Peter Inson

Peter now writes a fortnightly column, Island Living, for The Courier
which is published by Mersea Island Communications. Tel: 01206 382935

Reeves Hall

The farm track rises gently and then Reeves Hall slopes down in front of me towards the sea wall, 600 acres enfolded by the Pyefleet Channel. Tom Richardson who runs the farm in partnership with his brother Alex points out the original shore line, only one field away from the farm house and much closer than the present sea defences. One of the fields there is called Boat Field. It’s a lonely place, the sort of place where, in Great Expectations, Charles Dickens’ Pip encounters Magwitch the convict. In front of us are dykes, hedges and fences and the first of the sheep, ewes with their lambs, turned back out onto early spring grass.

Tom’s father came here in 1964. Now there are 300 ewes, Suffolks with plain black faces and Texels, bigger sheep with brindled faces. About fifty of them are corralled in buildings that once housed cattle, a yard outside and an old cowshed that has been neatly converted into a maternity hospital for sheep. It’s easy to keep an eye on the ewes here as they approach lambing without disturbing them excessively. Most of them manage alone, but any that are in difficulty are quickly spotted and helped; gentle pulling on the lamb’s front feet can make life easier for an exhausted ewe.

Back in the autumn the ewes were run with the rams which wear coloured markers. These leave a coloured mark on the ewe’s back so that the shepherd knows when she will be due to lamb. At this time of year the rams can be seen away from the farm, sombre-looking sheep, shut away and out of mischief while the ewes are lambing.

The ewes average one and a half lambs apiece, so some fostering has to be arranged, work for a skilful shepherd, a professional from Cumbria, on contract for a month. Some ewes will accept orphans or a lamb from a set of triplets. Sometimes an orphan is wrapped in the skin of a dead lamb so that the mother recognises the “right” smell. Ewes that are particularly uncooperative are yoked so that they can reach food and water, but cannot turn and force away a fostered lamb.

Once they are ready, umbilicusses dipped in iodine to prevent tetanus, marked with mother’s number, tails ringed, to prevent fly-strike – maggots eating into the sheep’s flesh - and the ram lambs castrated, also with rubber rings, they are turned out into an adjacent field where they are watched for a few more days. Then they can wander further afield where the only danger is from occasional dogs that are not properly controlled and which can get a taste for worrying livestock; farmers are allowed to shoot them on sight.

Later in the season they will be joined outside by the beef cattle, twenty or so cows and a Limousin bull, a warm, chestnut colour. At present they are housed nearby with their progeny, fattening in the traditional way, on hay and grass and grain produced on the farm before the journey to Cock’s the butchers, local beef, and lamb, with low food miles.

With the arable land worked in cooperation with a neighbour, this is a traditional, extensive system, run by one man, while for Tom the management of the place is a part-time concern. When his father came to Reeves Hall there would have been several men to do the work.

I thanked Tom for his time and set off up the long slope across the arable land, back to the main road. Before I lost sight of the buildings I looked back across one of the loneliest parts of Mersea. From the footpath on top of the sea wall on the far side of the farm, you can look across this quiet, unspoiled landscape and think of Pip and the convict.

A near miss

Turned right onto East Road, past the police station late one evening. Bike lights twinkling as they approached me on the wrong side of the road. Pulled up. Opened near side window. Two young ladies stopped. Did they realise the danger they were putting themselves in? No. They thought they were doing the right thing, going against the traffic, proper lights, helmets, responsible looking road users, but. They spoke in surprised tones, as if they had just read all about it in the highway code.

I explained, that while they are riding their bikes, they are vehicles, even on pedestrian crossings. I just hope that they got home safely and will continue to cycle about the place.

Something nice about teenagers

Spent a day recently in one of the county’s comprehensive schools, a “bog standard comp,” not long out of special measures. I was to run creative writing workshops for older pupils, some considered gifted and talented and likely to respond well to a specialist from outside the school. Another group were students for whom the subject is less easy.

They accepted me quickly and got down to work immediately. They were great fun too; it took them less than a minute to tune into my brand of teacher’s humour – and you can remember no doubt just how bad teachers’ jokes can be. We were fortunate that I could present ideas and activities independently, and not according to some “expert.” We looked closely at what writers try to do and what students can do to help themselves unaided.

On my way out I exchanged a few words with the caretaker; school caretakers often have a gift for noticing what really matters in a school. “It’s much better now – he really loves the school this new head.”

It’s a pity that this school is not within travelling distance of Mersea.

Local school reorganisation

The Gazette labelled the consultation about local schools, “a sham.” I wouldn’t mind betting that it was the same local authority that set up the current arrangements that now need to be replaced. Why rush through these new arrangements now that the county wants to privatise education?

Parents who want to keep local schools will have to find organisations to sponsor them as academies, or set up a trust to run them privately, both very difficult options. It might pay to find out more about home tutoring on the island. The more parents there are involved, the more feasible the idea becomes. Anyway, isn’t it time we faced the fact that our children’s education is far too important to be entrusted to politicians.

27 Mar 2009 Return to top of page

Visit to Boulders, the Free Church Youth Club

Arrival at a busy car park, happy children coming out to happy parents. Two parents tell me how pleased they are with the provision for their children and no, they do not belong to the Free Church. One is not a churchgoer, the other an occasional Catholic and they are collecting their 9-11 year-olds.

Why did their children come – to be with enthusiastic friends. For a moment the hall clears and then the older group arrive, 11-16 year olds. Some seem small enough to fit into your back pocket, some large enough to stuff you into theirs, with one hand tied behind their backs. What they have in common is being pleased to be here; they are all relaxed and smiling.

The main hall fills up; as they come in a casual game of dodge ball starts. Most of them join in while others cluster and talk. Played with a large sponge ball dodge ball is great fun; adults and kids attack each other and laugh and chat all at the same time. After ten minutes, a calling to order and some announcements – a trip at half-term.

In the back room I find a game of pool under way, watched by half-dozen or so others. Peter Gibson, the minister catches a young man’s eye – he needs a word. The two of them pass along and out to the car park. Within minutes they are back. A word of explanation to the youngster, a few words of assurance, friendship and respect intact.

It’s a free night tonight and there is talk among the group I speak to of tournaments, other sports, X-Factor and just spending time with friends. Other trips take them to Rollerworld or quad-biking. Some of them got to know each other at primary school but then found themselves at different secondary schools. The club provides a chance to keep in touch.

They’re away from home and school but not out wandering the streets where, these wise youngsters tell me, it’s not always as easy to avoid being persuaded or challenged into stupidity. Here, the adults are more like friends. I can see what they mean; at the pool table a twelve year old takes on one of the adults, four times his age. They are mates as far as the youngster is concerned and to me he looks like an apprentice adult, learning to be an adult by being treated like one.

There are forty youngsters on the books and seven staff, all members of the Free Church which provides for the club’s needs and does so as part of a concern to contribute to the community. For me there are echoes of the Sally Army and its position of trust in our society. With more staff the Free Church could run a second session, on Sunday evenings, a further opportunity for apprentice adults.

Most youngsters come along because friends are already involved and because of the club’s reputation. Contact details of their parents are required there is a code of conduct; no smoking, alcohol or bad language and a concern and consideration for others. On arrival members sign in and there is a system of fire drills and accounting for children.

The aim is to provide for youngsters’ needs and interests. It is clear that there is no idea of pursuing any sort of mission amongst them.

This year there are four juniors amongst the staff. They have come up through the club and reflect its sustainability. For most of the members, the end of Year Eleven at school is the time to leave so there is room for the next intake of smaller people. Then they have to put to the test the adult ways and understanding learnt here, out on the street and wherever else they go.

A footnote. After nineteen and a half years at West Mersea Free Church, Peter and Audrey Gibson are off to pastures new, to Bury St Edmunds where Peter will become minister of Southgate Church. I’m not surprised as he tells me of the planning authorities permitting only one church in the area. Baptists, members of The United Reformed Church and the Church of England have subsequently formed one congregation which he has been asked to lead. Left behind them now is the challenge for others to continue what they have been able to lead.

Police Dog Training

I recently found myself at an open meeting of the Mersea Island Society when I met a number of locals, including the speaker, Phil Passfield. Following his presentation about the selection and training of dogs there were two demonstrations by dog handler PC Terry Collinson and plenty of opportunities for questions.

It was good to learn about an area of work that most of us probably take for granted – did you know that police dogs can now be sent into dangerous buildings wearing head cameras that help officers outside to make operational decisions. It was also good to see a local forum where people of all ages can get together to share something that is not part of the daily round.

The Society’s Chairman is Ian Crossley [tel 384206] and the Secretary is Mary Hargreaves [tel 382833]

Teenagers

At the February meeting of NAP (Neighbourhood Action Panel) it was encouraging to hear that since Christmas the level of anti-social behaviour on the island had declined. Two people present had been impressed when, separately, they had encountered teenager skateboarders in the Coop car park and pointed out the potential danger to others, particularly in the passageway up to the main entrance, and also the ban on skateboarding there. Whether the youngsters continued skating once the adults had gone, they had at least listened politely.

Other teenagers, between Well House Green and the playing fields resented adult comment about noisy and unruly behaviour and this was noted by police and PCSOs who would not incorporate the area into their patrols.

Mersea Island Society

On Tuesday, February 17th the Society enjoyed a talk on the work of police dogs given by Mersea resident and police dog trainer, Phil Passfield, and PC Terry Collinson, a dog handler with the Essex force. They were assisted by Storm, a springer spaniel and Sam, a German shepherd dog.

Essex Police has grown from a handful of dogs in the early nineteen fifties to over forty today, with training base near Chelmsford. Springers and German Shepherds are the main breeds used, although blood hounds and Labradors are used by other forces. Phil Passfield made all this clear as he explained how dogs are trained to work alongside officers.

For some of us at least, it was a revelation to learn of dogs being trained with tennis balls or other toys which become their focus of attention, of their being sent into buildings wearing head cameras to transmit pictures to officers outside, and of the courts’ refusal to acknowledge evidence created by a dog following and finding a suspect.

Each dog is trained for a specific type of work, searching for drugs, or explosives or for people, missing persons as well as suspects and they carry out this work in a far greater variety of situations than other working dogs. Explosives dogs have to recognise eighty types of explosives.

Once Storm had lived up to his name and revealed the whereabouts of various items hidden by Terry, Phil strapped on the large padded sleeve that is used to train dogs in search and find operations. Terry stood in the doorway with Sam and the two men exchanged words. The words got louder while Sam joined in. Finally released, he seized Phil’s sleeve and kept him very occupied. Had he need to, I’m sure that Terry could have rolled a cigarette or poured himself a cup of tea while Phil struggled and failed to get away.

On a command from Phil Sam released his prisoner and went back to his van while the two officers answered further questions.

Kath Haines ended the meeting by thanking the officers for a most interesting and informative talk and demonstration.

Teenagers plus

I have just enjoyed the company of two groups of people who, like me, are no longer teenagers. Invited to talk to the Mothers’ Union about a third career as a writer, I found that I was not the only man there and wondered just what a bloke had to do to join in. Was this equal opportunities gone mad? No. He must have been there for the tea; it was one of the best cuppas I have ever enjoyed.

