...What correlation is there, one wonders, between the utter savage wretchedness of the world and the rising tide of priggish officialdom? The more, for example, feral youths run riot causing mischief, mayhem and indeed sadly sometimes murder, the more does the Constabulary of this land appear to spend its time nicking plain folk for putting jokey advertisements in shop windows or else carving their hedgerows into amusing if mildly erotic shapes.
Most likely said Constabulary, as I fear so many of us, have simply given up on the big things, because they are truly monstrous and largely untouchable. How much easier is it to harass a poor pensioner for cluttering up a shopping centre or the child chalking hopscotch on a pavement, than to tackle the Mad Max gangs that terrorise whole neighbourhoods?
This though is not a rant about policing in its narrow sense, but of the latest Town Hall nonsense that would seek to sanitise our cherished street names. For way down South - not here mercifully - one reads that Lewes Council is to take arms against 'Juggs Close' and to prevent any 'Typple Lane'.
Pompously declaring they will not countenance names that are "capable of deliberate misinterpretation", the local Council sets its silly Puritan hat against fun in any guise. (More cakes and ale cried Falstaff and so do I!)
The worst of it is that in so po-facedly deciding, they are at war with our heritage, history and tradition. The 'jugg' that so titillates - or not - the modern ear is, for example, the name of the basket in which fish was carried in that once great port of Lewes.
We too here have our ancient names for ancient ways, 'Shaggers Bottom' being but the best of them. Yes it is amusing in all so many silly ways, but it is also a remembrance of the valley in which rough woollen cloth was woven in centuries past. A light-industry long gone maybe, but I would as soon lose that connection to our Woldean history as I would see an Elizabethan house torn down for being equally archaic.
Now for myself - as Rector - I own I do prefer not actually to live in Shaggers Bottom as such. There would be complications, it is true, I could and do well live without. But H and E have already heard from their stern and committed master that should come the day our local Council looks askance at the name we'll be moving there the very next day and hang the lot of them say we all. (Well, do I say anyways.)
Is there a New Year equivalent for Yuletide 'Bah Humbug'? There jolly well should be!
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