At about ten past nine, the doorbell rings, and there framed on the welcome mat are Mr and Mrs Lightfoot. He's bald. She's fat. He's smiling too much. She not enough.
'Sorry we're a bit late,' he says, as I shake their hands and herd them through the hall and into the living room. 'We've had a problem with the van,' he explains to Maggie, 'it's been playing up for the past few days. It started with a knocking whenever we went downhill. I thought at first it was the axle, didn't I, Gladys?' She remains impassive. 'So once we arrived at the NUCL site last night…' (Knuckle? They're bare fist-fighting fans?!) '… Oh sorry you'll have to forgive us. We forget not everybody's got a caravan. That's National Union of Caravan Lovers. I'm the assistant regional representative for Hertfordshire. Sorry, I'm wandering off the subject. Anyway I was underneath the van for two hours last night. First I had the cam crank regulator bolt off, but that wasn't it, so then I…' About eight minutes later, I manage to ask them if they'd like a cup of tea. The Jaffa cakes are already arranged on the coffee table in an attractive configuration.
'No thanks,' says Gladys, 'we'd just like to get on with it.'
'Nice back garden,' says Cedric, peering through the French windows.
'Oh, thank you,' says Maggie. It's her department.
'Do you get a lot of noise from the school across the road?' asks Mrs L.
'Oh, that. Good lord, no,' I reply. 'It's not like living in London you know. This is Stow-on-the-Wold.' I give what aims to be an indulgent laugh, but then wonder if it came over as mocking.
'The children here are very well behaved,' chips in Maggie.
'And quiet,' I add.
The Lightfoots look at each other. Then he mumbles something about needing to get to the supermarket before it closes, and thanks us for our time. She says, 'It's not as big as in the photo, is it?' And he adds that they'll be in touch, before doing an embarrassed sidestep to join her as she passes through the front door.
With minor variations to the preliminaries, this conversation is repeated with the Handsovs, Longarms, Chummy-Headlocks and approximately 196 other sets of viewers, the overwhelming majority of whom we never hear from again. The only significant departures from this model come when, through the front window, we see potential purchasers pull up outside, then drive off without even getting out of their cars.
So after two months of this, we surrender, and decide to put it with an agent. Apart from anything else, the planners are getting restless again. In fact there are signs of a full-scale insurgency brewing.
CHAPTER 12
GLIBPERT'S REVENGE
An email has arrived from Anthea.
'I don't believe this!!!!!!!!! Give me a call please so we can discuss this.'
She's forwarded a message from Bella, who says:
'Dear Anthea,
'We have a problem with this application as the conservation team have objected. I have attached a copy of their response.'
Then comes a report, headed 'From Gilbert Gradfram-Polly.'
It's long. I scan it.
'… historic structure… However… relies on an extension… would dominate the existing building… In addition… rear of extension would appear as large expanse of masonry… uncharacteristic element within the setting of the neighbouring cottage.'
Then there are three options with boxes to be ticked: CONSENT /REFUSE /REFER TO SECRETARY OF STATE. The tick's against the middle one.
Maggie says, 'It makes you want to say "Bugger 'em" and demolish it.'
For Maggie to say this, it's dire. I call Anthea, who reckons that our chances of getting anything beyond the existing footprint of the garages and workshop are now counting backwards fast towards zero. 'The problem is,' she points out, 'it's going to be a loss of face for them to go back on what they've put in writing. The only thing I can think of is for you to have a chat direct with this conservation officer. I think he's new, and it's his first job.'
'Yes, he's twelve next birthday,' I say, explaining I've met him.
OK, nothing to lose now I guess. Before I phone him, Maggie spells out some advice on how to handle the encounter, then gives me a good luck pat on the back, and – when he answers his mobile at the second ring –- I come out fighting.
My opening moves are designed to get him to lower his guard. I ask if he's happy to talk about his recommendation. He says, 'Yes.' I stress how much we agree with his description of the building as an 'historic structure.' He murmurs, 'OK, good.'
