On The Stump...

...Eyes still watering from one's own last post - not to mention mind still reeling as to 'how' and 'why' and 'please tell me that did not happen, please tell me that was just an urban myth' - one returns to the slightly less surreal world of campaigning for local Parish Council elections, which is underway in earnest and with due ferocity of course.

H will no doubt interject with some legally privileged musings at some point as she and Mildred are, naturally, one of the main 'parties' in this election. One does use the phrase 'political party' with a certain caution here, as technically everyone is meant to be an independent and howsoever blue or red might be their national affiliation or their private leanings, neither is supposed to be the flag under which one steers one's ship when it comes to the Parish Council.

The differentiations of 'left' or 'right' or 'wobbling in the middle whilst trying to be understanding of all reasonable views' (H's take on my own fence-sitting position!) are, indeed, of little relevance here. Ours is a more antique aggregation of forces, more akin to Italian renaissance family power struggles, or perhaps - sticking to one's own local land for an exemplum - the Iceni versus the Mercians. (Another long-lasting feud that was 'put to bed', as it were, through an alliance by marriage. King Anna, one recalls, being one of the more bellicose of the combatants around that time: much, one assumes, as the eponymous hero of Johnny Cash's song 'A Boy Named Sue' forever doomed to squabble and fight because his Papa named him after a girl.)

What we come round to then are strong local magnetic forces of power - sometimes located within a family though often just within a single, powerful individual personality - that compel or repel adherence among any who come within their range of attraction.

Simple adherence to one or other such forces is, understandably, the line of least resistance most often and more easily followed by the many. Never let it be said that the Swiss or the Swedes have it easy in sticking to a global policy of neutrality! Only by openly or tacitly owing allegiance to one of the competing power bases are you allowed to rest in peace. Acts of active conversion, though, are rare - Mildred may not delight in knowing that Peggy is of the Mrs J camp, but she will rarely seek to mount a raid on her loyalty in the hope of carrying off the prize of altered allegiance.

We who, however, whether by nature or - as in my case - by the nurture of our position in local society, are seen as not 'belonging', are open season prey for persuasion, seduction, exhortation, berating - or any other means of inducing - to take the shilling of one of the competing Kings or Queens (Queens mostly it has to be said and of these mainly though not exclusively of the female gender).

In this regard I was much struck by a comment a frail yet elegant old lady made in a television programme regarding village life the other week. She talked of her relationship with her faith - that of Roman Catholicism - and remarked that she had spent many years questioning some tenets of the required beliefs and also many shaming aspects of her Church's behaviour. (One thinks - as she did - of paedophile priests and hangs one's head and weeps for the very shame of it.)

Finally though she had achieved a personal reconciliation that I, for one, applaud. She might not 'believe' - she said - but she did 'belong' and that was in the end such a comfort and so good a place to be. We all crave belonging - whether the womb, the job, the club or the faith - and this all the more makes one's necessary stand of so publicly 'not belonging' to any local power group so taxing and so wearing.

My own parents told me - and I vaguely recalled the matter - that as a child I would take all the election posters that came through our letter box and paste each one in my bedroom window. Thus South-East I was a Conservative, East you would find me a Liberal, and by the South I was turned to raw, radical (as it was in those days) Labour.

Quite sweet really, if totally barking. No wonder one became a vicar. Though one who would happily take a fortnight's retreat at the Abbey of Q during local election time!

Must pause here - the telephone is ringing once more. Will doubtless by either Mildred or Mrs J wanting a quiet word!