Most of what I write about is serious, because helping subscribers make money is a serious business, but now that we are in a hiatus having for the most part made big gains, waiting for the PM sector to finish correcting, I can afford the luxury of sharing with you something a little less weighty than analyzing stock charts.
Many years ago I lived in the country near to a small town called Pershore in Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. There was a time when, chatting with the local merchants and shopkeepers in this town, I learned that their trade had been significantly reduced by the rapidly diminishing number of parking spaces brought about by the actions of a bungling incompetent town council whose incessant meddling had made it very difficult for visitors to find somewhere to park. I gave this some thought, wondering if there was anything I could do about it, given that I was not directly involved, and realized that this was a case where “the pen would be mightier than the sword”. So I figured that the best line of attack would be humor and I wrote the following mail to the regional newspaper, which was given “pride of place” on the “letters to the editor” page which is hardly surprising as most such mails are boring drivel…
Click on images to pop up larger more easy to read versions.
This mail apparently had quite an impact for a few days later I was contacted by the Pershore Chamber of Commerce who congratulated me on it and told me that when it was read out at their meeting they fell about laughing and they then used it to subject the local council to ridicule, thus shaming them into doing something about it.
On a lighter note, if this is possible, and a complete change of subject, one day I was out on a country walk in Worcestershire with my sister-in-law and we strolled through the Lench villages (Ab Lench, Atch Lench, Church Lench, Rous Lench and Sheriffs Lench). One of these villages, Ab Lench, was small and little more than a hamlet which was distinguished by having a large filthy cattle shed in the middle of it with the poor beasts standing knee deep in excrement and mud outside it, kind of like you see in western Kansas (bring back the bison). Needless to say this generated an appalling smell over the entire settlement, and later, thinking about this, it occurred to me that a more apt name for this Hamlet would be as I suggested in this letter to the local paper…
On this occasion I doubt that this mail made any difference to the situation as the farmer who owned the cow shed was probably shameless.
Look these places up in Google Earth – I’m not making this up – and there are other curiously named villages nearby like Flyford Flavell, North Piddle and Upton Snodsbury.
Lastly, I became increasingly aware that a lot of motorists were speeding on the wide approach road into Pershore and not just speeding but going really fast, doing 50 – 60 mph and sometimes more in a 30 limit and that nothing was being done about it – the police were ignoring it, a situation which clearly called for me to put pen to paper again. So I wrote the following letter to the local paper which requires no explanation…
The effect of this mail appearing in the paper was dramatic – within a few days the police were out in force all over the place with radar guns catching people speeding and this went on for weeks. It thus appears that I made them into a laughing stock and it’s possible that this mail went higher up and the local constabulary were given a dressing down and “hauled over the coals”. I of course found it hugely amusing until a few weeks later, when just one day before I left the area to live in London, they caught me speeding and gave me a ticket. So this had “a sting in the tail” – I never thought that my merciless ridiculing would catch up with me.
End of English Literature contribution.
Posted at 10.20 am EDT on 26th October 25.