Grantham. Car parking. Anger. Why we wont be shopping in Grantham in the future.

A couple of weeks ago Sharon parked in a South Kesteven District Council car park. She paid her money and put the ticket on the dashboard of her car. Unfortunately it was a blustery day and a gust of wind blew the ticket onto the front seat of the car. She didn't notice this so when she returned she found she had been given a £50 fine. She contacted the relevant office and sent in her ticket with an explanation of what had happened. They did not let her off the fine, however.The ticket wasn't displayed clearly according to regulations. She still had to pay the fine.

Naturally we were not pleased. We could have taken our appeal further but decided not to. This was because we have learned from long experience that getting involved in this kind of process  eats
 up your time and when you are self employed time is money. So we have paid the fine. The man in the office has won and no doubt he is pleased with himself for grabbing some cash for the South Kesteven coffers. Parking fines are such a convenient source of revenue!

Off course this business has a knock on effect that is not so beneficial to those coffers. Because we are angry -what did Sharon call them *%~** & **@**?- we are deterred from going into Grantham to shop now and certainly will not be using the South Kesteven Car Parks. They will be getting no more revenue from us so they are going to lose a lot more than £50 in revenue.

I'm not just talking about this because of our personal anger but because our experience is rather too common. Negotiating the one way system in Grantham is not easy and parking is difficult. Grantham used to have a bustling town centre and a wonderful market. Sadly there are few independent shops there now and the market is a sad remnant of what it used to be. I would like Grantham to be a thriving market town again that would be a joy to walk around. But it is unlikely to prosper unless The Council start making us feel welcome rather than making us feel like criminals or undesirable guests who are, in effect, being taxed to visit.

 And, of course, this story is being repeated in towns up and own the country, in towns that used to be called 'market towns' because people used to go to them to shop.

The Last Evenings of Summer.

The last evenings of summer.

In my garden wasps swirl around the grapes I picked and laid out for the sun to turn into raisins. I’d Googled it,  but it didn’t work. All I got was mouldy, vespid masticated globules . Blotchy. Disturbingly scrotal. Most definitely inedible.  Not fit for  mixing with my morning porridge oats.

Nature is not kind, it is not PC. Nature bites, stings, and dribbles and allows God denying  parasites to thrive: guinea worms, tape worms that encapsulate in the cerebral cortex, fungal infections that provoke hot sweats and itchiness in  inaccessible regions of one’s anatomy, liver flukes, toxoplasmosis, unrecognised  spores that colonise the central nervous systems….the theological implications  are immense.

Yesterday walked down the back lane. In the hedgerow I plucked at succulent blackberries. The last one that I raised to my mouth was topped with a grub that was so remarkable for its vivacity that I just had to stare  at it…a Naked Lunch moment…Not sure whether my inner feeling was one of awe or one of horror.  Or Sartrean nausea. [Sorry spellcheck doesn’t recognise ‘Sartrean’].

Round the next bend, just beyond the Devon Brook, lay a dead badger. Snout crushed by a car.  Grotesque, mocking  grin. Vortex of blowflies hovering above it, gyrating elegantly  in the odd puff of breeze. The badger was female. It was, clearly, pregnant.

I was glad to reach the top road where the air was fresh. But  I had to dodge rat-running Range Rovers that seemed intent on provoking me to play chicken. I observed further road kill there, and, amongst the rough tussocks and thistles of the verge, the junk food detritus of modern England. Interestingly there were more Red Bull cans than Coke cans, and more Chinese take away cartons than Indian ones.  There were, also, Foster’s cans, Old English Cider cans, Budweiser cans and Stella Artois cans. But  I searched in vain for the Carlsberg Special cans that the late and much missed Andy K. used to leave. This made me feel sad.

There is so much going on that your average watercolour  artist misses. Like the impossibly delicate and detailed cirrus clouds that I observed  this evening, like the young  swallows that  were swarming around the village church’s spire, twittering excitedly in anticipation of their long trip to Africa and like the bumble bees being busy, as they are proverbially  supposed to be,  on the lavender on my neighbour, Martin’s, ironstone wall.

I come in, pour a glass of Port. I want to  be on my own. I want to be with people. It’s that time of year: my birthday [I don’t celebrate it anymore], the drawing in of the nights , the final croppings of runner beans and courgettes. Ideally I would like to open a bottle of Malt whisky and sit up till four in the morning with a sympathetic friend and talk about life, books, the minutiae of early memories,  my wild speculations about pagan gods, my innermost feelings and fears, about art, about  cats, about events and incidents that are in danger of dissolving into the void and above all, about people, both the loathed and the loved.

It’s that time of year…and I’m going to pour myself just one more, small, glass of port. I’m feeling that feeling that is one part nostalgia, one part sadness, one part euphoria and one part something else that I haven’t  got the slightest comprehension of.