Burley Cross Postbox Theft

by Nicola Barker

  WE R INVINCIBLE!!!!!

  I’m pretending to write 2 mum right now (in hosp.) so that I can write 2 U instead. They won’t even allow me 2 keep my pencil case when I get home from school! First the internet, then the phone, now this! I even have to ask permission to write my diary! I know they are reading it behind my back! How stupid do they think I am?!

  Is there NOTHING they won’t take from me? Is there NO DEPTH these zombies won’t stoop to?

  The plan is that we meet up on Christmas Day, behind the church (St Peter’s) at 3pm EXACTLY. I’m planning 2 feed them a cock&bull story about going 2 light my mother a special candle in church. Nobody will suspect. I won’t be able 2 ring U again or contact U 2 confirm.

  REMEMBER! Our Song! ‘STICKWITU’!!!!

  UR my life!

  UR are my blood – my smooth, smooth knife – my Guardian Angel – my soul!

  Until the 25th, then – and eternity.

  Sing our song if U feel low:

  And now,

  Ain’t nothin’ else I could need…

  I’m crying cause you’re so, so into me,

  I got you,

  We’ll be making love endlessly,

  I’m with you,

  Baby, you’re with me…

  Nobody gonna love me better,

  I’MMA GONNA STICKWITU FOREVER,

  Nobody gonna take me higher,

  I’MMA STICKWITU.

  A X

  PS PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T FORGET ABOUT ME, GAB!

  I AM DESPERATE! I AM ALL ALONE! I AM

  DEPENDING ON U!!

  [letter 23]

  Tollhouse Cottage

  Fitzwilliam Street

  Burley Cross

  20/12/2006

  Dear Teddy,

  Festive Greetings from Burley Cross, England!

  I have enclosed the set of Christmas stamps, as requested. Once again, secular designs. They’re perfectly passable, I suppose. Two each for First Class and Second Class. I especially like the £1.19 Christmas Tree and Presents. Can’t help thinking the Father Christmas on his Chimney and the Snowman are somewhat workmanlike, however…

  They’re by Tatsuro Kiuchi. He’s a very reputable Japanese digital illustrator. Perhaps I’m getting a little picky in my old age, but I can’t help feeling like there’s something a fraction ‘hollow’ about the set, in general.

  Is it just the preponderance of blue? I’ve never been a great fan of blue tones at Christmas. I much prefer the warmer, interior tones of red and green. Of course I fully accept that those perennial Christmas themes of snow and ice demand a blue/white palette, but I loathe the fashion for blue trees and blue lights at the moment. People hang them all over their houses nowadays – outside, too! I fear we’ve become terribly American since you were last in the UK. You’d probably hardly recognize the old place!

  Call me an old grump if you like, but when I see blue lights I immediately think ‘emergency’: Police! Fire! Ambulance! I certainly don’t think ‘festive’ or ‘relaxation’.

  It surely must have some bearing on the issue (the stamp issue – no pun intended!) that they don’t celebrate Christmas in Japan. It isn’t even a proper holiday over there.

  On a somewhat more positive front, my Tristan da Cunha collection is almost ‘definitive’, now. The 1995 Queen Mother’s Birthday arrived on Friday via Stanley Gibbons. I’m very pleased with it and am currently only hankering after the 1977 Naval Ships/Crests and the 1973 Anne and Mark’s Wedding (neither very expensive – I’ll probably order them for my birthday in late Feb).

  Thanks so much for your letter. It was funny and informative, as always. I was delighted to hear that the long-anticipated talk by the man from the Organic Soil Assoc. went down so well on the island. I can’t pretend I’m not eaten up with jealousy that he got government support to fund his trip over there.

  From your brief précis I didn’t get the impression that he had much of great interest to offer on the subject of soil erosion. This was definitely a missed opportunity. There’s so much to be said (and done) on the matter – and not just in Tristan da Cunha, but worldwide (Africa! Asia! India! Even here, in the UK!). Imagine the differences we could make, environmentally, if we just put an end to tilling, if we finally resolved to stop using crop residue for other purposes (like fencing, animal feed etc.) and opted to proceed the natural way.

