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.