Then at Club 74 I found a real Dagenham girl who had been taught piano by the same teacher as one of my great heroes, Dudley Moore. I think they are great readers in this club for I soon ran out of copies of my book which I had been signing.

Both groups listed with interest and understanding to my account of my interest in the teenage years and why I write about teenagers, and I have made more Mersea friends.

My thanks to Bridget Smith and Christine Eycott for their hospitality.

13 Mar 2009 Return to top of page

Interview with Farmer John Gray

Before Christmas I visited John Gray at Wellhouse Farm where we sat and talked in an office swamped with paperwork rather than in a farmyard. John explains. When he started out in farming he would spend five per-cent of his time planning what he was going to do and ninety-five percent doing it. That was more than forty years ago. Now modern farming and its associated paperwork has reversed that and most of his time is spent in the office, which is not unlike the headmaster’s office I used to inhabit.

John’s father came to Mersea in 1940 when the war that had broken out the previous year had almost brought to a halt to the import of cheap overseas food. So hard was the agricultural depression of the thirties that there had been no grain to be seen growing between Mersea and Maldon. Now there was a desperate call to “Dig for victory,” to produce as much of our own food as possible and John’s father established himself on a derelict farm on the island.

John started independently in 1957, keeping pigs at Weir Farm on East Road while still at school. Later he attended Writtle Agricultural College near Chelmsford. Since then he has watched, and been involved in the forces that have changed farming on Mersea where the pressures of modern food production that keep him in his office have seen the closure of smaller farm units and the redistribution of the land that they served. Around us we can see farm houses and cottages that no longer house people who earn their living from the land.

John paused to remember Cecil Baldwin from Peldon who rode a bike every day to work for John’s father. For John, Cecil was an inspiration, knowledgeable and hardworking. He was also a bit of a character. Shortly before he retired, Cecil bought himself an Austin A35 in which he then drove to work, arriving some twenty minutes earlier every day; despite this new mode of transport, he refused to change the habit of a lifetime and leave home later.

Although arable farming is a substantial part of John’s farming enterprise, it is the pig enterprise which we talk about; like John, I attended Writtle College and, for a few years, bred pigs.

Like the arable farming we see on the island with its bigger but fewer tractors and bigger fields, John's pigs are kept on an industrial scale, using waste food to feed pigs via a production unit that converts it into a carefully balanced diet for the animals which is piped to them via an automated system. This system even monitors the troughs so that pigs that are failing to eat up are spotted very quickly. Long gone are the days when each small group of pigs is fed from a bucket while the pigs in the next pen shriek in anticipation. And what are they fed? It’s a mix of dairy products, some simply past its sell-by date, and biscuit waste and other by-products from the baking and brewing industries.

The pigs come to Mersea from outdoor breeding units where, the weaners are placed in groups of several families at about six weeks old. At this age they get along with other pigs but later they will fight fiercely if they are mixed with strangers. At Bocking Hall they are housed in deep straw and are fed and cared for until they are ready for the butcher. John explains the monitoring of the pigs’ progress. Firstly, he expects every pig to have been seen by someone by eight o’clock every morning and, should any problems be spotted, he wants something done or planned by nine o’clock. There is a mix of commercial sense and animal welfare here and it’s difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. John’s management of the growing pigs is technically interesting. In the olden days, which I can remember, individual pigs were sold off as they reached slaughter weight. The trouble with that approach was that the least efficient of the pigs was kept longest in pens that were half-empty, a double inefficiency. As John’s pigs take up more and more space in their pens, he sells off the smaller pigs for pork, leaving sufficient room in the pen for the larger, more efficient pigs to continue converting pig food into bacon until they weigh about 100kg.

Every three months there is a veterinary inspection of the whole unit so that the health status and welfare of the pigs is monitored. To some people this might seem an expensive business, but it results in the tiniest level of expenditure, about 1p per pig, on antibiotics and reflects the health care demands that are built in by the outlets which buy John’s pigs. These are mainly supermarkets whose operations and timings require reliable sources of pork and bacon.

These same health restrictions mean that I am unable to visit the unit. Not only is the health of the pigs paramount in the operation, but the health of the people caring for the pigs is also monitored lest human illness be passed on by the pigs when they leave the farm for slaughter.

And then of course, there is the disposal of the main by-product from the enterprise. At the end of harvest each year there is a window of opportunity and manure is spread generously on the fields that have been cleared of arable crops, oilseed rape, barley and wheat. For a few days, some of us are reminded of the pig unit, but no industrially manufactured, inorganic fertilizer is required on these fields.

Suddenly, I am no longer in awe of the large numbers and industrial processes involved here. I can remember talk of balanced farming and responsible care for the land which impressed me deeply years ago. The word environment was not heard then but there was pride in the traditional rotation of crops which sustained fertility and reduced crop disease, and the returning of natural fertilizer to the soil. Suddenly it is back again, right here under my nose in Mersea. The source of food for these pigs is a mirror of the post-war pig swill industry which involved collecting waste food from hospitals, schools and factories. Now we talk of recycling.

We stand up and John apologies for making me listen for so long - my wife will never believe this. John is still talking as we reach the yard outside. It’s porkburgers now. He tried some out at the ploughing match and they sold like hot cakes. Food – it’s what he produces and what he is still enthusing about as I reach my car.

East Mersea does its bit

Despite the cold East Mersea spruced itself up with the annual litter-pick. Encouraged by Peter Mann, Chairman of the parish council, seven volunteers turned out to pick up the rubbish left along the roads and in the hedgerows. Between then they filled about a dozen large sacks and collected a trailer load of other discarded items which the council have now taken away.

Much of the rubbish had obviously been left by those who come and go, bottles and cans, plastic and polystyrene containers, some of it dangerous, especially with flail hedge cutters in use. Particularly interesting however were the remains of a temporary road sign, left by the council or its contractors, and some overhead line insulators and mountings forgotten by BT. Perhaps they would like to sponsor our litter-pick next year.

27 Feb 2009 Return to top of page

Modern Superstition

Someone once advised me to avoid really contentious matters in this column, especially if they involve religion, but this is not one to ignore.

Did you see the news of a bus driver in Southampton earlier this month who refused to take out a bus with a so-called aetheist ad emblazoned on the side? The ad stated –

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

The ad was posted by the British Humanist Association which wants at least to balance Christian ads on London buses. The aim, I would imagine, is to show religious “certainties” as superstitious and irrational. Perhaps then the association would like to tackle other areas of life, where superstition and a lack of thought are far more prevalent, and probably – I like that word – more harmful.

Ten years ago I was dealing with three boys in my school who were persistent in not wearing correct uniform. It was the trainers, laces undone, tongues pulled out and worn with a west London swagger.

“Nike, eh. How much do they pay you to wear them Jason?”
“What d’yer mean sir?”
“How much do Nike pay you to wear these trainers?”
“Dunno what you mean sir.”
“Well Jason, they’re paying Tiger Woods six million dollars a year to wear them. I wondered what the deal was with you.”

Then it dawned on them – I clearly didn’t know what on earth I was talking about.

“No sir, we pay them for the trainers.”
“How much?”
“A hundred quid sir.”

Outside, in the high road, petrol was 60p a litre.

“Why lads, why so much money for a pair of trainers?”
“Well, you know, like, we’re sort of standing with him, like. He wears the trainers and so are we.”
“But he’s being paid an outrageous fortune to wear them. You’ll never see money like that, will you.”

They shook their heads.

“So why pay so much for trainers?”
“Well Like Jason said sir, it’s like standing alongside the man.”
“Does that make you play golf like him? Does something about Tiger Woods rub off on you then?”
“Sort of, like you’re sort of with him, like, you know, he’s there like.”
“But he doesn’t improve your performance.”

They smiled again. Fancy the old man thinking something stupid like that.

I think of that smile whenever I see celebrities smiling their endorsements - watches, cars and perfumes – all the way to the bank. Talking like this, thinking like this - voodoo for the twentieth century, bankers’ black magic for the twenty first. It reminds me of the MP who paid his son thousands out of his parliamentary allowance – our money – and pretended that he had done some work in exchange, and of the members of the Lords who seem to think that, somehow like maybe perhaps, it’s all right to push the interests of groups who will reward them.

Worries about local schools

I didn’t think that I was going to return to education so soon, but I will try to keep it short this time. News on the south Colchester schools front is that TLA is not to disappear completely but is to reappear as an annex of Colchester Institute, for 14-19 year-olds. This raises another set of questions. Where will its students appear from? Will some children have to transfer to this new institution after three years in a local comp? Will local schools encourage their best exam prospects to transfer or will they only encourage those with fewer academic prospects to go? The starting age of fourteen matches the starting age for the new vocational diplomas that were introduced last September when the school leaving age was, effectively, raised. Will fourteen year-olds at this institution be able to start proper apprenticeships with real employers – a good idea in my book – so that they are not shut up all day with other adolescents?

There is talk of more home tutoring in Mersea because of uncertainties about local comprehensive schools. At a meeting with parents who have refused to send children to a school near Clacton, our MP, Bernard Jenkin, pointed out an important truth, that it was unreasonable to expect parents to send their children to schools which they do not trust. Across the other side of the Colne, in St Osyth, six families with year seven children have taken the brave decision to teach their children at home – you may have seen them on BBC TV’s “Look East.” They have had to struggle and go without but now they have made progress and, at last, Essex County Council is offering to provide material and professional support. You can see more of The St. Osyth Six on:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=48718571407

13 Feb 2009 Return to top of page

Choosing a secondary school – asking the right questions

When you first meet a head teacher they will probably be telling you what a good school it is that they run. This is understandable but you would be wise to ask some questions. If you can, ask these questions in front of other parents and make it clear that, if you do not receive answers at the time, you will expect the head teacher to answer them soon. Ask when and how you will receive the answers and do not agree to see the head teacher privately, afterwards, when the pressure of other parents who are also listening for an answer will have gone away. You should insist on a public assurance that you will receive an answer, which of course you will convey to other parents.

What sort of question should you ask? Well don’t bother asking about exams results; if they are any good you will hear all about them. You need to know about the quality of the people who are going to share responsibility for your son or daughter and see that they achieve the best of which they are capable. You want to know that these teachers will be able to get on with their work unburdened by children who don’t want to work and behave, and whose parents are not prepared to support the school when their children are difficult.

1. Ask whether there is a parents’ association. Ask about the proportion of families who belong to it. Ask about their functions. You want to know whether this is a school with supportive parents, a key indicator of what the school has to build on.

2. Ask about the number of teachers who leave each year - you want to know the proportion of teachers who have left for each of the last three years. If the average is more than ten percent of the total, ask why teachers are not staying at the school.

3. If the school is on more than one site, or if teachers work at more than one school, ask how many teachers have to change sites or schools during each day. Swopping locations during the teaching day is difficult and following up children who have failed to work or misbehaved is less effective.

