Early one morning a few weeks ago I set out for Hereford Market with a trailer load of sheep, and as I was threading my way around the pot holes at Botloes Green, an attractive lady driver came around the bend. This put me in a quandary because I am the one who usually reverses. However, quick as a flash she manoeuvred back and we then edged slowly past one another. I leaned out to thank her and she replied that she too had a trailer and knew the problems of the narrow lanes.
This got me thinking of how lucky we are to have narrow lanes around which pleasant surprises lurk, but it also reminded me that local roads can have a down side. Some years ago my wife’s car was hit by a young chap haring along as though he had just come out of the pit lane at Silverstone and not much later a young woman was killed outside our cottage when a car overturned. Mercifully such occurrences are rare, but increasingly common are drivers coming towards you who do not slow down or thank you for letting them past. Surely a wave of the hand is not too much to ask?
I must confess a sense of pleasure when I meet someone I know and we then exchange smiles or stop our cars for a brief chat. It may be wicked of me, but on those occasions I get a sense of satisfaction if we hold up any through traffic for a fleeting moment or two. In fact, most of my friends confess to driving particularly carefully and thus slow down any vehicles they do not recognise as being local. This may annoy some and be regarded as anti-social, but in these days when many people believe they are instantly entitled to what they want, and all the important decisions are made in Brussels, Beijing or New York, I can’t help but feel a frisson of excitement when examples of such trivial parochialism come to the fore.
In the first paragraph I mentioned pot holes, but did not say that the County Council has made the task of seeing them easier by edging them with white paint. I guess that this is cheaper than filling them in, and anyway is probably aimed at avoiding insurance claims from motorists who lose wheels as a result of hitting a hole.
I have long suspected that our local rulers suffer from a jollity deficit, and the decision to paint all the pot holes of whatever size, depth or location in the same colour can be seen as lacking in imagination. Who knows what opportunities for creative thinking have been denied the motoring public had the holes been painted in various colours? Mothers on the school run could have devised games and children boosted their education by counting the numbers of the various colours passed on the way. Mental arithmetic would have blossomed were the children to have given both positive and negative values to the holes. A point could be obtained for missing a hole but deducted for hitting one. To add excitement, the different colours could be given different values and so minus 2 points could be lost for a rear offside wheel in a red hole, whereas the driver could lose 4 points for a front nearside wheel in a yellow hole. The options would be on the scale of the Rubic Cube, particularly as some say that Gloucestershire has twenty million pot holes. I reckon that were my proposal to be taken up, it would be a matter of months only before the children of the county would reign supreme in matters mathematical.
Creative thinking is not only to be found in this column. It is also prevalent amongst the clergy and this may be because of the number of sermons they are required to prepare during a long tenure. It would never do for a cleric to mimic the TV channels by giving us endless repeats. Writing sermons is not the only way in which clergy exercise their creativity: In an earlier edition I recounted the tale of the vicar who burst into flames at Pauntley and was saved only by the prompt action of a parishioner leaping over the communion rail and beating out the flames with his walking stick. This summer, the same vicar was again involved in innovative thinking during the sprinkling of holy water onto the renovated walls of Bromsberrow church.
It was a balmy evening and about a hundred people had packed the sun drenched church. Light through the stained glass gave a warmth and cheeriness to the occasion and the world seemed rosy. However, as the time came to gather outside for the sprinkling the weather took a turn for the worse and storm clouds gathered.
After dipping his fingers into the bucket the vicar tried to direct the water towards the walls, but each time he tried a chilling gust of wind blew the drops onto the bystanders. Undaunted, the intrepid cleric waited for a gap in the rising wind and sensing the moment, seized the galvanised bucket with both hands and hurled its entire contents at the wall.
At this the congregation heartily applauded and then. led by the triumphant cleric, made their way down the narrow lane to the village hall for a hearty supper.
View from the Pew 