THE SAGA OF REGGIE'S DRIVE

CAPTAIN (QM) Thurston (Retired) has decided to set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme in the village. He'll be in charge of it, of course.
Reggie Thurston and his 'mem', as he always refers to her, Gloria, retired a few years ago and moved here last Easter, since when they have really tried to fit in. The mem business puzzles me a little, I know that old military men have always picked up a smattering of Hindustani but Munchen Gladbach is hardly Uttar Pradesh and Reggie is not really any sort of an old India hand.
Anyway ever since he's been here he seems to have had a bit of a bee in his bonnet about security. Take his car, not that you'll have much chance, he guards it like the Crown Jewels. He always keeps it in the garage - and by that I mean always. When it's not in use, it's either moving along the road at a sedate pace or it's well and truly under lock and key.
In the morning he goes down to the village store to get his paper. Out of the house he strides, unlocks the garage, strolls in and reverses the car out. He then jumps out and locks the garage door again. He then repeats the whole performance with the gates.
When he comes back he enacts the whole time-consuming act in reverse. A three minute trip has turned into a 20 minute epic. Within the hour he's usually off somewhere or the other and has to go through the whole rigmarole again, sometimes it happens four or five times a day. I asked him about it once, "You can't be too careful," he told me, "there's all sorts of undesirables about - travellers, hippies, subversives you name them. They'd steal the shirt off of your back if you gave them half the chance." I didn't feel that there was a lot I could say to that. His house is fortified like one of the establishments he might well have spent his working life in, there's burglar alarms, chains on the door and locks on all of the windows - then there's the security lights.
He had a company from Dorchester come and install at them at, no doubt, enormous expense. They've got a built-in detector so that should anyone walk up his drive during the hours of darkness they are immediately flooded in the brightest light imaginable. The lads at the Lark Ascending took them as an insult and a challenge.
For several weeks a few of the younger chaps would take a walk home past Reggie and Gloria's house after closing time. The idea was for a volunteer to vault the gate and run up the drive towards the house. His score depended on the distance covered before the lights came on, making the whole place look like the old Checkpoint Charley on a busy night. Needless to say Reggie did not see the funny side of this new village entertainment. In fact he used to bang on the windows and shout hideous threats at the trespassers, he would have opened the windows but they were locked and I don't suppose that he could turn the keys up at short notice.
There had been some fairly reasonable attempts, I understand, with one or two of the fitter chaps almost reaching the front door when Reggie went and put the hammer on the game by wrapping barbed wire around the tops of his gates.
The only ally he has managed to find for his crusade against crime, so far, is the local policeman, PC Stratton. Usually he has about one case of cycling without a light and a couple of noisy parties to deal with in this village each year so I suppose that he feels the new organisation will help to justify his existence. Certainly no one who has lived here for more than a very short while thinks that assorted footpads and villains are something to worry themselves about unduly.
Everyone else seems to be consumed with apathy but Reggie has been sticking up little notices all over the place. They invite householders to telephone him and discuss 'the rising tide of lawlessness and crime which is engulfing our society'. It might be engulfing some places but since Peter Lavell stopped poaching and Ted Throssel got himself a television licence there's been little signs of a dribble around here, yet alone a deluge.
Still I suppose it all gives Bertie something to keep himself active. It must be a bit of a come-down going from running a busy miltary stores to living in a peaceful Dorset village. Nobody resents what he's up to, they just find it slightly amusing and completely irrelevant to their everyday lives. Bert, the landlord of the Lark Ascending has a theory about it, as he does about most things, "It's this fear that does it. If he took a bit more notice of what was going on around him and a bit less of what he saw on television he wouldn't be so frightened and could start to enjoy his life a bit more". In the mean time several of his regulars are practising pole vaulting ready for the next episode in the saga of Reggie's drive.

