THERE may be a reader out there, a summer visitor to the Yorkshire Dales perhaps, who lives under that wonderful 'roses round the door' delusion that country life is one long procession of slow, somnolent, summer days and short, hay scented nights with the air trilling with nightingale song.

What a load of compost. These past few weeks in Beggarsdale have been full of suspicion, surprise and sinister sightings. Turmoil is everywhere.

For a start, the quarry problem is still with us although the council have finally agreed to meet a delegation from the village next week. We fear that the vast hole in the ground is to be used as a landfill site for urban waste and that could virtually mean the end of the village as a viable community.

Already, more than half of the residents have made plans to leave. These include most of the offcumdens, who are anxious to sell up whilst the property market is still sky-high locally: they want to be out before the quarry news leaks and prices tumble.

We locals, who can't afford to move, are resigned to a life of noise, traffic fumes, foul smells and even fouler rats and insects. But if the rest scarper, will the pub and post office still be viable?

Then came a sighting that has left us all with furrowed brows. Last Sunday, Hermione Hyphen-Hyphen, heir to the Big House, was in the village. She spends most of her time in London or on her parents' yacht in either the Mediterranean or the Caribbean depending on the seasons.

Whenever a Hyphen-Hyphen appears in the Dale, we know something is up for sale. Whenever her dad needs a new spinnaker or satellite navigation system, another cottage or parcel of land gets sold.

Trouble is, there's not much of the estate left. The family that once owned virtually everything except the parish church - and they appointed the incumbents there - including the Beggars' Arms, is now down to a couple of cottages and perhaps a couple of hundred acres.

Now Hermione is usually in charge of any such wheelings and dealings but her appearance in the village was unusually fleeting. She was seen entering the Old Vicarage, now home to Maggots Money-Grubber, and leaving an hour or so later. But she never even put in an appearance at the Beggars' and that, for Hermione, is something of a first.

However, on top of all these local concerns a much darker, wider and sinister cloud has fallen over the Dale: the ample silhouette of that East Yorkshireman John Prescott.

Two Jabs, as he is known for his pugilistic skills, has decided that he wants to abolish the countryside and put townies from Leeds and Bradford, Sheffield and Hull, in charge of a new Yorkshire parliament, which is about as popular as a porcupine in a sauna.

Under these plans, all communities will elect their representatives on a per capita basis and that has left we rural folk in a quandary: there are so few people living in our part of Yorkshire that we will be entitled to elect just under one half of a member. Just which half we will get can't be guaranteed but, knowing this Government's total lack of understanding of rural affairs, it will be, in pantomime terms, the back end of the donkey.

And there are still people out there willing to pay a fortune to live in the countryside! My advice is, find somewhere more peaceful. Like Afghanistan or the Gaza Strip !

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