4. Ask about the number of exclusions from school. Do not be surprised if the head is reluctant to answer this question, but the fact that exclusions do take place can indicate that the school is willing to insist on reasonable standards. Clearly, the head will not discuss particular cases, but the statistics will be on record. Ask whether the exclusions were for aggressive behaviour towards other children or adults, or for other reasons. If they were for other reasons, ask what these reasons were.

5. Ask about the proportion of children at the school who were excluded for any reason in the last year. You want to know whether there are many children getting into serious trouble occasionally or a few more persistent trouble-makers. [Ten years ago, the school I was running, the most popular and successful one in a west London borough, excluded about 3% each year]

6. Ask whether your child will be left unsupervised with children who are known to be violent, or to steal or to disrupt lessons. If you are told that this is never a problem, or if you are told that little can be done to protect your child from such children, be very wary and ask why anyone should send their child to the school. If the head accepts the reality of disruptive and challenging children, but can explain what is done to protect the school and its pupils and to help difficult children then maybe you should stay to hear more about the school. But leave the meeting in no doubt that you do not expect your child or your child’s teachers to have time and energy wasted by children who do not come to school prepared to work and behave reasonably. Listen very carefully to the answers to this question.

If you can, print off the questions you want asked and share them out with other parents going to the same meeting to ensure that they are asked and followed up, this will help to impress upon the head that you, and hopefully others, would expect a great deal from the school should you decide to send your child there. A good head teacher will welcome this ammunition which can be used to protect the school’s interests. If a head says that a question cannot be answered, or suggests that one of these questions is unimportant you will be able to draw your own conclusions.

If all you are actually offered is a place in a school that you don’t trust then life is going to get tough whatever you do. You are going to have to monitor and watch over your child and be much more alert than you probably were while your daughter or son attended local primary school. Whatever happens next, whatever you do about your child’s education, you are going to have to put yourselves out if you want to avoid regrets a few years down the road. Be aware, especially if this is your oldest child, that the teenage years also await just round the corner and the influence of school and the teenage culture there will tend to reduce even further your ability to affect your child’s life, for better or worse.

If you take a place reluctantly, seek out other like-minded parents and join or form a PTA. Don’t ask anyone’s permission to do this. Offer to do so in order to support the school and encourage the teachers – a word of thanks from a parent, of an offer of help will do wonders for teachers’ morale and enhance their effectiveness with your child. Other parents can be a source of strength and robust common sense; I recently heard – a mum speak out passionately and effectively about children who find learning difficult, who will be labelled failures by our current obsession with statistics, but who need to be encouraged to do their best, not belittled before they have even got started. Work with parents like her to encourage the school when things go well and to challenge it when they do not. When you do have to challenge a school remember that, however worried or angry you are, as long as your child is a pupil there, your challenge must be directed at helping the school to do better, not put it out of business.

Don’t send your child to a school because friends are going there – schooling is far too important to be left to the vagaries of childhood friendships and anyway, if the friendships are any good they will survive. Remember, from the school’s point of view, it is the parents who will send their children greater distances, who will fight to keep open a popular school, who will work for the PTA, who are the parents with whom they stand a much better chance of success.

Be wary of schools until you feel that you can trust them. Be positive about your kids and the teachers who help them along the way, and join other parents in working to support schools. Finally, if you are not prepared to do anything to support a school, ask why your child should take the school seriously. Ask yourself what you can expect the school to do without your support. Ask yourself why you are prepared to send your child to a school that you are not prepared to support. There are alternatives. Although home tuition is very difficult and demanding, it can provide an alternative and increasing numbers of parents are doing this. Independent schools are expensive and, rightly, will expect your automatic support.

30 Jan 2009 Return to top of page

Education? Education? Education?

Just before Christmas I was fortunate to be able to attend two meetings at West Mersea Primary School which concerned the county’s proposed reorganisation of secondary education in Colchester. For children in year six, and their parents, this can be a very fraught time, but the prospect of losing the closest schools, and a longer journey to the far side of the town, makes this a particularly difficult year.

Parents of year six pupils have already had to make choices between local secondary schools without knowing the likely path these schools are going to take during the very years when their children will have to attend them. One school, we were told, is already having difficulty in recruiting staff and teachers are being seconded from another school. Another of these schools was unable to tell me whether it had a parents’ association. Other possibility is the transformation of one school into an academy, a solution that seems very popular with local authorities at the moment for they make it possible to throw large sums of money at a problem and get them off the hook.

I was encouraged to visit a local school where vast sums have been spent but which remains half-empty; I am supporting six families who are refusing to send their children to this school, having failed to gain places at four other local, oversubscribed schools. A plaque on the wall told of its being opened by a prime minister who shouted, “Education, education, education,” and whose youngest son was taken round to look at an independent school last year. As the head showed me round with a television journalist, he had to unlock every door that we came to then re-lock it behind us. I was reminded of young offenders institutions and prisons that I have visited. I would not want to teach there or to send a child there. Money and celebrity interest are quite ineffective when parents fail to support schools.

The problem that remains for some parents will be the possibility that the only places available for their children will be in a school which they cannot trust. It may be a school where the main influence on their children, on the way to school, in the toilets, at the back of the playground, in classrooms when teachers are delayed or are stand-ins who are unfamiliar with the school and its pupils, is a combination of families and their children who cannot be bothered to support the school and who resent and oppose the school’s efforts to insist on hard work and good behaviour. And this main influence can continue out of school of course, in the streets, the shops and the open spaces somewhere near you. Secondary school should of course be a place where children’s self-discipline makes education possible.

It is no surprise to me that the preferred arrangement for reorganising Colchester’s non-selective schools is the least popular with parents; these arrangements are like the badge-engineering or re-branding arrangements that a local authority once tried to get me to accept with my school. The consultation that has been under way is just that. Although the results will not force the hand of Essex County Council, the consultation has roused much strong feeling on the subject which the council may well choose to acknowledge. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, parents will know where they and their children stand. Just remember that when the current year six children finish secondary education, in 2016, the current councillors will have long forgotten this matter of school provision, but the decisions they make this year will be with your children for a very long time.

Sometime before the summer holidays, parents will know where their children have been offered places. They will also know the fate of these schools; will they be wound down and closed while your children are there or will a sponsor be found to pour money in? During a recession? Whatever is decided, parents will have to accept or reject the offers. Then they will have to begin the process of dealing with these schools and hopefully, get off to a start that will help the school do its best for their children. I will take up this important practical business next time, for the crucial thing is, however disappointed you may be about the place provided, there are still things you can do to improve matters and, if you can get other parents to join you, things may start to get better.

Forty-three years on

A copy of The Essex Chronicle - May 7th 1965 turned up recently, a week when the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” was Top of the Pops.

That year my father, John, had sung in a production of Pink Champagne with Braintree and Bocking Musical Society. The performance was reviewed in the Chronicle and a copy survived, in Stebbing and then in Burnham on Crouch, and was recently passed to me by my mother who was clearing out old newspapers.

Among recently acquired friends on Mersea there are Reg and Val Green from Whitham who have a caravan on the island. Val had told us how her father had moved to Whitham when she was child, following his appointment as Labour Party agent for the Maldon constituency. On this same page of The Chronicle I noticed an item about a new Labour candidate for the constituency and wondered whether Ted Mawdesley, the Labour agent, would have been Val’s father.

I could not find Reg and Val to ask them. Two other new friends, Peter and Gill Mann, were at home and I asked whether they knew Val’s maiden name. Peter asked why I wanted to know and I explained that I was wondering whether Val’s father had been Ted Mawdsley. I wasn’t expecting Peter’s reply.

“Ted Mawdsley was a signalman at Whitham Station; he worked with my father.”

This answer simply raised more questions so, finally, the six of us got together to straighten out this bit of history. What was Val’s maiden name? Was her dad anything to do with Peter Mann’s father’s colleague on the railways?

We sat down to examine the evidence. All, we thought, would soon be revealed as we read about a minor crime wave in Chelmsford, children endangering elderly people in Heybridge by riding their bikes on the pavement and a Braintree Councillor attacking the national press over negative attitudes towards road deaths. Clearly the nation was falling apart even in those days.

Val’s maiden name was Howe. Ted Mawdsley had taken over as Labour Party agent from her father. Simple really; now we knew.

All that remained to hold our attention was an ad for a Jackson electric cooker for only £68.5s.0d, or £6.18s.0d down and 16 quarterly payments of £4.10s.8d, on offer from Eastern Electricity.

Gill Mann was left holding the paper, and turned over the page. There was a gasp.

“She lived in my road.” Gill held up the paper and pointed to a wedding photo. Miss Christine Bocking of Delta Road, Hutton had married a Mr David Huttley of Meads Close, Ingatestone. For a moment it seemed that Gill was to have the last word but no, there was an interruption from her husband.

“And his brother was in my class at school.”

Three couples connected by a forty-three year old coincidences and a sheet of old newspaper.

16 Jan 2009 Return to top of page

Duke of Edinburgh's Award and Sailing

Thanks to Bry Mogridge and her assistants, Mark Muson and Shirley Adams, I was able to spend some time with a group of Mersea teenagers who are involved in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. For a long time I have been aware of the excellent reputation of the scheme which provides young people with four programmes of activity: helping people or the community, getting fitter, developing skills, an expedition, and, for the final Gold Award, a five day residential activity away from home. Now I was going to hear about growing up on Mersea from ten of its determined young people.

First I asked who the important adults were in their lives, apart from teachers and parents. Most of them found the parents of their friends easy to get on with, easy to trust; by this stage it was obvious that Bry and her two helpers were very much in this category – adults on whom they could rely, adults with whom they shared a mutual respect, adults who would help them get on with things.

What was it about the D of E that kept them going? It’s reputation; they were confident that it was worthwhile. For some it was the company of other young people and for others it was the opportunity to do something particularly interesting, out of the mould. Two of them joked that it was because Mum sent them. This may have been so, but they certainly gave me the impression that they were not at all sorry that she had done so.

I asked them about the complaints about teenagers that are sometimes voiced on Mersea. Yes, they said. There were certain groups whose pointless stupidity deserved criticism, but, apart from a lack of a youth club, some sort of social provision, somewhere just to meet with other youngsters, there were lots of other organised activities on Mersea. Passing your driving test was a bit of a watershed because then you easily get off the island and travel further afield.

They liked being recognised on the island. Here it was easier to respect people whom you knew. As one of them put it, on Mersea he was known; he wasn’t “just a kid.”

Thank you, Chloe, Abbie, George, Holly, Megan, Abby, Matt, Tom and Lorna.

Most of time we have to content ourselves with seven square miles of island and escape to get to work, for shopping and pleasure. It was only when a neighbour kindly took me along for a weekend afloat that it dawned upon me the sheer, vast extent of the leisure ground that surrounds us and stretches away north, east and south. Something I merely looked at recently from the island’s edge. Sailing, I realised, provides an enormous extension of the island, several times its area in the two local estuaries and between Dengie and Clacton. Later I was to realise that it’s one thing to look at a chart as you try to keep up with the RYA’s day skipper course, warm and dry with a comfortable bar downstairs, another to look across wide bodies of water and try to pick out home through the fog.

