sequel, “The Girl Who Played With Fire”.

Our Book Club doesn’t confine itself to any era or genre. For instance, last year our reading list included “On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous” and “There Are Rivers In The Sky”. In between my ‘must read’ list, I consumed Duff Cooper’s “Operation Heartbreak” on a train journey to and from London on Monday. I headed for the National Gallery, instead of the Tate at Millbank, which is one of my favourite destinations in town. I had lunch in the crypt of St Martins in the Fields, which is a value-for-money eatery with a reasonable vegetarian menu.

Currently, I’m searching for books for our upcoming holiday to Mexico, which is a dilemma, because I like real book but the weight of carrying them around can be burdensome. I have the Kindle app on my smartphone, but it’s not the same feeling as when I turn a page. I shall strike a happy medium and take a couple of paperbacks and download some new material too.

According to a astrologer that I came across yesterday, we are in a period where we need to balance ourselves, so we are ready for the full blast of the Fire Horse. The time between lunar new moon and the spring equinox on 20^th March 2026 is a period of transition, which provides space to prepare for the upheavals to come. The advice is to continue to shed anything that you no longer value or benefit from, set boundaries (especially to do with finance and work) and decide on areas that need to change and then create an action plan to be put into motion later, specifically towards the end of March.

I can be impatient and I haven’t waited for ‘the right time’. I looked up our records for applying for planning permission to install a new vehicle crossover from the highway to our private driveway. It has been over twenty-four weeks. The local authority website states David and I should have had a decision within eight weeks, unless there were exceptional circumstance, leading to a maximum wait time of sixteen weeks. We are using an architect as our agent, so I wrote to her and pointed out these facts, including exact dates, and asked her to find out when we might see white smoke. The answer from the Planning Officer is that he has inherited a heavy caseload from his predecessor, who left things in a mess, but if it was a straightforward application, he’d let us know “soon”. At least we are on his radar, which should be helpful.

I don’t think we will need much heavy machinery to build the crossover for if/when we get planning approval, but loud noises and big vehicles are Ruby the Beagles least favourite things.

Our neighbours next door have finally got permission to work on their garden. First their fuel tank leaked heating oil, not only into their garden, but under one of the school storage buildings next door on the other side to us. It was a slow process that must have been going on for for many years until it became obvious that there was a problem with a leak. To add to their woes with the Environmental Agency (whose policy is ‘polluter pays’ ) the local authority placed a blanket Tree Preservation Order on the whole back garden, so they have been unable to prune anything from the big oaks to the wiry saplings. As a consequence, squirrels have been running riot in their loft and chewed through electrical wiring. They have clearly had a lot to deal with. Anyway, last week they had the tree surgeons in for the four days with their chainsaws buzzing and their massive shredder chewing through the unwanted branches, which was very noisy.

At first, Ruby was reluctant to venture anywhere near her usual haunt by the fence (where she meets up with Benji and Archie, the cockapoos), but she gradually got used to it and, by the time the tree surgeons left, didn’t seem to mind their noise at all. However, she did hide behind David’s legs when the dustcart rumbled by, so she’s still nervous.

David is a happy chap today. He had another letter published in The Times, which is apparently an achievement, since the newspaper is extremely selective about what it publishes from the public. He only writes about things within the scope of his expertise and the current missive is about funding the UK’s nuclear deterrent. His view is that a separate, centrally held fund would be paid for from the existing defence budget and not, as another reader suggested, be financed by HM Treasury with new money. As Margaret Thatcher once famously said “... the government doesn’t have any money” by which she meant that everything had to be paid for by the taxpayer or from borrowing. Her aim was to ensure that everyone recognised that they were a stakeholder in the prosperity of the nation.

I had a boss once, affectionately known as Morgan the Pirate, who said that there were many ways to be wrong and the worst one was to be right before your time. Perhaps, Mrs Thatcher was one of those people who had a vision, but failed to get her message across in a way that carried the masses. If I had one of those dinner parties where you could invite anyone, she might be on the long list, along with Leonardo da Vinci, David Bowie and Lord Byron. Do let me know if I should expand my guest list with a suggestion or two in the comments.

I enjoyed working with Morgan and the rest of the team and it was an interesting job, I think I might still be there, if we hadn’t moved to Australia. It taught me that the quality of life was more important than chasing the money. This lesson was reinforced whilst we lived in Canberra, when I enjoyed working, mostly in an unpaid capacity, at Pegasus (Riding for the Disabled) far more than I did as a paid Management Consultant. Again, there was a good leader and a dedicated, friendly cohort of co-workers.

My poem this week comes from my book “Ritual of the Mirror”, which is a collection of sagas and folk-stories that I wrote a few years ago. Incidentally, it takes its name from a line in one of the the stories, called “Summons”. The book is still available on Amazon, as are the rest of my publications. This particular poem was written with Morgan, his team of maritime salvors and any other seafarer in mind.

PIRATE LULLABY
Let me sing you a song of charts
marked with legends of dragons,
serpents and griffins.

Let me sing you a song of chests filled
with softly glowing ropes of pearls,
bright gems and gold doubloons.
 
Let me sing you a song of
beautiful, pale and deadly maidens,
sirens and mermaids of the deep.

When you awaken
you will have had such adventures
that only a seafarer can know.

I will send you to sleep
to sail the broad, briny oceans
at the helm of your own fast galleon.

I will send you to sleep
to dream of the pirate flag
flying proud on a windjammer's mast.

I will send you to sleep
with a map where 'X' hides treasure
and a black Jolly Roger to hoist.

When you awaken
you will have had such adventures
that only a seafarer can know.