So I move on to Round Two: softening him up. I've got a couple of sharp jabs ready. He's mentioned that the back of our extension would produce a 'large expanse of masonry,' but it won't be seen from anywhere but the car park.
His block is weak, 'Yes, but it will be seen.' OK, but has he noticed that the barn just up the road has one side which is also 'an expanse of masonry' – without a single window – roughly five times bigger than what we're proposing? I hear the air expelled from his lungs with the force of the blow.
But he bounces back off the ropes. 'The fundamental point is that this is within the grounds of a listed building, so as an historic structure, the outbuilding must be maintained within its existing footprint.' And he follows up with a straight right, quoting clause and sub-clause from the relevant Act.
But he over-reaches himself and starts to lose his balance. 'An extension,' he says, trying to build on his last hit, 'would be detrimental to the look of the facade.'
He's toppling forward, and it needs only the slightest biff from me to drop him to the canvas. The facade, which he's so keen to protect, I point out, is currently a line of battered garage doors. I can see he knows he's losing now, so I'm on to him before the referee can intervene. We have an existing permission to demolish the whole structure, I point out. Which does he think would spoil the facade more: a small discreet extension, or tearing the whole lot down?
There's a pause while he takes a mandatory count of eight. Then he's struggling to his knees. 'I wasn't asked to decide between competing proposals,' he whines, trying to block my assault.
I can see he's groggy, and he retreats, staggering across the ring. 'I'm only making a recommendation.' It's a weak counter. 'This is not a final decision. I'll discuss it with the case officer.' And that's how it stands at the end of the bout.
The points are mostly mine, I reckon. I look over for approval from Maggie, who's been listening on the other phone.
'I said, "Make sure you cuddle him,"' she sighs. 'I didn't say, "Make sure you clobber him".'
Oh.
It is at this point that I begin to believe we will not get the planning consent we need, and that we'll have to sell up to the builder who wants to demolish our old stable so he can erect the new repro Cotswold cottage instead.
I'm puzzled as much as morose. I need some fresh air. Maggie's already left for the shop, shaking her head. I wander into the Square, where the vicar gives me a clarion-volumed 'Lovely Morning', which from my side of the words is untrue, but which it would be churlish to reject. So, lying, I smile and agree with him, as Black Beauty lumbers past. My mind is still full of unchristian thoughts about planners and conservation officers. I'm thinking to myself, 'I bet the builders in Hogsthorpe didn't have any of this bother. Presumably all they did was pop into the council offices in Louth [home of the famous large cow] one Friday afternoon and say, "Oh by the way, we thought we'd let you know we've got a couple of our lads starting in Hogsthorpe Monday morning. Going to put up four thousand bungalows. OK?" To which the planner probably retorted, "Spot on, Garry. Much appreciate the tip-off."'
I'm starting to believe that this tale has now acquired definitive villains: the evil masters of the planning process at Westminster and their diabolic minions in Cirencester. Or am I just indulging in self justification?
I turn into the High Street as the bells in the church tower fill Stow's Market Square. Stow has the heaviest peal of bells of any parish church in Gloucestershire. Have you ever noticed that the genuine sound of bells being rung by half
a dozen people pulling hard on bell ropes, rather than some synthesised recording, is one of an arrhythmic jangle? With these monstrous pieces of metal, weighing over a ton each, swinging about over your head, it's almost impossible to achieve the constant beat of a conventional musical instrument. But the power and the beauty of the sound more than make up for the lack of rhythm. I've loved church bells ever since I was at Oxford, where the landlord of The Turl pub complained they were disturbing his drinkers. And one of the things I'm looking forward to at our new house is being able to hear from there the changes rung at St. Edward's.
