The Curmudgeon

This was the rare politically anguished questions to be heard issuing from the windows of the Old Schoolhouse this week when the strictly non-political parish council was having its monthly meeting.

Now I could refine that question. I could ask what the whole or rural England and Wales has done to Johnny Two Jags, for ever since he got his ham-like hands on the levers of power he has been doing his level best to grind the noses of country folk in the dirt.

His very first action in office was to ban the bypasses around several Dales villages just as work was about to begin.

That has sentenced those poor villagers to another eight years of traffic noise, fumes and the threat of instant death under the wheels of a 150 mph motorbike ridden by a pot-bellied businessman in his 50s.

In recent weeks, he has sneered and jeered and delighted in telling pro-hunting country people to submit to the will of the townies in banning the hunt and sentencing tens of thousands of hounds to death.

But as the Beggarsdale Beagles have been in suspended animation ever since the Hyphen-Hyphens left the Big House more or less for good, that is not the latest grief that Prezza is threatening to inflict on the dale.

For the cause of Cousin Kate's tortured question in her role as chairwoman of the council was a circular letter pointing out that the Deputy Prime Minister believes that more permanent sites should be provided for gypsies - and did Beggarsdale have any under-used land that could perform such a function?

Now before the PC brigade start to shout and moan and write angry letters to t'Editor (although they have probably started already without reading the end of this sentence) our village has had a pretty friendly relationship with the Romanies going back for many generations.

For most of the 20th century, and probably well before that, they stopped on their way to and the way back from the Appleby Horse Fair, parking their gaily painted horse-drawn vans on a spare piece of land between the quarry and Coney Wood.

OK, they probably poached a few rabbits. Perhaps they even baked the odd hedgehog in clay, as legend has it. But they shopped at the post office, were generally polite, their children were clean, they were quite good fun in the Beggars' Arms and - best of all - they cleaned up their own mess.

But these, I would point out, were genuine Romanies, knights of the open road, proud guardians of a culture allegedly going back to ancient Egypt. They had a deep understanding of nature and were keen to protect it.

That began to change in the 1990s. The horse-drawn vans became fewer and fewer and now, the Romanies have all but disappeared. They have been replaced by itinerants, travelling in big American pick-ups towing huge, gaudy modern caravans.

What they leave behind when they finally go is almost indescribable.

Not just any scraps of metal they cannot sell but gas bottles, old mattresses, oil and petrol cans, discarded clothes, mountains of paper and cardboard.

But the worst bit is the paddock of Coney Wood Cottage, which they use as a lavatory.

It is rumoured that old Two Jags will be put out to grass after the next election. Hope he doesn't choose the paddock.

o The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.