November 28th Bring back the Pillory

Standing in a queue outside the butcher’s in cold drizzle and clinging mist serves the purpose of tribal camp-fires or a Viking ‘thing-mote’, it’s where community is consolidated by news, gossip, debate and humour. Without the pubs this is where stories are told and events publicised. I read Crich Standard this morning and there displayed in print and pictures were all the histories, activities and public-spirit that make this village such a warm place to live. I’m not saying we should gather in the queues just to exchange conversation without actually buying anything, that would be annoying, but this is one of the places where you find that your feelings are shared, that your personal situation is not as bad as some others’, that people’s life styles and the wider world are changing around you and that you and your plight are not at the centre of the universe.

There are also, what Deirdre would call, the ‘eejits’; those whose understanding of cause and effect is retarded, whose comprehension of empathy is missing, and in whose brain the electrical impulses between the synapses and neurons tend to splutter like dirty spark plugs on a damp morning. In other words they don’t make connections. They can be identified by a tendency to park their vans on the pavement right up against a spiky pyracantha hedge on the narrowest part of the road where most cars are parked. In case this is not enough to identify them they leave the van there for a significant period. At best this is thoughtless behaviour, but it can be lethally thoughtless. ‘Thoughtless’ here is a euphemism for downright brainless. Anyone with a push chair or wheel chair would have to go right out into the middle of the road where they can’t see what’s coming. To try and squeeze through would entail clothes and faces being torn by thorns. I once knew someone who was wheelchair bound who would make no bones about squeezing through and deliberately leaving a scratch mark from one end of the vehicle to the other. Perhaps a willing toddler this morning will have dragged Mummy’s keys along the side of this van while squeezing past. But I’m left feeling inadequate because I did not challenge the culprit and explain to him that he was a gormless socio-path with a malfunctioning cortex. I’m not even publishing the photo I took of the van. Sometimes I wish I was a second row forward in the All Blacks scrum – I suspect that when they explain to gormless socio-paths that their cortex is malfunctioning they are listened to.

We have similar quandaries when we see people gathering in crowds, not wearing masks, having parties, recklessly ignoring the rules and justifying themselves by saying it’s all exaggerated, or it’s an infringement of our right to be a eejit. I was struck by the interviewee on TV Thursday evening who said the imposition of Tier 3 is like being in a class where everyone behaves but the whole class goes into detention because of someone messing around at the back.

We had a strange introduction to Crich the first weekend we lived here. We’d put our picnic table on the front lawn and the next morning it had disappeared. I found it a quarter of a mile away outside the Black Swan. We couldn’t help but admire the drunken cunning, stamina, strategic thinking and sheer determination that had accomplished the crime. These were master criminals compared with the oaf who uproots a solar light and throws it into a neighbour’s garden without having enough imagination to plant it in a policeman’s helmet. In fact I have some time ago published a litany of crimes worthy of extreme penalties:

WHERE IS THE PILLORY?

(Written in the Pique)

Where is the pillory?

Where are the stocks?

Where are the gallows

And the head chopping blocks?

Where are the felons,

Miscreants abhorrent?

Summon the constable,

Issue a warrant.

Drag forth the offenders

In manacles and shackles,

Those who sully Crich’s lanes

And what’s more raise my hackles;

Those who vomit on the path

Or park upon the pavement,

Transport them to the colonies,

Hard-labour and enslavement.

The dog poo plastic baggers

Who hang them in the trees,

Take them to the whipping post

Or to the pillories;

Set them in the village stocks

Until they show remorse,

Bombard them all with dog poo

Or better still with horse.

Leavers of polystyrene cartons

Crammed in dry stone walls,

Eviscerate their entrails,

Crush their rotten (thumbs in thumb screws!).

Budweiser bottles in hedges,

Fanta cans tossed in gardens,

Bring the brazier and the branding iron,

No sanctuary, no pardons.

And those who play thumping music

From their open windowed cars

While racing down the Common,

Life sentence behind bars;

Or vandals in the churchyard,

Or lead thieves on the take,

Drag them before the barmote

Or the good old wapentake.

And one of my solar lights was pinched

By some villainous passer-by;

Bring out the vigilante mob,

Raise the hue and cry.

Appoint the village watch man

And church warden with his wand

To decide who is guilty

By ducking them in the pond.

Medieval justice,

And the ancient feudal court,

Crich must have had a pillory

To which the rogues were brought.

Evidence for its whereabouts

Is sadly rather scant,

But justice has at last been done

Now I’ve had my rant.

We no longer have these opportunities for local punishment, beyond posting photos on Facebook, our modern version of the pillory. But crime is still pretty rare here, so that a broken-in shed is a big talking point up and down the queue outside the Butcher’s. And having a good old moan with a fellow shopper is all good for communal solidarity.