Three of us set out on an autumn Saturday. Stowing kit and sleeping bags reminded me of scout camp and sturdy ex-army tents, but this tent followed and led us with its canvas pulling us overhead. Heybridge was our first target and we tacked up the Blackwater while I watched out at places with names familiar from road signs which now looked completely different. It was, I suppose, rather like studying an old-fashioned photographic negative and trying to imagine the print.

To Heybridge watching the echo-sounder

Slipping into Bradwell and soon I found myself escorted to an establishment known as The Green Man. Before setting off I had heard much about this establishment and was not disappointed. In fact bystanders could be forgiven for entertaining the belief that many voyages out of Mersea have some such place as their destination.

02 Jan 2009 Return to top of page

Our island home. Part Four: the last long straight

Past these caravans the sea wall falls away and I pound along flat sand that is stabilised by tough grass. From its place on the island’s spine which links it to Barrow Hill in the west, The Dog and Pheasant watches, now the highest pub on the island. Ahead I can see the island’s cliffs.

Do not expect drama when you encounter our cliffs; they do not fall hundreds of feet into the sea. In fact you would be hard put to fall off them. If you did, you would probably roll rather than fall to the beach where bits of concrete, Twentieth Century history, spread themselves from the foot of the cliffs where once they awaited invaders. With the trees that have fallen and lie nearby, this area is another reminder of the sea which is waiting beyond the stakes that step out across the mudflats. Soon it will return with its forceful purpose to the reddish strata of subsoil which it has exposed, as if a giant scalpel has been drawn across the fields and destroyed the sweep and dignity of a landscape.

But here is a beach, with access from the country park; in the summer I have watched families at play while sand martins come and go, feeding their families in the nests above them in the cliffs.

Before I turn for the last mile of wall and fields and salting and marsh, I look back again, West. The town and its Victoria Esplanade have vanished and the power station has settled back a little into the greyness on the other side of the Blackwater, a bigger lump among the small ones over the river. Around the corner and I look up the Colne again, busy now, but no longer mercurial under a dark sky. People are out of doors, spreading themselves out over the water and the land.

A couple get out of a car in front of me, at the top of the path by the golf house. Do I know of any good walks around here? I tell them about one or two; turn left towards North Mersea, on the edge, where there are creeks and lonely marshes, or right for South Mersea and the light and the sea, where mankind is more apparent. How long have I been out? I look at my watch; almost five hours.

Six conversations, nearly three hundred photographs and 13 miles.

Greetings. Not a particularly pleasant day to be out walking. Two of them, a man and a boy with three dogs, an end of season visit by the look of them. I cycle towards them, nod and speak: “Morning.” The man glares at me, as if I ought to be minding my own business and not troubling him. Over my shoulder the boy is staring back at me while the man continues, anxious perhaps to get away from this nuisance on two wheels.

The boy looks puzzled, as if he has seen something for the first time and can’t work out what’s wrong with it. What, I wonder, will he make of my gesture and of his adult companion’s response? What chance of someone telling him that we are all human, that another’s greeting can be cheering, or reassuring, or an invitation. Will he simply be left to conclude that the adult world is a very strange one, or will he learn to receive and exchange greetings and the spark of human interest that goes with them?

At a recent meeting at West Mersea Primary School about the County’s proposals for reorganising local secondary schools, Jonathan Tippett, head of three of the schools concerned, made very clear the counter proposal that Stanway School would like to see adopted, which would see the retention of TLA and Alderman Blaxhill. The plan is on Stanway School’s web site.

There was considerable support for TLA but, like most maintained schools, it suffers from politicians, local and national, making a football out of education and believing that what is good enough for other people’s children is not always good enough for their own. Having run a maintained school in London, and taught in independent schools, I am convinced that greater independence for schools, coupled with greater responsibilities and powers for parents is the key - public schools for all.

And now there is news in the last edition of The Courier of “Alternative secondary school education” on the island. I have a particular interest in alternatives to mainstream education. Currently I am supporting six families in St Osyth who are teaching their children out of school. They are brave and determined, undertaking the two most important roles in the world, parent and teacher. It will be interesting to learn more of what is happening on Mersea.

To the flics, Mersea’s very own.

Free tickets my wife said, so the last Friday in November found us in the MICA Centre with over 160 other Mersea folk to see a film. That was it. Could Mersea sustain a film society?

The bar was open, there were friends and neighbours to greet, and Peter Clements to welcome us with some words of explanation; as yet, no one knew the title of the film.

It would be possible to show ten films a year, films which had not made it to the cinema in Colchester or had passed on quickly before anyone had a chance to see them, so long as at least sixty people signed up. The cost? £20 pa. The evening’s film? Seabiscuit.

The lights dimmed, West Mersea Yacht Club’s CD projector came to life and we were off.

Seabiscuit tells the true story of the undersized Depression-era American racehorse whose victories lifted the spirits of the nation. It was an excellent choice, a reminder of sudden and terrifying changes that beset the States, and a background for anxious discussion nowadays in the UK. It is a tale of endurance and determination in difficult times.

There was an interval and a raffle, which paid for the expensive paint that had transformed the back wall of the stage. Afterwards over one hundred members were signed up by the organizers: Jon and Hilary Bower, Peter and Liz Clements, Leslie and Kevin Mullins and Yvonne and John Rann.

Suddenly there it was, Mersea Island Film Society, fully functioning, technically, economically, socially and aesthetically – there was even an opportunity to suggest films that should be shown.

Membership cards and a list of films to be shown next year, starting on January 28th, will be sent out in the early in the New Year. Members will be able to bring guests, subject to there being seats available, for £3.

Since the meeting more people have signed up taking the membership to over 130. There will be a membership limit – the main hall seats 200. So, if you are interested, hurry along to the MICA Centre and join.

Boxing Day. I am thawed out sufficiently to have forgotten last year’s pain. If you are looking for someone to sponsor this year in aid of the RNLI, do get in touch.

19 Dec 2008 Return to top of page

Our island home. Part Three - Mersea Shared

It is so different. No longer am I looking out across marshes or mudflats for the water is here beside me, lapping along the low water mark, awaiting the impulse to return and cover the foreshore where a handful of people walk with their dogs. There are three of them, trying to get on with their doggy business, sniffing and being sniffed. One woman ignores her dog as it leaps and barks at a new playmate, who is tied still to its owner and he struggles to avoid getting involved. I keep out of it. You can learn a lot if you watch people with their animals.

Past Fairhaven Avenue and family memories. At the bottom of the beach two men watch over a boy who is digging for bait. I congratulate them on getting the youngster to do all the work and one of the men grins. “This is nothing; he’s going up the chimney when we get home.”

Ahead, the line of the coast is curving towards the north and the mudflats reach out vast towards St Osyth, beyond the Colne, the line of white sails passing two and fro, like the white vans on the Strood an hour and a half ago.

Pastel painted beach huts trail away over my left shoulder, and I make my way back up onto the sea wall which reappears at the top of the beach. It was good to walk along the beach for a while and sample humanity, but it’s from the wall that the views of the island are best. Embedded here in the wall, its eyes sealed now with cement and concrete blocks, a pill box stares blindly out to sea, where two Thames barges cut across the horizon, silhouettes against the mid-morning light and beyond them crawls the blur of an ocean-going ship.

At the bottom of a long slope Waldergraves’ caravans nestle next to the wall. Here some owners lavish care and love on their bit of the island and flower beds climb from the vans to the top of the wall. Below the wall the beach stretches itself, a welcome, wide open area between the Seaview site and this spot.

Across to my left two pairs of slender white posts appear, bright against the autumn fields: the rugby club and, next door, the youth club. They are quiet now, the sprawl of buildings and equipment suggest busyness and purpose just waiting to break out.

I press on and, among the trees and buildings at the top of the fields there is East Mersea Church, no longer the distant dark shape that I recognised so clearly from the other side of the island, almost four hours ago. The stonework is brightly lit now and the church sits square and purposeful amongst the tops of trees which shimmer in a stiff north-westerly. Below the church the land is bathed in clear light and, away to my right, the sea sparkles under a clear, bright sky.

Now I am confined to the top of the wall, above a mixture of mudflat and stones. Here the sea comes right up against the seawall which has been paved with concrete sets, a pattern of white squares fixed in black pitch which oozes out between them. In places the sea has torn a hole in these squares and I can sense the destructive force that makes its way up here twice a day. Across the mouth of the Colne, Point Clear is now closer than West Mersea. From behind the Stone, our island’s most easterly point, oyster smacks move up and down the mouth of the river, slightly Mediterranean in appearance with their slanted red sails.

Next to my path there is a cafeteria. On the stones below the wall some boys play with a bucket and some stones while two mums look on and chat. Inside the cafeteria a couple sit with their papers and the remains of their breakfast, looking out over the sea. What do they make of this place? I slide open a door and ask if I might join them.

Mersea is one of the easiest bits of coast for them to travel to and there is a history of family visits and a caravan now and somewhere to which they can escape. We are contemporaries, from the same town, and we joke about the colour of girls’ school uniforms. It’s been good to share a few minutes but then my journey calls again and I get up to leave.

Earlier this autumn I came to realize that we have some deer on the island. From a distance, up on the sea wall again, I could see an animal about three hundred yards away, watching me so still that I could not make it out. A light coloured Alsatian? - too light although its hind quarters sloped downwards. Too big for a fox and more still than a fox would have been; Reynard likes you to see him move while he weighs you up and moves on. Then this creature moved its head and looked straight towards me. “Ah, Bambi,” I thought before it sprang into action and disappeared smartly into a copse.

I had forgotten the muntjac until there was its sign or spore, pairs of small neat dark slots in the footpath in front of me, a mile and a month away from my first sighting. A child is not just for Christmas [2] Did you know that there are Easter carols as well as Christmas? I sometimes wonder what would happen if the churches cancelled Christmas one year and invited everyone to Easter Carol services instead. One Easter carol finishes with this verse:

We followed far, we traded not, But long ago we could not find him. The very folk that called him king Let robbers go and bind him. We found him then, the sport of men, Still calm among their crying: And well we knew his words were true He was most kingly dying. Instead of three wise men, a dozen merchants, seeking a king on their travels.

One of my favourite carols impresses with its reminder that Christmas is but the start of the story.

Hush do not wake the Infant King.... Soon comes the cross, the nails, the piercing, Then in the grave at last reposing: Sing lullaby. I don’t know whether Sabine Baring Gould was still rector of East Mersea when he wrote these words but with them he reminds us that it is Easter that is the end of the story and that this child is not just for Christmas.

05 Dec 2008 Return to top of page

Our island home. Part Two - The City.

I pause now, at The Strood, while two lorries carry tractors and ploughs up towards Dawes Lane for the ploughing match. Past the mess which marks the start of the road towards East Mersea I turn towards the west. Above me I can see other early risers, fishermen and their shelters up on the reservoir.