  I know seed-drilling technology can appear prohibitively expensive at the outset, but just consider the money to be saved, in the long term, on diesel and fertilizer! Our topsoils are so vulnerable, so fragile. It’s taken literally millions of years for them to evolve on this planet, and yet what people seem signally incapable of comprehending is that once they’re gone, they’re gone for good (unless you have a spare million or so years to wait around for them to gradually reconstitute, that is!).

  World populations are growing at an alarming rate, millions go hungry every year, more and more pressure is being placed on the remaining soil stocks we have left, but still we persist in using farming methods whose long-term (even short-term) prognosis leads to erosion and sterility. This isn’t just carelessness or stupidity, it’s nothing short of criminal.

  As I always like to say: people – the general public – really need to stop thinking of soil as just ‘muck’ or ‘dirt’ (denigrating it, in other words) and to start realizing that it’s the foundation, the very lifeblood, of this beautiful earth we inhabit.

  Part of the problem has always been that we (and by ‘we’ I mean governments, the big corporations etc.) are addicted to short-termism. That, and the fact that we invariably have a vested interest in shoring up an unsatisfactory situation (and thereby cheerfully maintaining the status quo). What exactly am I getting at here? Well, that real money – serious money – is always made from supplying treatments, not from inventing cures. Where’s the logic in solving a problem if it means that the numerous institutions/industries that have been carefully developed over the generations to support it (pretending to counter it, but actually only sustaining it) will be rendered obsolete?

  I was listening to a programme on the radio the other week about the huge increase in cases of Type 1 Diabetes, worldwide, and the various ways politicians and scientists have set about responding to this crisis (for the record, your average diabetic requires approx. £1 million in healthcare spending during the course of their lifetime). It became increasingly obvious (as the report progressed) that scientists were only really getting substantial, private and public funding to try and improve the kinds of treatments already in existence, not to grapple with the fundamental problem outright. Because where’s the profit to be had in finding a cure for something?

  Let’s think about it this way: if your local street ‘dealer’ suddenly found himself in possession of a pill to cure heroin addiction (in one fell swoop), would he opt to sell it to his regular clients, even if they were willing to pay ten times as much money for it as for their regular hit? Not likely! Even your lowliest street punk understands the rudiments of capitalist economics! Supply and demand! These same principles apply across the board, not least to farming and to soil.

  Sorry, Teddy – here I go again, banging on, relentlessly, about my favourite topic! You must be heartily sick of my incessant rantings by now! In fact you’ve probably accumulated about as much ‘core’ knowledge on this subject as I have after all these years (merely by acting as my sounding-board!). On that basis, there’s no ‘earthly’ reason (Oops! A little inadvertent geological joke!) why you shouldn’t host a public meeting yourself to discuss this vital issue in an island context (I can certainly supply you with a good set of crib notes!) instead of patiently waiting for me to turn up and host one.

  If only Joanna’s sister hadn’t moved to Stuttgart… She insists on seeing her twice a year, and our already frugal holiday funds are rapidly depleted on flights and hotels (Pam, her sister, lives in a one-bedroom flat). As things stand (and much as this grieves me), I can’t see me fulfilling my childhood drea
m of setting foot on ‘The Loneliest Island in the World’ any time in the foreseeable future.

  Curious to think that it’s been all of forty-four years since we last saw each other, face to face. I remember waving a cheery farewell to you from the docks in Southampton like it was only yesterday (the memory of that moment remains crystal clear!); a blithe twelve-year-old, so full of hope and heat and heart and confidence… Where’d it all go, eh?!

  I suppose I shouldn’t let myself get too down in the mouth about it. These things are generally always best left in the hands of the Gods (‘Insh’allah’ as the Muslims are wont to murmur). If it hadn’t been for a series of entirely unpredictable and earth-shattering events, after all (an erupting volcano, no less!), we would never have met up – or have become such firm friends – in the first place. So who am I to pronounce with such certainty (or such resignation) on what the future may hold?

