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Our familiar and long-serving street cleaner, Robert Squires, is off work - and off street-cleaning - after a collision in Oxford between his motorbike and a car. Holed up in the JR for a time, he is now home nursing a broken elbow in a sling and a host of painful cuts and bruises. He is convalescent, but will be unable to work - or to clean our streets - for some weeks to come, and meantime depends on others for transport. For the record, though, he reports that the JR's food was just fine. His road sweeping round is being taken over for the time being by Richard Berry.
Next year features the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and the nation is being mightily enjoined to celebrate. A prominent part of this exercise is an attempt literally to lighten our national gloom by setting a chain of 2012 bonfire beacons alight across the land. 2012 for 2012, see?
The parish clerk has been sent a glossy 8 page brochure signed by the Diamond Jubilee 'Pageantmaster,' containing detailed instructions on how to build and light the recommended celebratory flame. No ordinary bonfire this; a 6 metre high structure calling for seven 20 foot wooden poles in its manufacture and the construction of a six foot high tunnel into its centre (for internal access during building); the whole thing must then be covered to keep it dry in the days before ignition day, June the 4th. The dead hand of health and safety alas lies firmly on the exercise. Paraffin rags are permitted to light it with, but 'always ensure all excess paraffin is drained off rags before use' and 'if spilt on your clothes during the preparation of your beacon lighting you should replace those items of clothing before approaching any naked flames.' And of course always remember to put the lid back on any container. As an alternative to this somewhat intimidating exercise, we are told we can if we prefer purchase for the small fee of £299 plus VAT a Church Tower Beacon - fully assembled, fuel not included - to set atop our church.
I can't imagine the parish council being hugely keen on organising this, nor for that matter the PCC or the Rector being keen to carry the recommended fuel (two 19kg butane tanks) up the winding stair to the church roof. But I might be wrong. Others may well feel differently; and I have all the details.
An alternative might be to celebrate instead the parish clerk's 80th birthday, which falls three months before; but not, please, with a bonfire. Cake would be nice.
Our local protests about Hanson's second planning application to quarry sand in the village seems to be having some impact on the County's officers; the highways department has acknowledged what we have been telling them for some time - that the A420/Pine Woods Road junction is unsafe - and are recommending refusal of the application on this ground. However they have not ruled out negotiations with Hanson, and we may well yet see a repetition of the succession of proposals made last time to alter the junction to make it in their view 'acceptable.' Be aware!
Alan Boyce
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