For a while little changes and rows of duck and some waders enjoy the sun which is warming the mud on the far side of the Strood Channel. A couple pass by with a small dog. To my left the fields slope up towards the back of the town and then, further over, my eye is taken with a flock of caravans which sparkle in the early morning light, poised as if to tumble down to the channel’s edge. Below them, for the first time, I am hemmed in and there are views only to one side, over the marshes and the creek to Ray Island, Mehalah’s home, and beyond, where the land rises towards Peldon and Wigborough, there are distant settlements, dark smudges on a wide canvas.

Suddenly there are clapperboard cottages, squat and tightly rooted, a black line along the edge of the land, then the Dab Chicks and boats resting in the creek, and roads and signs of people. The weight of settlement looms to my left, side roads and houses tucked into lanes that run up and away from the water and disappear amongst hedges and trees. There are a few signs of life, relaxed, but quietly purposeful, more dogs taking their owners for a walk, and at the Company Shed people smile hello while they go about their business. It’s a mixture of town and country, here on the edge of the sea. I pause here. Is this what makes Mersea then, down here in Mehalah’s Old City?

Ahead there’s an ice cream sign. Mövenpick? For a moment I am confused; five years in Switzerland and early morning runs there past Mövenpick’s factory, just above Lake Geneva. Here, it’s far too early for ice-cream, even Swiss ice cream, but I enjoy a coffee at the Blackwater Pearl where several other people are relaxed about their breakfasts.

I stay on the road, past the yacht club and the reminders of activity, suspended for the moment. No one comes and goes at The Coast Inn, or The Victory or The Oyster Bar, and I feel as though I am trespassing in an abandoned gourmet park here, and should move on before someone comes out and demands to know my business. I peer out between sheds towards Cobmash Island and, beyond, to the grey bulk of Bradwell’s old power station. Where the road dips, there are the house boats, waiting like abandoned landing craft. Up the slope and past St Peter’s Well and the empty seat which stares out from its railed enclosure across the creeks and the estuary. Then down again, down the Monkey Steps and, after three hours on my feet, I step onto sand and shingle.

Next time, Mersea Shared.

East Mersea village questionnaire. Our thanks to all of you who have completed and returned questionnaires. These will be sent off shortly so the results can be analysed. If you have yet to return your questionnaire please return it to the village shop; do make an effort as the more we submit, the more notice will be taken of our views.

It is hoped to produce preliminary results by Christmas, with an open meeting to discuss them to follow. If you have any queries, please contact Harry Sharp at “Fairwinds.”

A child is not just for Christmas [1]

Have you ever encountered someone who has blurted out news of some stupidity or other and left you speechless with anger? It happened to me a couple of weeks ago.

“Tara’s in hospital you know – ‘cos of that hole in the heart business.” I expressed concern and interest.
“Oh yes, and she’s got four weeks to go, that’s what’s really worrying them.” It began to dawn on me.
“She’s expecting, just before Christmas.”

The mother’s detachment beggared belief. It’s like an unfortunate natural event, beyond the control of human beings, you know, a storm, or flooding; you shrug your shoulders and get on with making the best of it, trying to clear up the mess. There is no one to blame. You know – these things happen.

This woman expects my concern and sympathy for the trouble to which her fourteen year-old daughter is putting her: visits to the hospital, sustained maintenance for her and the child, the business of re-establishing some sort of schooling once the baby has arrived. But there’s more to it than that. Tara has now realised that she is an adult – well – she’s pregnant isn’t she. Obviously, she wants her boyfriend to move in; he’ll be able to help settle the baby if it wakes in the night. Her mother will have to keep him of course because his parents don’t want to know. And Tara’s father? Who?

Of course you wouldn’t want your child or grandchild fostered by this girl, or her mother, but they do have a spare room that they could turn into a bit of cash.

So just tell me please, why should they be allowed to inflict themselves on this child which will arrive just before Christmas when, like all children, it will require love, not sentimentality, and care and commitment and affection and support and guidance for at least another twenty Christmases?

And while I’m feeling bolshie – do any of you suffer from computer generated letters concerning unpaid accounts for things which you have never received, or concerning things which you might, in the future, neglect to do? I think I might have discovered an answer. Reply, clearly, boldly and confidently and make sure that you ask as many questions as you can, for example, “Can you assure me that no steps have been taken that might affect my creditworthiness or otherwise place me at a disadvantage?”

Assure the recipient that you will address the matter fully once you have received these assurances and see what happens. I suspect that both computers and human beings find it very difficult to give such assurances. In two cases, a car park operator and a phone line provider threw in the towel very quickly.

21 Nov 2008 Return to top of page

Disposing of materials thoughtfully

Earlier this month I visited a school where new vocational diplomas have been introduced. There I watched fourteen year-olds examine familiar products to see the materials involved in their construction and the ways in which they had been assembled. Their next task was to consider how the items could be disposed of once they were no longer of use, thinking at the start of the process, not at the finish.

Early next morning I approached Meeting Lane along a footpath from the east. Someone had dumped broken glass on the track where it will become mixed up with the soil. Nothing will grow there now, unless someone finds an easy way to separate shards of glass from soil. Here in miniature, was a land-fill site, somewhere to dump and forget things that were once useful but which we cannot afford to separate again so that they can be put to further good use.

Try Googling “space debris.” You will encounter the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office which monitors and analyses a sort of inter-galactic land-fill site. NASA reports that there are more than 9,000 pieces of space debris. Each piece is more than four inches across and altogether this rubbish weighs 5,500 tons, over half a ton per item. Imagine running in to one of them if you were not looking where you were going. Nasa claims that there is no workable and economic way to remove them. We are clever enough to get the stuff up there, but not clever enough to ask what will happen to it once we have no further use for it. And it’s only fifty years or so since space was first visited by man.

Thank goodness that young people are looking for ways for us to behave more responsibly in future.

07 Nov 2008 Return to top of page

Our island home. Part One. On the Edge - North Mersea

It was to be a quick look at the territory, to celebrate a year in our new island home. At 6.40 am I set off westwards, along the northern edge. Behind me Brightlingsea lies in darkness, flattened under strips of pink cloud and a sky that is growing lighter. In front lie fields, part hidden under patches of mist, while a strip of narrow slack water waits across the marsh and the mudflats. Two riding lights keep watch, one on a Thames barge, and red and green lights wink from the water up the channel past Wivenhoe. Soon a heron takes off and flies away, dark and parallel to the sea wall. Blackbirds rattle alarm cries and, ahead of me, I can hear a great skein of geese moving across the sky. Closer, curlew call out to one another. I turn my back on Pyefleet and look at East Mersea, silhouetted across fields which rise slowly towards the road. Beyond there is the clear outline of the church and, despite half an hour winding my way along this sea wall, I know just where I stand.

There is a trackway below the wall where walking would be much easier, but from up here in a steady north-west wind, there is so much more to see. A barn owl rises from the seaward side of the wall. He decides that he does not like my company but stays on the island and floats away inland until he is lost to sight. Now I am looking across hundreds of acres of farmland, hidden from the roads, all productive with cattle and sheep grazing and cultivated fields cleared with autumn work nearly finished, a new year started already. It is a huge chunk of our island, sweeping out to the north and inspiring in the growing light. Walking around it is quite a commitment; fewer people make their mark up here on the sea wall and, between the path up to Shop Lane and the Strood, there are no paths back to the road.

An hour after setting off I discover some abandoned oyster beds, hidden in a narrow creek, and I wonder how many years it has been since they were productive. Across the marsh the sound of traffic disturbs the peace for the first time since I set out. A large white van – it’s always a white van isn’t it – a white van reflects the sun, a moving target on the marsh making its way along the line of the fence that marks the Strood.

I hope that many of you enjoyed the Mersea’s ploughing match as much as I did. The day was as good as the weather and deserved to be, thanks to Dave Leggett, Sara Baldwin and their team. A town friend, who had never been to anything like this before, tried to put her finger on it; it didn’t matter to whom you spoke, you would get on with them. There were gigantic modern tractors ploughing great swathes of land as they passed, friendly vintage tractors, clearly pleased to come out of retirement, and the great horses striding out as their forebears have done in this part of the world for centuries. Not for nothing does the island have a Saxon name for it was the Saxon invaders who brought with them heavy ploughs that could turn Essex into a source of grain.

Some of you may remember A.G. Street, the farmer who became famous as the author of Famer’s Glory and as a panelist on the BBC’s Any Questions; he has at least two admirers on Mersea. Of ploughing he wrote:

Ploughing is the king of jobs, the most charming disguise that work can wear. Once you have acquired the knack of it, it goes with the effortless urge of a sailing boat. Ploughing is a mental tonic of great power for, little by little, the ploughman changes the face of the earth.

He was right. During the depression of nineteen thirties, my grandfather, a marine engineer without work, was told by his doctor to go and do some ploughing on his brother-in-law’s farm and, years later, I ploughed a hillside field near Brentwood and watched the brown of newly-turned soil spread across the yellow stubble slope, and came to realise the truth of all this.

Next time, South Mersea

07 Nov 2008 Return to top of page

The Perils of Cycling

Twice recently neighbours have voiced concerns about the dangers of cycling on Mersea. Two retired neighbours no longer cycle, not even to the pub, simply because they no longer feel safe. Someone else was horrified when she found me riding back home across the island, in the dark; I explained that I am just stubborn and ride defensively.

But there are drivers who risk head-on collisions rather than catch their wheel trims on the kerb, and others who assume that around the next bend someone is keeping the road empty for them so that they need not pause in their headlong rush. Some drivers seem simply to have no idea where the four corners of their vehicle actually are and now there is a proposal to simplify the driving test so that three point turns, reversing around a corner and reversing into a parking space will somehow be ticked off the list by a driving instructor. Would you give a gun to someone who did not know where the bullets came out?

There are many good reasons for cycling: to reduce congestion in urban areas – we each of us take up far more space when we surround ourselves with a motor vehicle, fuel economy, reduced carbon footprint, fitness and nosiness; you can have a good look as you ride past, at gardens, at other people’s rubbish and at whatever’s going on in the front room, without anyone realising. In large towns and cities there is a further advantage of using a bike; it’s often the quickest way to get from A to B and time is not wasted looking for somewhere to park.

Some mums and dads on Mersea know this and you can see them, teaching their children to ride sensibly, especially on their way to and from school, and they are really impressive. Other parents seem too frightened to let their children anywhere near a road unless they are safely strapped into the back of a car. This is understandable, especially if the parents were not brought up to use bikes or have never used bikes confidently, but this does nothing to reduce this barrier of fear which condemns so many of us to expensive transport and reduced opportunities for healthy exercise.

One understandable concern is the way that some cyclists show no consideration for other people, be they motorists, whom they expect to be mind-readers, or pedestrians who are expected quickly to get out of their way even if they are elderly or burdened with shopping or children. On a bike you can stop or change direction almost instantly, without warning. The fact that you are far more vulnerable, easily knocked over by motorists or pedestrians is no comfort to them. No one wants to see other people hurt; the problem is to control inconsiderate riding or driving and to encourage greater responsibility on our roads.