  ‘The Loneliest Island in the World’… I couldn’t help but smile wryly to myself as I wrote that down just now. Because I don’t mind admitting – at least not to you, Teddy – that sometimes I feel rather like a lonely island myself (even the loneliest island, on the odd occasion!).

  I shouldn’t complain. I have so much to be grateful for: good health, a loyal wife, a charming home. Burley Cross is such a beautiful place (a ‘chocolate-box’ village, to all intents and purposes), and I’ve grown to truly love West Yorkshire over the seven years since Joanna and I first moved here, but I must confess that I sometimes struggle to find people I can really talk to, people I can exchange ideas with or truly ‘open up’ to.

  I sometimes feel starved of intellectual stimulation, of decent conversation. I used to enjoy the odd chat with Lance Tunnicliffe (OBE), but it’s been difficult to maintain the relationship since he moved into sheltered accommodation in Ilkley. I’m not entirely sure why… Perhaps I serve as too much of a painful reminder of his old life (now over)? Hopefully this feeling may alter, in the fulness of time.

  Then there was Robin Goff (the inventor – or ‘The Prof’ as he’s known about the place). He’s an odd man, somewhat scatty, slightly sensitive and irascible, very intense, a keen fell runner, but extremely interesting for all of that. Unfortunately our blossoming friendship has recently been soured (I won’t go into all the sordid details) and I’m not sure if it will be possible to get it back on track.

  The point I’m struggling to make here, Teddy, is that I still feel I have so much more to give… I just long to do something useful, something substantial, something of consequence, to break free from my shackles (self-imposed as they undeniably are) and purge this gnawing maggot of frustration that constantly and relentlessly seems to worry away at me.

  I suppose this is all just part and parcel of the aftermath of Robbie’s death. A child’s death is never easy, but the death of a chronically disabled child takes its toll in so many quiet and insidious ways. It’s much less straightforward than you might imagine (on an emotional level), so much more difficult to ‘unpick’.

  Joanna has coped with things by throwing herself, wholeheartedly (the only way Jo knows how!) into her many charitable pursuits – chiefly her animals. She’s become absolutely indispensable at Gawkley. I was speaking to one of the other volunteers in Ilkley the other week who said they were thinking of naming her their ‘Patron Saint’!

  But it’s always been that much harder for me, Teddy, not least because I found the situation with Robbie so much more demanding – so much more challenging – than Jo ever did (Jo’s faithful as a Fox Terrier – loyal to the bone). I was always that little bit less ‘easy’ with it, less ‘natural’ with it, right from the start. I resented more. I gave less (or less willingly).

  After he passed away I honestly believed life would just miraculously ‘start up’ again, that I would somehow (almost effortlessly) pick up where I had left off. But it seems like time has got away from me. Things have changed. They’ve moved on. And it’s a cultural shift as much as anything. I keep reading articles (in Nature, the New Scientist) about how geology is ‘the coming science’, but I still have this nagging feeling that I’m ‘old hat’, that I’ve jumped off the carousel, that I’ve missed the bandwagon to some extent.

  Seventeen years ago, I felt like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness on soil erosion issues, but today there are many voices, all clamouring together, in unison. How to make oneself heard among them, I wonder? How best to stand out and yet still to fit in?

  Of course, on a rational level, I know that this upsurge in interest can only really be to the power of good (politically, environmentally) and yet still I find myself almost resenting it at some level (absolutely ludicrous, I know!).

  I was watching a nature documentary on television the other week about the life-cycle of the earwig. It transpires that earwigs actually have a set of wings on their back – perfectly functional wings – which they never bother to use! I found this fact both strange and extraordinary. Where’s the sense in lugging around a spare pair of wings all day, I thought, and yet never going to the trouble of unfurling the damn things? I mean why not just throw caution to the wind and cut loose, for once? Take to the air? If only as a novelty – for the sheer thrill of it? As an experiment! Because you can!