With my ears filled to brimming, I look around the Square at the mishmash of shops, houses, pubs and cafes on all sides. No two roofs are the same height, none slant at the same angle. No two buildings have the same window frames, and many are bent and warped. One facade sticks out from its neighbour, while another tilts sideways a little. Some have pillars, the next has a porch, some are flat-chested, others have shopfronts that look like joke spectacles on a wrinkled face. The tiles on the rain-stained roofs sag, or poke up and are spattered with knobbles of near-black moss. The walls are all different colours. Forget that nonsense about 'honey-dipped' stonework. That's seeing things as you think they ought to be. Take a proper look. The colour of Stow's buildings is more like cheese that's been dropped in mud, then stamped on a few times. Cheddar mostly, but sometimes Double Gloucester, seeping through a grey or even black covering, then topped off with the odd blotch of lichen in mustard or off-white. However mellow Cotswold stone was in the quarry, it soon weathers on the wall. So all this around me is a higgledy piggledy delight of refusal to conform. I'm not trying to pretend that Stow-on-the-Wold is the Keith Richards of domestic architecture, but it's not the Singing Nun either. It sits somewhere between strutting anarchism and simpering jollity. Holding two arthritic fingers up to the twenty-first century's straight lined neatness, Stow's buildings come from an age long before planning officers marched in with their regulations and their interpretations.
But then of course, I remember. One of the reasons I can still enjoy this shambolic beauty is because those very same planners now bend over backwards to preserve it for me. OK then. The Planning Office is not the arch-villain of the drama. I suppose it's like the rest of us. It gets things a bit wrong sometimes. And with this charitable thought settling into unfamiliar surroundings in my brain, I take a wander round the Square.
It's clear the recession is having an impact. There's more than one empty tea shop with TO LET in the window. And as Maggie knows from her own boutique as well as from chatting to her fellow retailers, Stow this year is getting a busload fewer visitors here and a carful fewer shoppers there. But it's more than the commercial downturn that's affecting Stow. Buyers' tastes have been changing too.
For much of the past thirty years, Stow has been to antiques what Melton Mowbray is to pork pies. But the antiques trade isn't what it was. It used to be that Americans landing at Heathrow would grab a black taxi and snap, 'Take us to your old Brit antique stores.' The cabbies, pausing only to start their taximeters, would shoot up the M40 and, £350 later, deposit the eager collectors in the Square. There they could be heard demanding Crown Derby inkwells, Chippendale tiffin-trolleys or whatever it was they considered to be the prized relics of Britain's once mighty past. Stow could pride itself on having the most authentic supplies and the most expert suppliers.
But nowadays, it's often Japanese and Australians who arrive in coaches or rented Ford KAs, and are more interested in taking photos of themselves outside the New England Coffee Shop or in purchasing tankards that say, . There are still antique shops in Stow, but they look mournful and bereft of customers. Most of the dealers in the Square itself have gone, and where once stood polished walnut and flowery porcelain, you now find cream teas, or posh anoraks, or Joanna Trollopes and a little white tree with necklaces hanging from its branches in an upmarket charity shop.
But it's a tribute to Stow's commercial resilience that the town has a growing reputation as the supplier of another category of valuable household object. Art. Galleries are springing up all over the place. And there's something for all tastes. For example:
• A Cheeky Visitor, squirrel on a windowsill reproduced in photo-realist detail with a single-hair paintbrush (would make a nice eightieth birthday present for Nan in Merthyr Tydfil).
• The Tuileries from Boulevard Haussmann, a cityscape with sparkly colours in the style of the Impressionists (could suit newly retired solicitor).
• Arousal in Crimson, a square metre of brown acrylic paint with a blue spot in the middle (twenty-five year-old banker might acquire to show girlfriends he has soul as well as a Ferrari).
Most of the antique dealers have always had on their walls the odd gilt-framed canvas along the lines of Sir Josiah Spatchcock Astride Winsome Lass (i.e. a horse). So for some it was a natural progression to phase out the scorned Tudor tables and Edwardian candelabra, and buy in squirrels, boulevards and emotive spots instead. But for many, sales in the Spatchcock department have apparently not been brisk enough to tempt them to leap across to the art bandwagon, so instead they sell up in Stow and 'go online' with a small, rented workshop in Bourton.