If able-bodied people had to pass the cycling proficiency test before obtaining a provisional driving license, all drivers would learn what it is like to be at risk from motorists. Parents who are now alarmed for their children would then move heaven and earth to see roads made safer for their teenage sons and daughters who were practising on their bikes for their tests, and we would all become far more concerned to see responsible use of our roads. We might go further and suggest that convictions for any violent or aggressive behaviour, or the use of a motor vehicle in the commission of crime, should result in a driving ban.

A licence should be a privilege which any of us can claim so long as we do not abuse it. We should not expect more. If driving licences were suspended pending investigations into accidents, as happens on the railways, with commercial shipping and with flying, travelling on the road might be as safe. Think how much more carefully we would drive if involvement in an accident resulted in the automatic suspension of our driving licences until we had been cleared of any responsibility.

Here on Mersea there is hope; I have rediscovered hand signals. When I have a better view of a clear road ahead I wave motorists on. About half of them signal their thanks.

Wanted: flautist or terrier to deal with a colony of rats on East Road, opposite Weir Farm, near the turning to the youth camp. Do remember to put out your warning triangles first; there is a double bend here.

Did you see the return of Oliver Cromwell to Colchester last month? No, not the Great Protector who besieged the castle during the civil war, but Britannia pacific number 70013 which used to run between Liverpool Street and destinations in Essex and East Anglia. Mersea nearly became one of these destinations – Empress Avenue was set out to allow for a line along the bottom of the long gardens on the eastern side of the road. One hour to Liverpool Street – now there’s a thought.

There is, of course, the A12. “Free flow facilities for through traffic....a system of inter-connected high speed routes....(the A120) projected through Hertfordshire – a high speed rout to the Midlands....a 70 mph twin-track clearway clean across Essex.” The words of The Braintree and Whitham Times on St Patrick’s Day, 1967, reporting the county’s plans for our roads. Since then Stanstead has appeared while the railway that linked Harwich with Bishop Stortford, and the airport, has been severed at Braintree.

Have you tried to rush across Hertfordshire recently? Across Essex, political Essex maybe, but it’s a long way to crawl from Brentwood to Stratford.

Did you notice amongst all the news of financial troubles, the failure of an attempt in Parliament to outlaw the smacking of children. I wrote a piece in The Independent opposing the measure and attracted a lot of comment. What do people on Mersea think?

Finally, congratulations to Mersea’s adults for nurturing a happy and contented generation of teenagers. Not one of them has responded to my invitation in the last issue (438), Grumpy Old Teenagers, to complain about you. peterinson@yahoo.co.uk

24 Oct 2008 Return to top of page

A morning dredging for oysters

Until we came to live on Mersea, my only experience of oysters was as a consumer. At a Christmas feast I have watched friends eat nothing else all evening and, of course, we know that the Romans enjoyed Mersea Oysters. Thanks now to Richard Haward of Company Shed fame, I have learnt something about the unseen side of oyster production, a long-established island enterprise.

First there were boxes of native oysters to collect, humped across the mud into a small motor boat. First lesson; these are not scallops. Then I am able to compare them with the Gigas, (say “gigantic”) larger, rougher looking creatures whose ancestors were brought here from the Pacific to be bred in hatcheries and then put out in the sea to grow on there. Now they spawn in the wild in large numbers.

Cold, misty and fairly early, at the bottom of the tide, we set off from the hard in an oyster skiff that Richard’s father had built here in Mersea in 1948. Around me are familiar sights; the yacht club and the church tower have risen up and I feel cut off from the horizon. Towards Salcott Creek, round humps of island, we pass tired yachts that doze quietly under their awnings.

Oysters are not found in boxes conveniently dumped just above low water. They spawn in the water and release their eggs, which have been fertilised inside the parent’s shell, are released and then settle on something hard and start to grow. Often they settle on the shells of other oysters or other shellfish; Richard says he counted forty on the biggest clump that he has encountered.

When we reach Richard’s oyster beds we can see the oysters, mainly gigas, exposed and stretching away from us, up towards the high water mark, in places covering the floor of the creek completely. What I am looking at has as much to do with farming as fishing for this muddy looking area in front of us is a field that is flooded twice a day. Like cattle or sheep, the oysters can be left there to fatten ready for the market, or they can be rounded up, packed into boxes and sent to places where they will fatten quicker, just as a farmer will shift grazing beasts to where the grass is best. There is an art in all this, for oysters which grow too quickly develop brittle shells that are easily damaged.

What is more, these oyster beds can be weeded – cleared of diseased oysters, and the floor of the oyster bed can be harrowed like a field to break up large clumps of oysters and spread the stones and shells on which the spat, the newly hatched oysters, will start to grow. Just as some animals are fattened indoors, so oyster producers have used rafts and floating cages to keep oysters close to the best sources of food, near outlets from the marshes where material washed off the land provides good nutrition.

On the side of the boat, about midships, there is a small table built above the bulwark. Richard gives a shove to the metal dredger that has been resting on it and this simple piece of equipment, a large metal shopping basket, swings out on a simple hoist attached to the mast and is lowered into the water. For ten minutes or so we circle around within the narrow ribbon of water and then the dredge is wound in. It hangs over the table, a cage that measures some two by three feet and about a foot in width. Richard releases a catch and a few dozen oysters tumble out accompanied by some shells and a little mud. Tiny crabs scramble about in this new confusion.

Richard picks up a cultac, a small, heavy blade which has a spike at the end, and taps and chops away at oysters that require separation, then scrapes quickly at some jelly-like growths on their shells. Small oysters are returned to continue fattening and diseased or damaged oysters are put to one side. Soon a white plastic bucket is full of oysters that you would recognise in a fish-mongers or a fish restaurant. First however they will have to be washed and cleaned.

My camera battery is flat and so a second trip is organised to get some more photographs. This time I am sent off with Andrew and Blackie. There is more to learn, but first I am tested.

“See that – it’s a cock oyster. That’s a hen, over there.” Blackie points them out.

He looks me straight in the eye, and I look straight back.

“They’re all hermaphrodites,” I remind him and there’s laughter all round.

He picks out three oysters to show me the amount of growth that is possible during the three years it takes an oyster to reach maturity. By six months they have reached a diameter of about one inch and after two years they have reached about three.

Six producers operate in and around West Mersea and out into the river. Up East the remains of oyster beds can still be seen, decimated by the bitter cold of 1963 and the anti-fouling paint that was in use at the time. In West Mersea however, our visitors can enjoy oysters that have been harvested only a few hundred yards away.

Have you noticed how idle and complacent are Mersea wood pigeons. They stare at you from telegraph poles and wires, or close by in trees. Near my home they perch on gates, puffed up and looking well-fed, bloated even, and they practically allow you to walk up to them. A well-aimed stone would be enough, but these birds are a savvy lot. Not only have they adjusted to the bird scarers that rattle away in the earlier part of the summer, but they have forgotten what it is to be shot at. Life is much safer for them for food is still very cheap.

Harvest time, reminders in the churches and elsewhere about the bounty of the earth. No one starves on Mersea. Reminders too, as I write this, of the fragility of Britain’s economy and the other economies with which we are mixed up. Just as our neighbours in the east have adjusted to the collapse of communist economies, we are facing questions about the capitalism system. Two thirds of the world starves and around us here land lies unproductive, a desperate conundrum.

Responses. To Ken Bennet, p.9, Issue no 437, Thanks for the comments. In Issue number 436 I did outline some practical ideas, which I was kindly invited to explain at the Neighbourhood Watch AGM on 17th September when I said that I was prepared to get involved. To Rolanda Norton – Transition Island – bee populations halving. The threat to honey bees of Collapsing Colony Syndrome, alarming in the States, has not manifest itself in this country to anything like the same extent and beekeepers in many countries are learning to cope with varroa. On Mersea, there seems to be little sign of the latter disease and two of us at least have taken off reasonable crops of honey.

The Mersea Island Ploughing Match, off Dawes Lane on Saturday 18th October. The heart of food production – pull on your wellies then just go and watch it happen. More next time.

Finally, please encourage your GRUMPY OLD TEENAGERS to send their complaints about adults behaving badly to: peterinson@yahoo.co.uk

10 Oct 2008 Return to top of page

TV interviews, beekeeping and other matters

My oyster fishing trip has had to be postponed because the BBC wanted to hear my views about the new school diplomas and the raising of the school leaving age.

Schools are one of the few places where innocent people can be imprisoned. Bill Turnbull on The Breakfast Show thought this was very strong, but parents whose children fail to attend school can find themselves threatened with prison. My point was that I did not want children kept out of school, but that I wanted schools to be much more attractive for them. By allowing children to leave earlier, at fourteen rather than later at seventeen or eighteen, and allowing people to employ them – it is illegal at present to employ under-sixteens full-time – we would make state schools much more effective.

Some fourteen year-olds would learn more working with adults rather than kicking their heels with other, disaffected youngsters. And if, regrettably, a minority simply waste their time out of school at least they will not be handicapping other young people who can be persuaded to study.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Eleven months ago I brought six hives of bees to Mersea. Two of them are in West Mersea and the rest up East. Now I have harvested most of my honey crop I can tell you that my West honey is slightly different – runnier and more strongly flavoured, possibly because the bees there spent this summer next to a field of beans and included bean nectar in their honey.

As far as I know, there are three other beekeepers on the island. Beekeepers tend to be friendly and enthusiastic about their hobby and are usually keen to show others how to get started. Most beekeeping organisations run courses during the winter months for people who would like to try the hobby. Details of Colchester Beekeepers’ Association are available from the secretary, Lydia Geddes, on 01206-392226.

Essentially confidence in handling bees is best gained by working alongside someone who is experienced. Then you will discover that bees can be surprisingly easy to handle and that, contrary to popular belief, swarms of bees, bees that are looking for a new home, are not particularly dangerous. There is a risk for people who interfere with hives, especially if they do so noisily or clumsily, because the bees will naturally defend their homes and their honey.

I have kept bees in Lancashire and London where I shared this rural enthusiasm with urban pupils. Like me they were delighted to see jars of honey lined up on shelves; while we filled the jars they would stop now and again to give their fingers a good licking. It is a fascinating hobby and a very useful one, educationally, for it shows a very short food chain and people can learn easily just what it takes to produce this particular delightful foodstuff.

If you suffer from asthsma or are sensitive to pollen then honey produce within a mile or two of your home is likely to help relieve symptoms because the bees’ use of pollen as a source of protein can give their honey a serum-like quality. A spoonful of honey – I use a very large teaspoon – in hot lemon and honey is a pleasant remedy for winter colds, especially if reinforced with a tot or a dram.

Allotments. I must declare an interest as I live in East Mersea and I hear that West Mersea’s allotment holders have been offered a site at this end of the island. I have twice been an allotment holder and still enjoy growing all sorts of vegetables, but the thought of being sent on a round trip of ten miles every time I wanted to do a bit of watering or spend a few minutes picking raspberries, to an isolated site, would not attract me one bit. Can the needs of West Mersea’s vegetable growers not be met without bundling them into motor cars when they need to be able to walk, cycle or push their wheel barrows round the corner? Meanwhile I hear that the rabbits up east are designing new menu cards.