THE GREAT CAR BOOT SALE

IT must be summer, the roses are in well-developed bud, the cricket team has had several matches and Bert held a boot sale in the car park of The Lark Ascending last Sunday morning.
Dolly Hitchen, from the shop, didn't like it but, there again, there's not much that Dolly does like. She said that it would keep people away from Matins in St Thomas' but since the turn out there is usually pretty good no one else seemed to worry about it and the parson even dropped in after he'd finished work for the morning. He didn't buy anything but at least he showed willing.
I've been to a few of these things and it always puzzles me who buys all these out-dated copies of Reader's Digest. George Dawber usually gets a couple of boxes, if they're going cheaply enough, shredded up they make excellent bedding for his horses, but wherever do the rest of them go? Perhaps the residents of the Lark's Mead estate put them in book cases to impress the neighbours when they come in for a barbecue. There again, I often wonder who got them in the first place.
I managed to get hold of a couple of reels of 15 amp fuse wire, a Dorset Regiment cap badge and a lithograph of Lake Constance at dawn. Not a bad morning's work really. I've never tried selling at these affairs; I really can't imagine anyone wanting to buy anything so useless that I'd be prepared to let it go. Buying? That's a different matter, I usually turn up something that I can find a place for, it doesn't always make me popular when I get home but I do it all the same. I'm still trying to find the ideal spot for the stuffed owl I picked up last year.
Of course Bert's shindigs are small compared to some of these sales. At the best of times he has trouble getting more than a dozen cars round the side of his place, still the £2 each he charges to hopeful dealers goes to the village hall funds and it usually ensures that he's got a few people waiting on his doorstep when he opens his doors for trade at, more or less, 12 o'clock, depending on where Constable Stratton is at the time.
Say what you like about car boot sales, at least ours does bring a fair number of the locals into something like a community. Years ago it would have been whist or beetle drives in the hall, a children's sports day on the field or the annual flower show, now we come together to sell each other our cast offs, times move on I suppose and the effects of television and the car are changing us all.
Still we had a hum dinger of an annual fete last year. In the afternoon the green was lined with tables and all the village children had a celebration tea, supplied by the stalwarts of the WI. Later on there was a party for the adults on the self-same green and in and out of our two pubs, this was followed by a few fireworks and a few more visits to the local hostelries.
The evening was livened up a little when Justie Pilbeam walked up to the bar and asked Bert for a spritzer without the wine. That gave the proceedings just the right touch of humour, something that Justie isn't always aware that she's supplying. All-in-all everyone, except Ted Arbinger, agreed that the whole day was a great success.
Poor old Ted celebrated a little too well and woke up the next morning to find that he'd lost his pocket watch and his top plate. We all mucked in to help him search for them but they haven't come to light yet. Still he'll be able to replace them - perhaps at one of Bert's sales.
He tells me that I don't appreciate his true feelings because I‘m not as old as him and both of the missing items had sentimental value. He had won the watch at a rifle range stall on Blackpool sea front on the one and only holiday he ever had. The dentures he'd had since the old King was on the throne and he'd grown very comfortable with them and he always thought of them as a reminder of the days when he'd served in the army. There's not a lot you can say to console a man with those views, especially at the time of a grievous loss.
Bert and most of the locals was fairly pleased with the day of the car boot sale and he intends to make the markets a monthly affair this summer. So long as there's no unpleasantness like last year's fracas over the disputed ownership of a set of dentist’s equipment everything should go swimmingly.
So another summer moves on. Before we know it we'll be having the longest day and, with luck, a bit of hot weather, just so long as we don't get another hose pipe ban - the last one caused more trouble than all the water in the beer at The Gates of Calais is worth. But I'll save that one for another time.

TRANSPORT OF DELIGHT

HAVE you seen many kangaroos wandering about the highways and byways of Dorset? I must admit that I've never spotted one.
Which all makes me wonder why Gary Pilbeam has got a set of, what he describes as, ‘roo’ bars on the front of his car? I call it a car but to tell you the truth it looks more like a mini pantechnicon what with its huge, slab like, sides, high doors and monstrous bonnet. It looks ready to take on a rhinoceros to me, yet alone one of Skippy's cousins.
Mind you his wife, Justie, probably needs the four wheel drive when she negotiates the hill between here and the supermarket in Bridport, its near-on 1 in 100 in places and can get particularly nasty after a drop of rain, presumably that's where having a sump a good Olympic high jump off of the ground comes in handy too, you never know when you're going to have to plough through a flash flood in these parts.
Not that I'm one to knock Gary and Justie, they've been well into village life
in the 18 months since they moved here. Within a week Gary had bought himself a tweed hat and a walking stick and Justie soon filled bowls with countryside pot-pourri and placed them in strategic spots in the lounge of their detached 'Squire's Manor' model four bedroomed, detached house on the Lark's Mead Estate.
It's the kangaroo bars that defeat me. Gary told me, over a pint of IPA in The Lark Ascending one evening, that they were an optional extra and set him back 400 notes, which means pounds, I suppose. Why?
I mean why have them, not why do they cost that, after all who am I to complain if the local garage manages to make a few shillings out of something that is no earthly use at all? One other thing that puzzles me is a how a vehicle, which was basically designed for expeditions into the Amazon rain forests, for crossing tracts of desert or for getting soldiers into position in the middle of mucky old battlefields, can always be so clean.
I've never seen it other than gleaming as though it had just driven out of the showroom. You should the state of old Ted Arbinger's Land Rover, the last time it saw a wash Muffin the Mule was a national hero and rugby players counted in threes. Mind you I suppose a farmer gives his transport a bit more rugged use than does an account executive in an advertising agency. Tools of the trade and all that, I should imagine. When all's said and done you never see old Ted using a lap top computer in the saloon bar, nor the public, come to that but Gary has been known to.
I wonder about these things. There are others in the village get quite upset about them. It's been the same ever since they first built Lark's Mead. The trouble is it brought in a lot of people who aren't exactly used to living in rural surroundings. Still once they got used to the fact that there wasn't a health club and sauna behind the parish hall, a bistro next to the post office and that the nearest Bert got to serving bottles of Mexican beer was watching Viva Zapata on television they seemed to start to settle in as best they could.
Soon most of the locals started to accept them and include them in village events. Without them one of our pubs would probably have had to close and I doubt that Dolly Hitchen's shop would still be open without the extra trade they've given her. So on balance the newcomers really are a blessing.
But there's always a few, aren't there? You hear a lot of silly talk about 'incoming cockney yuppies telling us how we ought to do things' and the like from a hand full of the locals but that's usually late at night and after a drop or two of cider has been taken. So far none of the estate dwellers have been thrown in the village pond or a combine harvester and one or two look like getting regular places in the cricket team so things can't be all bad.
We used to be real country village, now we supply commuters to Yeovil, Taunton and Dorchester. I suppose that's progress of a sort. I can't help wondering though how these new countrymen would feel if a few of our farm workers were to take to going up to one of those towns, dressing in designer suits, listening to MP3 players all the time and drinking in trendy wine bars, with amusement I suspect.
So why is it that they all want to come in here, and villages like this, and look like they imaging the locals ought to? They do stick out a bit you know. In fact about as much as a kangaroo would getting himself knocked down by a Japanese jeep in deepest Dorset.