As I drift past another darkened window front, it strikes me that Stow's problem isn't a lack of shops. It's got too many. Why aren't they being turned into homes for local people, or else for weekenders? That's a good business. And what would the planners make of that?
CHAPTER 13
£*{],%@@, MORE OR LESS
Sometimes, on this earth, good things happen against all the odds. I'm not undergoing a religious conversion. I'm talking about when you leave a job interview thinking it hadn't gone too badly, and immediately see from the mirror in the lift, a little lump of something that belongs hidden inside a nice white hanky but that's stuck to your nice white shirt collar instead. You swear and with a heavy heart go back to the Appointments pages of the Sunday paper. Then six days later you get a letter offering you the job at your chosen salary. Sound familiar? No? Think I'm exaggerating for comic effect? Well, the year was 1997. Place: the London HQ of a major management consultancy. Job: a directorship. Star of this drama: you guessed it.
Now we're about to get our share of these good things against all the odds.
First, a few days after my boxing bout with Glibpert, Anthea calls. Bella now says that they will allow a linear extension, that is, one that continues the line of the long building, rather than our proposal, which would have turned it into an L-shape. No reason's given for this latest U-turn. But we know not to demand one.
The big advantage of what we'd wanted originally – the right-angled extension – was that we'd have had a room facing south, which of course would have had a glass- and oak-front like the main part of the building. And for Maggie, as Champion of Light, that had been important.
But we soon realise that we want this house so badly that we'll put up with not having the L-shaped extension. Over the next week, we indulge in what our son Dan, who's an academic philosopher by profession, says is 'post hoc rationalisation.' We get foisted on us an uncomfortable decision, and then afterwards hunt down reasons why it really suits us. We justify it like this:
1. The bedroom will be further away from the noise of the road.
2. From the courtyard garden, we'll have an unobstructed view of the tower of Stow church, which is prettily lit up at night.
3. We'll avoid having to bridge the mains sewer, which – we've conveniently forgotten until now – passes under the garden.
But I'm still cautious. We don't actually have it signed off yet, and Bella has, we know, changed her mind before. 'I think we should make sure we've got the Grise batting for us on this latest plan,' I say.
'True,' replies Maggie. 'We don't want him to revert to touchiness.'
So off I go to consult him. He's behind his desk, in the den of his emporium. He strokes his chin throughout my account of our scrap with the planners. They must figure high on hi
s list of people to disdain because he makes sympathetic murmurings. But he doesn't go so far as to voice his support for our extension. Instead he asks me what kind of roof topping we're going to use. I've not the remotest idea about this. So I just say we haven't decided yet, but of course, we won't now be raising the height of the roof. He then spends half an hour describing six different kinds of coping stone to top it off.
I thank him, and say, 'One thing's certain. We won't just put concrete on it.' I'm trying to lighten the mood. But humour, it seems, is an unwelcome guest among the reproduction Gladstone bags and Puritan style hat stands of the Grise emporium.
'I know you won't,' he comments, 'because I wouldn't let you.'
I figure he's had plenty of chance by now to object to our latest plan, so I thank him for his continued support, pausing for the phrase to sink in. Getting a nod in response, I wish him good afternoon, and the bell on top of his door clanks me on my way.
Over the next two weeks there's one more spat with Bella. This time it's about skylights. She's agreed to one in the main bathroom. We want a couple more. But she's lost interest by now, and just keeps pressing the F4 key on her computer which she must have programmed to send out a 'NO' to tedious supplicants. By the time the final planning consent comes through a month or so later for a linear extension with one skylight, we've moved on to other contests. So there's no national anthem nor raising of the flag. Just a whimper of satisfaction one morning over the figs and yoghurt.
A Horse in the Bathroom Page 10
