Do they think we are fools?

Well I don't know about you but I think somebody is taking the mick with us over the VI.  No for sale sign visible as I can see, nothing being done to it and yet it is still insured.  Maybe they are hoping somebody might set fire to it.

This new man in charge of the trustees seemed to have had great promise and yet it looks like he is being out manoeuvre by a bunch of old women intent on holding onto the past regardless of the cost.  I would suggest that if they are so intent on keeping the building that they toddle off down to the bank and stump up to buy it.  What is it going to take to  get some backsides in gear?  Maybe as suggested someone needs to report the trustees to the Charity Commission because from what I can see it's not improving our conditions of life, just costing and wasting our money.  What we have here is a wasting asset.

Now wouldn't that make a nice little bungalow for someone with some cash and vision.  Perhaps A1 Housing might be interested.

Maybe all this dithering is to hide some skullduggery.  Are the parish council still thinking of buying it as an alternative to the Misterton Centre? If they are then I suspect we are going to be up to our goolies in debt if we don't put our oar in sooner rather than later.  Talk about empire building at our expense. 

Are we prepared?

As someone pointed out to me the other day when I commented on the weather being quite good, the 1947 freeze didn't start until the end of January and didn't finish until mid March, by which time according to that fountain of all knowledge, Wikipedia, there were food shortages, fuel shortages and then when this was followed by flooding, 25% of sheep stock lost.

The USA has recently had it's own Polar Vortex and quite honestly how some of the people and animals survived I do not know.  Which makes me think what would happen if something similar happened to us.  In 1947 when flooded out, people just moved upstairs and got on with it, coming down when the water went (most of them with no help from insurance companies) and cleared the house out.  Following heavy snow and ice in the previous months they must have thought a plague would be next.

This village has flooded quite badly in the past, water up to the upstairs window ledges I am told in some parts.  The worst I've seen it is up to the cemetery so the only way out was through Gringley,  Gainsborough; you could get as far as halfway down past the roundabout and then land all around flooded, partly due to the fact that the powers to be wouldn't let Gainsborough flood..
 
Which leads me on to our village Emergency Plan, which I am told we have, although done some years ago.  Has it been updated?  Who is in charge and more to the point are they any good and what support do they have?  Doom and gloom I know but since most of us have, or should have, an emergency plan in their home, the one for our village should be watertight.  Where do we go if there is a disaster.  It might not be flooding or just bad weather, we've a petrol dump on our doorstep and planes flying over us at night from Finningley.  It might be something as simple as somebody nicking our gas and electricity and causing an explosion.

At the time we were asked what we had that could be useful in an emergency.  Things change, is it about time our parish council should get its bum into gear and start thinking about what could happen before it happens and get things updated.  Whose got a room spare at the Inn if the unthinkable happens.   What do we need, bit like your holiday list - Tickets, passport, money and knickers, beggar the rest if you leave it behind.  More to the point, where do we go if we have to evacuate in a hurry.  It will make a change for something useful to be popped through our letter box

Doom and gloom, well yes, but you never know.  Whose for a rehearsal?

Welcome to our Village

Was this appendage really necessary.  The sign was nice enough as it was, was there really any need to have more expense and tack something else on underneath, something that doesn't really mean anything since the majority of vehicles are passing through.  Wouldn't - Please Drive Carefully -  have been more appropriate.

What's wrong with this - less is better

Some one told me that not that many years ago the Parish Council didn't have a pot to pee in and was operating on the breadline.  Since the injection of capital from the Packet Inn site, the present incumbents seem intent on depleting this so that they are back to scratching their backsides for cash. Maybe that's the idea.

That Jubilee Garden still hasn't endeared itself to me, no matter how hard I try to like it. Pretentious stone that would look a lot better in a town garden, and even then I suspect anybody with a bit of taste wouldn't have gone for that particular shade of stone to sit in the middle of an old village.  That particular spot is certainly not as well used as it was before.  A nice piece of grass somewhere would improve it's barren appearance, without us having to rely on the grass provided on the road side by the district council. 

There was a great deal of spouting at the time that it hadn't cost us anything.  Well it had, that money came from our savings fund, the one that  belongs to the residents of this village.  Were we asked whether we should spend that much money on a garden that isn't really a garden, more like a monument.  No, and perhaps if they had there might have been more input from residents on what we really wanted.  Might even have been somebody local who would have done it much cheaper and known how to plant the stuff in it properly.  So much could  have been done given the size of the plot after the old bank had been demolished.

Despite its fame there are very few photographs around of this monument to our Queen, other than the ones taken when vandals attacked it.

 

The only thing you can say now is it barely gets looked at as we pass by and maybe shake our heads.

A wash and brush up for 2014

Don't know whether you have noticed but over Christmas, Century House has had a complete wash and brush up.  It was previously the home of residents who moved on ( I had better say no more), leaving the house empty.  More recently there were plans to demolish and build in the back garden but after an application for 5 dwellings was submitted, which was bound to fail if only on greediness.  Following the departure of the residents it has  fallen into decay, unwanted and unloved as all houses become when nobody lives in them.  This was it in 2009.  Looking at that time, quite respectable, to what it was prior to Christmas 2012.

Broken windows, overgrown trees, couldn't be seen from the road etc.  Now all gone, garden cleared entirely of all rubbish.  So what next, knocked down, refurbished.  I think we will have to wait and see although there is no other planning application on it, as yet.  Could this be  another village eyesore about to bite the dust?

Well yet another glorious year over

I say glorious because for residents in Misterton it is, or should be.  We have a lovely village, maybe not chocolate box pretty, but okay.  We have local shops on our doorstep, a library and a place to vent our fury if the bin collection is missed (not often) at the Misterton Centre, which also includes a police office to visit if we have more serious complaints.  We might  be the most northerly outpost that Bassetlaw would like to forget about, if it were not for our district councillor who lives in our village and stands in our corner regularly.  In a nutshell, we have everything we want within our village to cover our basic needs. Our only shortfall is a train service, which is a pity since we have a station.  I can't comment on the bus service since I don't use it but I do know it is difficult if you want  to work in towns other than Gainsborough.  Even the weather is kinder to us than in other parts of the country and best of all we live with open countryside around us.  Bloody perfect.


So, what next for 2014?  I'm not a resolution person, objectives is my motto, so what should we have on that list that I and maybe others would like to see happen?

1.  The Victorian Institute sold at the earliest opportunity, which won't come about if some trustees are sitting on their hands hoping for a white knight.

2.  The parish council stop messing about  and toying with ideas above our financial ceiling.  To be honest I don't go to meetings or want to, but I'm told there is a theme amongst certain individuals of trying to make a name for themselves - at our expense

3. A bit of green on that other little island of expense wouldn't come amiss either. 

4.  Fibre optic broadband would be good but I suppose I'm singing in the wind there

5.  A bit of civic responsibility from the parish council, why fix it if it ain't broke.  We have superior (seen that word on Bassetlaw website) accommodation in the Misterton Centre.  Why go out of their way to spend cash on something that has to be demolished, rebuilt and will still have no or negligible parking.  There is a much better alternative in the Methodist Hall (in the future possibly), which has a lot of affection in the village, regardless of your faith.

6. No more 'International' calls from idiots wanting to get me a free boiler, compensation on the injury claim I made or the payment protection insurance I had.  Even if I feel like answering them I tell them a load of tosh.

7.  A ring fence on any major housing in our village until those that can, give our infrastructure a major refurb

I could go on but I'll settle for the above for 2014.

A Happy (and prosperous) New Year to you all.