A couple of months ago we visited by a young lady with a clipboard acting on behalf of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA). Her task was to check that we were obeying the rules of a Farm Stewardship Scheme for which the Government pays us a small sum of money.
She started by asking how many sheep I had and upon hearing my reply then consulted a book of printed tables, and extrapolated the amount of nitrates deposited on the fields by each adult sheep. Not content with this, she then completed columns for lambs one to six months and another for those of seven to twelve months. After pushing a few buttons on her calculator she announced with an approving smile that I was, “Well within the sheep defecation deposit limits allowed for your farm.” I told her I felt relieved but somehow felt she missed the philological irony.
Next, came questions about empty bottles of fly spray, wormer and weed killer to which I replied that I washed them twice and sprayed the drops back onto the sheep or weeds. This answer won me a tick in the box although she was at pains to say that I must, “wash the bottles out three times not two.”
After three hours, during which she told me that her visit had cost the RPA more than they pay me each year, she informed me that I would receive a letter to say that I had passed the test. She then departed, and as her ‘environmentally friendly’ Toyota Prius disappeared into the blue smoke of my 1962 Fordson Super Dexta, I mused on previous youthful experiences with officialdom.
In the very early nineteen fifties we lived at the top of a very steep hill with a road surface made up of gritty pebbles and one day in July the Council came and applied a thick coating of something called Gas Tar. This tricky operation took two weeks following which, various officials around to view this exciting advance in road surface technology.
For about a month all went well as the only vehicles to ascend the 1 in 4 slope were the horses and carts of the coalman, the milkman and the greengrocer and a small council lorry came to empty the contents of the privy at the bottom of everyone’s garden. However it was not long before it became apparent that in executing this new advance in road making, the officials had failed to take into account a local custom of long standing, and one which was to have serious consequences for their much publicised achievements.
For some weeks prior to November the 5th the residents of the hill would scour their houses, sheds, allotments and surrounding countryside for tyres, wood, paper, pieces of lino and anything flammable. At the appointed time the entire population gathered this material into a huge pile in the middle of the road on top of the hill.
This particular year, a very old two-seater sofa had been placed on top of the pile on which was seated a trilby topped effigy of the corpulent Councillor Bonsor who, for some reason, had replaced Guy Fawkes as the official to be reviled by this act of public humiliation.
At 6pm the fire was lit and soon became a mighty conflagration as the various combustible materials successively ignited. An occasional explosion caused excitement as batteries and accumulators gave way to internal pressures and Councillor Bonsor’s trilby blew off in the upward rush of flames and heat.
It was about 6.40 that we began to notice that the ground beneath us was getting sticky and had a blue shimmering flame over its surface. At this point someone suggested we all get top-side of the fire, as the whole surface of the new road then began to melt, burn, and run downhill like a slow, black, sulphurous version of the Severn Bore.
It was not until the 7th of November that the fire was finally extinguished, and 1952 also proved to be the last year at which the Bonfire was held in the middle of the road. Councillor Bonsor however, continued in office a little longer.
View from the Pew 