Green Mersea. I have been shown one project where a heating system effectively takes heat from the air outside and concentrates it to provide under-floor heating and hot water. Now, in Shop Lane, Peter Mann is installing a wind-powered generator which will produce electricity on a commercial scale.

Headlights. On my bike one evening recently I tried out a simple technique for reminding car drivers that un-dipped headlights are dangerous. Instead of riding about eighteen inches out from the kerb, I moved towards the centre of the road and zig-zagged for a few yards. Immediately the car slowed and its lights were dipped. I moved back to my side of the road and we passed each other safely.

Shopping. I was dismayed the other week to discover that the price of bath salts on Mersea seemed to have doubled. Yes a fancy pack is all very well, but bath salts are simply bath salts. Fortunately, my favourite brand, the cheaper one, is still available elsewhere on the island.

Setting an example. As I came out of the Coop the other day a man of about forty rode boldly past out of the passageway from the carpark. Instinctively I drew back and he had gone. Did he realise how things might have ended up had I been using a walking stick, pushing a heavy trolley, or a pram? He could so easily have been hurt, which would be one thing, but so might somebody else, which is another. Perhaps he could not read the No Cycling notice, but then do we really need rules and instructions when it is simple consideration for others that is required.

Another example for teenagers, outside the Spar last Saturday morning when a large estate car was parked bang outside the entrance, along the pavement, parallel with the road, while children and small bikes spilled all over the pavement. Not only were the children milling about unnecessarily close to the road but the shop’s car park did have empty spaces. You see kids, it’s just as difficult for us adults to act sensibly so please send your suggestions for helping adults behave better to me at: peterinson@yahoo.co.uk

26 Sep 2008 Return to top of page

Mersea teens – part four

Chance found me watching an instructive programme one Sunday evening recently. Britain From Above, presented by Andrew Marr on BBC1, showed two interesting items. First, there was some serious scientific research into the apparently mindless wanderings of children and young people which do make sense when analysed; they are simply familiarising themselves with their territory. Then we saw a successful low-key approach by Strathclyde Police to a potentially explosive match between Celtic and Rangers. After Operation Fakenham, the police operation to target anti-social behaviour on the island earlier this summer, one Sergeant Butcher commented that a community solution was needed to tackle anti-social behaviour and vandalism.

But first, three very short anecdotes to help me finish, for the time being, this series of columns about teenagers.

Two years ago, I parked my bike in a shopping mall in Harrow. When I returned, a security patrolman rushed towards me - he had been keeping his eye on the bike – a small notice at the entrance would have told me that bikes were banned had I noticed it. He was ready to deal with me, all fired up for a confrontation. Suddenly, as I turned round, his whole demeanour changed. Clearly embarrassed he blurted out an apology: "I'm sorry. I thought you were a teenager and I was all ready to tear you off a strip."

If that is how you start a conversation with teenagers you will get nowhere.

In Dagenham, I had a boy in my class who was bright but troublesome, an only child who could only find company of his own age out on the streets. It was not the best of company and his behaviour at school deteriorated until his parents were summoned to see me. They were appalled by their son's actions and his attitude and we wondered how we would stop the boy ruining his own life. It was father who turned up at school the next morning with his son and brought him up into our assembly. From the front of the stage he told his son’s friends just what he thought of him and his behaviour. The son was visibly shocked and it dawned on him how badly he needed to mend his ways, which he did. He was very lucky for fathers like his will always be there for their sons; so-called friends may not be.

Finally, Paul, the manager of the new Tescos told me how he dealt with troublemakers at his previous shop in Witham where a crowd of teenagers regularly patrolled outside. Paul singled out the most aggressive of his visitors and said that he wanted to talk to him. Eventually he persuaded the boy to come into the shop and sit over in the cafeteria where he bought him a cup of coffee. Why, he asked the boy, why did he spend hours outside the shop, in all sorts of weather, annoying the customers, when he could be inside earning some money? The boy was surprised but agreed to give it a try. There was one condition; he had to persuade his friends to keep away from the shop. This he did and six months later he was promoted team leader.

Mersea is lucky to be a relatively enclosed community where many people feel comfortable because they are known and recognised and because they live among friends. It’s what my late parents in law enjoyed so much about the island when they retired here in 1972. As newly arrived residents my wife and I certainly appreciate it very much. It is clearly no wonder that local people are so angry and dismayed when they sense that the something that is special about Mersea is threatened by a very sad, small minority whose behaviour can be aggressively anti-social.

Of course there is no simple answer, but that is no reason not to bother or to give up or move elsewhere, where the problem is likely to be greater. Some people would like to see draconian measures taken but we cannot arrest any teenager who dares to set foot out of doors after ten o’clock at night. On the other hand we cannot ignore anti-social or criminal behaviour – to do so is to fail the offender who needs help to change his or her ways. Somewhere between these extremes we need to make a judgement about the best way to help particular individuals. This is difficult where the people concerned are not known to one another so the family is the obvious place to start; people who live together are best placed to make these judgements.

If this is so, then the best people to help parents are friends and family, neighbours and the community, rather than formal bodies, the police, social services and the courts which are more remote and less flexible in the ways in which they can operate.

When I was a headteacher I could insist that parents came to school to discuss problems and that made life easier, usually got us started constructively, and helped to us to understand one another better. It is more difficult for other authority figures; magistrate friends of mine resent being unable to summon parents to stand alongside young people who appear before them.

If the police find it difficult to deal effectively with troublesome young people, and organisations controlled and organised by adults do not attract these youngsters, then we are left with about three thousand families in Mersea whose community is endangered by the behaviour of members of a mere handful of families.

To approach these families I would suggest that we need a half-way house, a group of neighbours and community representatives to meet informally with families who find it difficult to control their children, who will offer to help but who will also be able to involve others if the offer of help is rejected or ignored. Then the options would be wider – the police, social services, especially if children were thought to be at risk, as well as much greater scrutiny of the family and reporting by neighbourhood watchers.

This might bother parents who cannot be bothered with their children. Perhaps they could then be encouraged to see that it is easier to bother their children than to be bothered by a well-meaning and helpful community.

For a start, when families move to the island, could there not be a visit by representatives - Neighbourhood Watch, the churches, Mersea Island Society, someone from the youth organisations – with information about the island’s many activities and organisations, to answer questions and to present newcomers with the positive, friendly face of Mersea? For parents new to the island there would be the reassurance that they had brought their children to a safe, friendly place where we support parents, provide many activities for their children and will watch out for their children around the island. This could be the deal, if you like.

How about it?

Next time I am getting to know my new home – starting with the oyster business.

12 Sep 2008 Return to top of page

Mersea Teens – part three

At last I caught up again with a group of teenagers, outside Tesco’s, 8.30 on a dry Thursday evening. There was a Landrover parked nearby with youngsters swarming all over it, trying to capsize the poor beast.

To one side two of the girls said hello – they recognised me from my visit a couple of weeks ago to Spar whose manager has declined to comment about the shop’s groupies. Yes, the girls were happy with what I had written about them and they remembered the badly parked car. One of the boys laughed – it was his friend’s car.

As I approached a stone had been making its way back and forth across an empty road and over the carport roof. It was that eternal challenge to land the stone close to your friend, to show that you could hit him if you wanted to. I recalled a really good catapult, turning slowly to ash in the dining room fire. The young man across the road waited to see how much interest I would take in this all this and I turned my attention back to the group.

[The next day, on French radio, news of two teenage boys, arrested on the island of Corsica when a single stone had killed a baby boy in his mother’s arms, and I wished had crossed over and spoken to the boy outside Digby’s.]

A good discussion: a kids’ bar, a hut with a pool table, the building far less important, just somewhere for them to gather with their mates, somewhere to meet up, get out from home. I pointed out the difficulty of signing contracts, of purchasing supplies and thought of “uninvited guests” who might have other uses for the place. Someone suggested using a floodlit sports area at Waldegraves; had he asked at Waldegraves? The girls, it seemed, were not into sport.

Two of them had never heard of Teddy Boys – how do you start to explain? Did they have Teddy Boys on Mersea? Where there ever visits, later in the sixties, from hoards of Mods and Rockers, greasy jackets on Triumphs and Nortons and be-suited young men with sunglasses and squirrel tail aerials on Vespas?

A thoughtful girl pointed out that adults have all they want – if only – and she listed Mersea’s generous provision – dependent of course on the discipline of putting in time and effort.

One evening the previous week, one of the girls claimed, the police had encouraged them to move from the town centre down to the beech – you won’t disturb people down there, they were told. Fifteen of them and three police cars – sounds more like protection for the entire cabinet. All lit up and their photos taken. Did they take pictures of the police I asked? A few days later our neighbourhood PC was surprised by this account and said that he would try to find out more for me.

The youngsters listened carefully while I explained what I call the other schools’ yobs syndrome – yobs who are really just as friendly as the yobs in your own school but who look terrifying only because you don’t recognise them. That, I told them, is why some adults can seem unfriendly towards them – they might feel nice and friendly inside but to a little old granny they are large and uncontrollable strangers.

A local shop keeper and long-term resident passed and exchanged greeting with the group. Smiles all round. This was encouraging – the bloke was about my age. Someone’s uncle, someone said, and there followed a lively discussion about who was or was not related to whom, just like a bunch of pensioners laying down the law to one another.

We talked about learning from mistakes – while one or two lads weaved in and out of our group from time to time, like confused moths, wanting to be part of things, wanting to register their presence, but not knowing how to join in. Some of them moved between the group who were talking to me and the serious motorists around the ancient Landrover, just like the one in which I passed my driving test.

So, these young people don’t want to be organised or tied down. One girl explained things really well - they are moving between the world of Brownies and Cubs and the adult world where they can please themselves, fifteen and sixteen year-olds, some of them about to start their last year at school with some vague plans about college or jobs.

At the Youth Camp on Sunday I met Paul Button who talked of a lack of funding to undertake youth work on the streets of West Mersea where it might be more effective. At the camp there were young people from thirteen countries enjoying themselves, some of them from Essex, including some from Mersea who were helping to run the camp. The “buzz” between the youngsters said it all – I taught for five years in an international boarding school and it was obvious to me just how well these visitors could organise and entertain themselves. I spoke to two local lads, Mark and Adam, who were clearly enjoying putting something into the camp and understood and appreciated its value.

Then on Monday August 11th, I found myself outside Estuary Dry Cleaners in Church Road where I met Maggie. First thing she had discovered seven windows smashed in with such force that the glass had reached thirty feet into the back of the shop which was packed with clothes and other fabrics. I watched as she explained carefully to customers what had happened and reassured them.

Despite the difficult start to the week Maggie explained patiently how she had called the police some three hours before and was frustrated that she was now having to clear up for the sake of her customers before the officers put in an appearance – they arrived on Tuesday.

