We watched the last episode of Midsomer Murders this week - at least the last to star John Nettles - there may be others starring someone else. I don’t normally watch the programme, but it seemed the end of en era and therefore that made it interesting even if the programme itself wasn’t. The show makes me realise that we are, in this locality, somewhat 'murder light.' You see, my neighbour is a retired detective inspector. Just the sort of person around whom murderers ought to be flocking, their dastardly deeds requiring just the agile mind of a retired sleuth to untangle. But then we can't compete I suppose with that homicidal hell-hole of Midsomer.
In fact the last murder in Cowbridge, so far as I can recall, took place about a dozen years ago when some drug-crazed hoodlum crashed into our local jewellers and demanded money with menaces in the shape of a carving knife. The jeweller, being an honourable if somewhat foolhardy man, told him to get lost. Whereupon tragedy struck. The hoodlum ran off, was rugby tackled by a stout member of the public and is now serving life at Her Majesty's pleasure. Plenty of sad pointlessness, grief and bewilderment, but not much of a plot for the little grey cells. Fortunately, this sort of thing doesn't happen often, I thought. Or does it and am I worried?
What prompted these reflections was the local county crime survey dropping through the letterbox yesterday morning, promising me the chance to win £100 in Argos vouchers if I filled it in and nobody nabbed the vouchers in the meantime. How do I feel about crime, the anonymous statistician wanted to know?
"Has crime gone up or down, in the past year," it asked matter-of-factly. "Or has it stayed the same." Fortunately, we live in one of the greener and pleasanter spots of this land and so crime is not something I think about very much. My car was broken into twenty years ago and about ten years ago someone stole a bicycle from the garden shed, but that (touch wood) is about it.
The interrogation continued through five more pages though fortunately a tick box on the survey form allowed me to say, "Never, really thought abaht it, guv" - or words to that effect. The survey also solicited my views about the offences to which the police should be paying more attention. Here I found myself ticking the anti-social behaviour box rather a lot - not that there is, again, too much of it here.
But what these surveys fail to ask you (indeed I wonder whether the politicians are aware either) is the newspaper and elephant question. You know, when the eccentric is asked why he is out in the garden at midnight, reading the newspaper. He replies that he does so to keep the elephants at bay. "But there aren't any elephants in Godalming," protests his interlocutor. "Precisely so," says your man.
I'd even put up with a bit more anti-social behaviour if I knew that the police were engaged on preventing more important crimes like murder, assault, robberies and so on. It is true I do find the noise and loutish behaviour of the drunken Cowbridge demi-monde on a Saturday night a matter of distaste and concern, but, by being concerned, may I not be helping to divert resources away from more serious uses of police time. In the good old days the police locked up drunks for the night and fined them 25 shillings in the morning. Today’s equivalent (perhaps £50) might be a useful source of revenue to our cash strapped government and a formidable deterrent to boot.
The survey concluded inevitably by asking intrusive details about the type of citizen you were, whence you came and what you usually got up to in the privacy of the back stalls at the Odeon cinema. Sadly by this point the option of ticking the "Never, really thought abaht it, guv" box had run out.
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For Kathryn Eastman who writes at ‘The Nut Press’ (see the sideline to this blog): a picture. This is ‘Badger the Otter’ - a delightful door stop that I thought at first was a Badger but who turned out later to be an Otter. Why else would he be wearing a fisherman’s gilet and sporting a creel with a fish sticking out of it? So he’s an Otter named Badger. And he gives me writing advice, sometimes.
He’s feeling a little undignified at the moment; for he’s wearing a nappy. Young grandchild Theo, who is two tomorrow, has been wandering the house nappy-ing up all the soft toys he can find, including a penguin. Thank you, Theo! So far Gus the Gorilla has escaped this indignity. He lives on a tall shelf. Now I wonder whether guerrilla nappy-ing up of soft toys counts as a crime?