GEORGE'S OLD NAG

IT'S that time of year again. The buds on the trees are swelling nicely and starting to burst, the evenings are getting noticeably longer and George Dawber is training Lucky Laddo for the point to point again.
I doubt that a horse has ever been saddled with such an inappropriate name. Laddo's had four outings so far and he's never managed to reach the finish yet. Even the on-course bookies, not noted for the generosity of their odds at this type of event, are seriously considering offering four figure numbers to one on his winning. George will be a taker, of course. I've heard him described as a wild optimist but I think that he's usually a bit more cheerful than that.
Training consists of a morning trot along the verge of the main road to Bridport and the horse doesn't get any at all. George reckons that he doesn't want his Laddo to be 'stale' when he faces the tapes on the big day. All this has resulted, so far, in two refusals at the first fence, a fall at the same obstacle and last year when '16 hands of pure strength and athleticism' , as George describes the nag, didn't even have the courtesy to take a short jog with the other entrants but simply ambled round in circles at the starting line. Riding in point to points can be a lonely business for those with mounts that aren't stuffed to the ears with the competitive spirit.
Down at The Lark Ascending, our local, Bert, the landlord and a mean judge of horse flesh, reckons that Lucky Laddo will be doing well to make it into the paddocks of the equestrian version of heaven when the Grim Reaper finally catches up with him, and he won't have to break into a sweat to do that, there's children on tricycles around here that could catch up with that particular candidate for the glue factory. Of course George will have none of it - he's convinced that he's got a potential Grand National winner on his hands.
The rest of us in the village have mixed feelings about the whole affair. After all local pride is something that can't be ignored. Our village gets few enough sporting legends passing through it so a horse, even one that never really gets going, that takes part in any sort of competition has got to be supported to the hilt, even if not backed, pride's pride but good money thrown away on ridiculous bets is something altogether different.
To save us all a great deal of embarrassment and money old Trevor has started his own book, he's offering odds on the type of thing that a proper turf accountant wouldn't even consider. So you can get evens on Lucky Laddo lasting a furlong, 5-1 on him attempting the first fence, 25-1 on his getting over, round or through it and 100-1 on his finishing. There isn't a figure for his winning, Trevor know that it would be an absolute waste of time working it out.
Instead of being pleased at the amount of village interest his racing pretensions are raising George has got very huffy about the whole matter and has even threatened to take his thirst, wallet and custom to The Gates of Calais along the road, something that would hit Bert's takings considerably.
Now it appears that to run a book you need a licence, something that Trevor completely overlooked, or didn't know in the first place. Sadly the whole business has come to the attention of PC Stratton, who would once have been known as the village bobby but now describes himself, rather pretentiously, I think, as a community constable. Trevor suspects that a member of the Women's Institute jam making committee 'grassed him up' but Stratton is keeping as dignified a silence as he can manage about the source of his information. Whatever it was he's hot on the tracks of this little bit of rural criminality and is determined to catch our very own Mr Big red handed.
All this has led to some strange goings-on the saloon bar of the inn on the green. When business of a gambling nature is being conducted the curtains are drawn and the doors bolted, something which has mystified more than one passing motorist hoping for nothing more than a pint of foaming lager and a packet of cardboard crisps at eight o'clock in the evening as he makes his way homeward from Dorchester.
Now the village is divided as it hasn't been since the unpleasantness over the girl from the Land Army, the gas mask and the GI from Maine. Mind you everyone's only heard the story from their parents so perhaps it's been a bit exaggerated with the passing of time. Anyway there's pro-betters and anti-betters and the sooner the whole matter is sorted out and George's reluctant charger gets put out to grass the better. There's enough troubles enough around here already without adding to them.