This beautiful swan crossed the road to show me his well grown young, This swan and I are old friends,I have been feeding him for years. I guess he wanted to show them the softest touch in town.
We have almost a total victory in the matter of the churchyard and the allotments, and have now widened our scope to take in the whole village, I still can not believe we have achieved so much.
Yesterday I was visited by the person from the council who has been responsible for the carnage in the church yard. I have been trying to get her to speak to me in person for six months, I think that the letters from three local councillors and a dozen London Assembly members may have concentrated her mind a little. She was hoity-toity to begin with but after much discussion she agreed to write to the private individuals who have been using the churchyard trees as their own winter log pile telling them to cease and desist on pain of prosecution.. She also agreed to stop the felling and poisoning of trees and hedges on the allotment site. Unfortunately she was intransigent when it came to the matter of the fortnightly strimming of the grave yard and the removal of ivy from the old walls and graves.
“The grass.”she said “Must not be allowed to grow more than 8cm high.” What a load of tosh!
I asked her why she had ordered the removal of the nettles and brambles during the nesting time for birds and the breeding season for butterflies. She kept on repeating the mantra of grass being only allowed to grow to 8cm, and said that it would take a good deal of time to arrange to have the strimming stopped. I asked why and she kept waffling on about the contractors. I have to suppose that no one at my local Council is capable of picking up the telephone and telling the contractors to stop.
Finally I was so annoyed that I said “Fine, so who do we send the summons to next time the law is broken .” At last she stopped chanting and said she would see if she could get it stopped while a management programme was put in place. “Conservation is not just about wild life,” she remarked,”It is about the community.” I gave her the news that this particular community would prefer not having their green spaces destroyed.
When a person asks to have a tree removed the council do not look at it themselves, instead they send the contractor who will do the job to look at it. He tells them it needs felling and they agree without question. The tree is felled,the complainant is off the councils back,the contractor gets paid and takes away the wood to sell. Spot the mistake with that practice. I pointed out to her that her approach was it best naïve, and by the look on her face I do not think that she even thought about it from that angle. Perhaps she will now. During the past week a beautiful and very large Lime tree was felled on the grounds that its leaves made a mess in an adjacent garden and that it allowed squirrels access to the roof of a house. Great Caesar's ghost! If we are going to fell every tree that causes that type of nuisance we shall soon as nuisance is one of the few exemptions that can be fiddled ,as it were, to suit convenience .Another member of our group went to a meeting of the Residents Society and got them all fired up about the number of trees being felled. When they discovered that the trees could have been saved by proper maintainance they were very angry and are complaining to the authorities in a body, more ammo!
Of course we are delighted with the ground we have gained but we are by no means finished. To show the lady we would not be put off I called the environment bods this morning and they are going to find out why the grass is being mowed at all..That woman must hate me ,and I do not give a damn! So we fight on but in good spirits,we know we are right and we are sure we will win through in the end. To every one who helped with research and moral support a huge hug and a heartfelt thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
My son's bed arrived to late to be put up today so we still have that pleasure before us...help!
I did a pot roast of beef for dinner with carrots, parsnips, roast potatoes,Yorkshire pudding ,mushy peas and gravy........I am absolutely stuffed, no one could fancy a pudding.
And so in the words of dear old Dixon “Evenin all.”
No comments:
Post a Comment