  Then it suddenly struck me (with a sense of almost thudding dismay) that here I was – in all my hubris and my insolence – expecting the humble earwig (a mere insect) to step up to the plate and take exactly the kinds of life-altering decisions that I have always been signally incapable of making myself! Because sometimes I feel as though I had a pair of wings on my back – folded up but never opened, never tried, never extended, never truly and fully stretched out…

  Have you ever felt that way yourself, Teddy?

  On a more cheerful note (and much as it galls me to admit it), Baxter Thorndyke has definitely been of some positive use in this regard. He’s helped to snap me out of my funk (to pull me – kicking and screaming – out of my rut). As you know, I’ve always had my misgivings about the man. I’m not sure if we really see eye to eye on an emotional or intellectual level – and certainly not politically! It’s principally a ‘social’ connection, a ‘local’ connection, engendered, in the main, by my deep admiration for his prodigious energy – his enviable vitality.

  There’s certainly no denying his magnetism. He’s deeply – even dangerously – charismatic (although cut more along the lines of ‘a pocket Stalin’ than a young Guevara, to be frank!).

  I’m still somewhat at odds to understand what it is, at root, that drives him. I remain to be convinced that his motivation is entirely altruistic. But then who am I of all people (the personification of somnolence and ennui!) to stand in judgement on such matters?!

  You may well remember that our ‘partnership’ (such as it is) began during his campaign to preserve the village’s grass verges. Joanna and I happened to have just such a verge outside our cottage, and were often frustrated to find people (generally tourists) parking their vehicles hard up against it before setting off on a ramble or a hike on the moor. The verge would invariably be either crushed or irreparably dented, and a considerable amount of work was involved in setting it right.

  By and large the campaign (which consisted of a series of rehearsed, public ‘interventions’, a small flurry of newspaper articles, a firmly worded ‘Statement of Intent’ placed in a prominent position on the notice board outside the PO, and some tastefully produced, portable, plastic signs – on supporting spikes – to be pushed into the more vulnerable verges as a warning during wet weekends and Bank Holidays etc.) has been very successful, although there have, inevitably, been some notable casualties.

  Wincey Hawkes (the landlady of our local pub, The Old Oak), came in for a bit of stick in this regard. She’s been encouraging coach parties to stop in the village (over recent months) and several prominent, central verges have suffered quite badly as a consequence. Don’t quote me on this, but I get the general impression that her trade has been rather poor of late
(especially after that unholy bust-up following the darts competition on Dec 12th: a succession of tabloid-style ‘pub from hell’ headlines in the local rag are hardly conducive to an increase in your overall customer base, I’d have thought!).

  Poor Wincey. From what I’ve heard on the grapevine, she’s still struggling to pay off the loans they took out for the extensive ‘improvements’ to the pub instituted by her late husband, Duke, who – just by the by – cultivated the most bitter and rancorous feud with Baxter while he was still alive. The two men quite literally loathed each other!

  From what I can recall, Baxter was accused of using his influence on council to block the expansion of the pub car park. Duke was furious about it. His response was to spontaneously compose and perform a series of the most filthy songs about Mr Thorndyke – to general acclaim – while perched at his harmonium on the saloon bar!

  He truly was a most extraordinary sight! While playing this wheezing instrument (and due to his enormous girth, he wasn’t entirely immune to emitting the odd wheeze himself) he looked not unlike an over-extended walrus, gently tinkering with a walnut!

  A remarkable man, and greatly missed (but I do seem to be getting slightly drawn off the subject here) …

  Baxter’s other notable campaign – against speeding in the village – has likewise had a pretty positive impact. Not so much in preventing the aforementioned traffic from taking this slightly shorter route (BC is favoured by ‘boy racers’ – and more sober folk who really should know better – as a short cut), but in giving people a sense of empowerment, a feeling that they are taking action themselves rather than just sitting back and letting standards slip.

  My most significant involvement with Baxter, to date, has, of course, been with the BCPTW – his campaign to ‘clean up’ the local public toilets (which are located just at the end of Fitzwilliam St).

  Given that these facilities are the only public lavatories for many miles around, they are naturally considered a vital resource for tourists, ramblers and local tradesmen alike, but they have also become the backdrop for what I shall simply call ‘more nefarious’ pursuits.