Getting things done

Judy was not a happy bunny.

It has to be said that an unhappy Judy is best avoided, or at very least humoured.

Judy is widely credited with putting the Green in Wylde Green.

She is not, as Mrs Thatcher once put it ‘One of us.’ She is not anything in our terms. Sort of independent – ah, well, no accounting for taste. She is, however, an enormously good egg.

Possessed of an extraordinary energy and no little organising skill, she threw herself into the Wylde Green forum more or less from the start. Her path crossed with the redoubtable Dr Pocock and a small committee of like minded and public minded citoyen.

They understood from the whistle that a credible representative local action group is possessed of a surprising power as long as they understand the levers and the triggers – which of course is the reason Dr Pocock was put on this planet.

So Wylde Green has seen a succession of what might be described as minor projects all of which have improved the lot of the community. In one sense this is surprisingly easy – all you need in inexhaustible reserves of energy, patience and most of all, determination.

So, you may have noticed that we have elegant planters each side of the main road, we have a subterranean bottle bank at the Lanes, we have somewhere to sit outside Sainsburys we have a more sensible traffic access to and from the Shopping Centre.

But last weekend we had a bench installed. Actually it was not installed, it was moved. New bench had been intended for the front of the HSBC but for various reasons it couldn’t stay there. It had to go up to the pavement outside Emmanuel Church. And there it was duly installed.

To Judy’s chagrin, it stands, right now cheek and jowl with the most dilapidated public bench you have ever seen in your life. Brand spanking new shiny bench and this refugee from the inter war years, possibly repainted in 1953.

Thus the manifestation of crestfallen bunny.

This will be sorted out. Offending chair, you may depend upon it, will be replaced or it will be refurbished.

It will be a little victory. It will not rock the foundations of Whitehall, or the Council House. But it will signal a further step along the road of the ordinary citizen, taking the trouble to take the trouble. And finding a voice, and making a difference.

It is slightly glorious.

But it does lead inevitably to the rather more general question.

What is it that the Councillors do for their stipend?



Nightwatchman