Swampy returns
THE messy eviction of HS2 environmental protestors from the tops of trees in ancient woodland near Great Missenden this week saw the return our most famous green activist.
Former Hazlemere resident and Holmer Green School pupil Daniel Hooper achieved national and international fame in 1996 by holding up the construction of an extension to the A30 in Devon. He spent days on end in a series of manmade tunnels, earning him the unforgettable nickname Swampy.
Daniel didn’t particularly like his celebrity, but he took his protests seriously. A veteran of the Newbury by-pass protest he went on to lodge in further tunnels to try and prevent the second Manchester Airport runway and spent months at a protest camp by a nuclear submarine base in Scotland. Newspapers have reported him taking part in climate change protests at Heathrow and last year he chained himself to a concrete block as part of an Extinction Rebellion protest outside a Welsh oil refinery.
The 47 year old father of three joined the treetop protest at Jones’ Hill Wood late in the campaign but is determined to see it through for as long as it takes. (UPDATE – the eviction process eventually finished on 7 October…and sure enough, Swampy was the last to be pulled down).
He is not expected to be recommended for an honour in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Dame Mary
HOWEVER, someone who is rumoured be in line for a Damehood when the Queen’s delayed Birthday Honours are announced next Saturday is “national treasure” Mary Berry who, of course, lived in Penn for 47 years before moving to Henley a couple of years ago.
Should Mary become a Dame, her charming husband Paul Hunnings, who ran the art gallery in Penn Barn for many years, will not become Sir Paul but remain just plain Mr. Sounds like an outrageous piece of gender discrimination to me. In the unlikely event of me becoming Sir Peter, for instance, my wife would become Lady Tina.
Perhaps we should ask Swampy to lead a protest.
Do we need a Pest House?
FOR REASONS which will no doubt become apparent when someone analyses the spread of Covid-19 , the number of outbreaks in Buckinghamshire are fewer than neighbouring areas, especially in some of the smaller towns. Early in the 17th century, when the Black Death returned to many parts of the country and reached enormous proportions in London, the pattern was the same.
Although they had no idea what caused the plague, people realised that isolation could help prevent its spread. Consequently, in Amersham, the locals built a “Pest House” at the bottom of Gore Hill where strangers suspected of having the disease were prevented from entering the town. It did the trick. Cases in Amersham were much lower than elsewhere.
All aboard
THE COUNCIL’S new community boards have got off to a bit of a wobbly start. In Buckinghamshire Council’s own words, the boards “will bring the new council and communities together, giving people the opportunity to speak up and get actively involved in their local area.”
Penn and Tylers Green is in the Beaconsfield and Chepping Wye Community Board. At its initial meeting parish councillors in Penn, for instance, weren’t too impressed. “No overall direction in terms of projects or cross-working,” moaned one. “A danger the community board could become a talking shop,” bewailed another.
Last week the board held a second meeting, beginning with a morale-boosting address from council leader Martin Tett via video-link. He is not normally a person lost for words, but on this occasion he was. His address had to be abandoned because no-one could get him off mute (take a detention the boy at the back who mouthed “thank goodness”!).
Not to worry. I sent an email to the board’s co-ordinator Andy Chapman to see if he could send the minutes rather than me wade through the video of the whole 90 minute session. Guess what. It bounced back “undeliverable”.
That’s the spirit
IT’S important to keep a sense of proportion and a sense of humour in these trying times. So hats off to Jon Wilson in his Penn and Tylers Green Cricket Club report in Village Voice magazine this month… “Winning and losing has just not seemed so important this summer…which is no bad thing for our 2nd XI whose season was marked by a lot of the latter and an absence of the former.“