The clothes and fabrics, the items in Maggie’s business that I saw covered in showers of broken glass were not somebody else’s items, they were our coats, our dresses and jackets and duvets, things we enjoy using, things that are very personal and part of us, expensive to replace.

I would love to know whose children had sprayed our things with broken glass as they attacked the shop. Were these mummies and daddies tucked up safely while their children abused their community? Did they not have some inkling, some vague idea that their children were out late the night before and might have come home the worse for wear? Is there any chance they could be adult enough, big enough, brave enough, responsible enough, mature enough and intelligent enough to denounce their offspring to the rest of us and help to put things right? Their children clearly think that breaking windows is good fun – perhaps their parents would like to offer their own windows next time so that they could join in.

Rather different from the parents whose sons’ funerals in Colchester last week were marked by a helicopter fly-past.

Fresh back back from Tesco’s. Manager Paul Payne spoke of initial disturbance caused by young people outside the shop when they first opened, and a prompt and effective response from the police. Groups of youngsters have only recently returned, usually after opening hours, and the only sign of them, the state of the car park the next morning. Paul told how he dealt with a particular troublemaker outside his previous shop, something for which I will find room next time.

Finally, thanks to Christine for the verse about people on the fringe and to Rachel for The Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Now then, has no one a copy of the Teddy Boy’s version?

29 Aug 2008 Return to top of page

Mersea Teens - part two

Since I wrote my last my piece for the Courier I have spoken to Alan Mogridge, West Mersea’s mayor, who pointed out to me the opportunities that are available for young people on the island. I think it is a very considerable list for a small community. Alan also told me of an arrangement to bus young people to the Youth Camp site for evening activities. The town council put over £8,000 into this attempt to provide activities for young people which had to be abandoned because some of the young people involved vandalised the site. Of course it was not only money that was lost; the other youngsters were deprived of an opportunity to enjoy themselves and make good use of their leisure time. More recently, Alan reminded me, the police had come to appreciate the efforts made by people on Mersea to bring to their attention troublesome individuals.

I have spoken to one mother who did pointed out that her youngsters did not want to join in sports activities and uniformed organisations, because they were just that, organised. There was a need, she claimed, for somewhere for young people to just meet up, without being organised. The trouble is, without a minimum of organisation scouts, guides and sports clubs simply do not happen and for those who want to benefit, or want their children to benefit, there is the discipline of arranging to go along on a particular day, at a particular time and to a particular place. Less formal arrangements for young people are more difficult to make, not least because there are times when young people simply do not want to be organised. This is natural, part of the growing up process by which young people show the adult world that it is time to let them join in.

We should remember that it is good for young people to help and work alongside adults, whether in a job, or sport or helping to run activities for younger children. It’s part of the business of serving our apprenticeships as adults; we have to learn that to get the things done that we all need, to earn our money, we need to be punctual, helpful, reliable and honest. Getting our kids started on the right lines is not easy: to encourage them to take an interest in worthwhile things, to take responsibility for using their own time constructively, to respond politely and considerately to others, even if others are short on social skills and ignore them.

This last point is a particularly difficult one for kids as they grow up. What should they do when they come across adults who are not very intelligent, or who are ill-mannered or aggressive, particularly if the adult insists on being right, or demands respect from the youngster? It requires a lot of patience and understanding for a young person not to respond angrily or resentfully.

Helping children to grow up ready to cope will all these things takes a lot of time and effort and it sometimes needs to be done when parents would rather be doing something else. It is something that effective parents are driven to do because they can’t help it, because they cannot imagine doing anything else. These are the parents who will put everything else on hold when something needs to be dealt with, sickness, problems at school, or a practical joke that has gone wrong and upset or hurt someone. The trouble is, if the parents don’t bother to do these things, who else can we turn to?

For anybody else to do this, whether they are teachers, social workers, probation officers, foster parents or the staff of children’s homes, it is far more expensive, far more troublesome and much, much more difficult. The last figures I saw were £80,000 pa to keep a child in care and £35,000 pa to keep an adult in prison. No wonder some people expect parents not to give up for, apart from all the expense and trouble for the rest of us, the prospects for such children are grim.

I spoke to Adam Ryder, one of the PCSOs, who feels that he has got to know a lot of the young people in the three years that he has worked on the island. His comments reflected things said to me by other residents, that the majority of youngsters here are thoroughly decent and pleasant and are certainly not dangerous or aggressive. I asked how parents reacted if he had to tackle them about their children’s bad behaviour and he told me that whereas some families were genuinely surprised at what was going on, he had only found one or two families who were antagonistic.

There are one or two more adults whose views I need in order to finish the sequence of articles. I have tried to make contact again with more Mersea teenagers but the terraces outside Spar have been empty when I have come down to have a look. I shall keep trying – just look out for an old man on a blue bike with squeaky brakes.

In the meantime, here are the remnants of a parody of Henry Hall’s Teddy Bear’s Picnic, from the 1950s when a wave of violent anti-social behaviour by teddy boys, as they were called, seemed to threaten the country.

It’s incomplete and in the original there was a middle section from which I remember a fragment: Softly, catch them unawares, they’re having a lovely time to day and an ending something like this: At six o’clock their mummies and daddies will take them home to bed because they’re tired little teddy bears. Does anyone remember all the words? Better still, does anybody have the record?

Perhaps we could have an update; there are good poets on the island, I know, so perhaps someone might like to address our current fears about young people. If you would like to send them to me at: peterinson@yahoo.co.uk I will pass them on to the editor.

15 Aug 2008 Return to top of page

Mersea Island Teens

Soon after I moved to the island last year I realised that the behaviour of some teenagers here was causing concern. There was some advice in The Courier; don’t approach these young people. If they are misbehaving or seem aggressive, whatever you do, keep away from them.

That made me stop and think. If no one speaks to them, how on earth are they supposed to know that other people find them anti-social, troublesome, frightening, revolting or whatever?

Several weeks ago I explained this in The Courier and suggested that there were ways to approach young people whom you did not know. Then I realised that I ought to be the first person to try this out. and I have, and yes, I have survived.

It was a Tuesday when I cycled down West. Approaching The Fox I noticed a teenager cycling towards me. There was a friendly nod of the head and he continued on his way. Another two hundred yards and another young man nodded and pedalled on. Was this West Mersea’s teenage problem?

There were only three youngsters outside Spar so I cycled on, along Upland Road, down to the Monkey Steps then along to the beach huts and the bottom of Seaview Avenue. There was not a yob or a hoodie to be seen. Disappointment threatened. Was this going to be a wasted journey?

Back to the Spar. This time there were twelve of them and a badly parked car. I wheeled round in the road on my bike and pulled up alongside the eight young men. For a moment they stared at me, an old man on a push bike with squeaky brakes. What was this?

Had they seen the sort of things that The Courier was saying about them? I explained that I was interested to know whether anyone had told them they were a nuisance. Nobody had. We began a conversation, about the times when they gathered here, whether they were local – two of them were from off the island. They had all left school; two of them were fishermen and one of the girls was a hairdresser. While we were talking the driver of the car tried to keep up a sort of one-man conversation, about how he could run things down with his car. He looked at my bike and one of his friends said, "Keep off the road when he’s about," and this seemed to please him. Then he moved his car onto a place reserved for disabled drivers and I told his friends about a notice I had seen in a French car park.

01 Aug 2008 Return to top of page

Disabled?

It can be arranged

They liked this. The moving of the car required a lot of prodding of the accelerator and a good deal of shunting about in the road and seemed to take a lot of effort. I think the driver was trying to impress me.

The boys explained the attraction of The Spar; it is the obvious place to gather with their friends, to talk and watch the world, or their part of it, go by. And that is exactly what they were doing, as we talked. Other young people walked or drove past and there was the wave of a hand or a shouted greeting. In Gstaad in Switzerland, or in the Via Venetto in Rome I have watched the seriously rich do exactly the same thing.

What, I asked them, what should I write about them for The Courier?

By this time the boys had persuaded me that I should walk over and talk to the girls. One of them explained that her mother had grown up on the island and, as a teenager had been able to hang about with her friends behind the old Fountain pub, just over the way. Staying in at home was just not on when their friends were out there somewhere. Even when the weather was bad it was better to get out and meet up with friends.

We were interrupted by a noisy greeting from someone going past. One of the group was annoyed by this and was about to swear when she looked around at me and put her hand up to her mouth.

“Ooh. Shouldn’t say that.” We laughed and I was impressed; the girl had got manners as well as a sense of humour. Her friends told me that a woman councillor had approached them about a year ago to ask what sort of thing they would like provided for them. They had seen nothing of her since.

As we spoke adults of various ages made their way in and out of Spar. Sometimes the youngsters seemed to get in the way, but there was no attempt to ask them to move, a friendly word or request. I said that some people found them a bit of a nuisance when they were trying to get past. They seemed to understand but countered by saying that some adults simply told them to f.... off out of the way.

A place to hang out with friends, a place to chill, that’s all these young people want. As long as The Spar provides the best site, right next to a source of food and drink, that is where youngsters will be found, just like the informal paths that ignore paving stones and make their way across grass between car parks and buildings. It’s the easiest way, the best place to be.

There kids, I have reported. Thanks for talking to an old man on a bike.

Now a final word for the wrinklies, for the generation who used to hang out with me when we were kids and when teenagers slashed every seat in Romford’s Gaumont cinema. (The Blackboard Jungle was released in 1955)

For all I know, the young people I met are nothing at all to do with the seriously anti-social behaviour and vandalism that we hear about, but there are other people to whom I hope to speak and when I have, you will hear from me again, like the youngsters who gather on Spar Corner.

01 Aug 2008 Return to top of page

How will they ever learn? Responding to teenagers

A recommendation on page 3 of the March 28th edition – Neighbourhood Watch, caught my eye; avoid people whose behaviour is antisocial. I gather that the behaviour of some young people has been causing concern.

Two questions. First, sometimes these people are just there, bang in front of us; what should we do then? Secondly, if nobody ever indicates to young people that their behaviour is antisocial, how can we expect them to mend their ways?

If your parents don’t teach you reasonable conduct and consideration for others how else will you come to realise that your behaviour offends other people and that this matters?

When we are confronted like this, uncertainty makes most of us cautious and liable to overreact with sarcasm or anger which are themselves provocative, especially when the recipient does not understand or does not want to understand why we are troubled by antisocial behaviour.

Although most of us will avoid situations such as unlit alleys and large and excessively rowdy groups of young people, there will be times when we find ourselves face to face with unpleasantness.

Then we should get in first with a smile or some sort of friendly greeting, even if they are trying to be unpleasant. Take the lead – do not wait nervously to see what they are going to do. Start the encounter on your own, civilised terms.

Don’t insist that they pay attention as you might your own children.

Don’t shout.

Don’t try to avoid them as if they are contagious; they resent this.

Don’t become riled by taunts.

Try and smile as you speak.

Remember as you do this that you are expected somewhere, close by, and that someone is waiting for you – you’re running late. Goodbye – and that last smile.

25 Apr 2008 Return to top of page

Author and Journalist

dunno - His First Novel

Buy dunno Online

Peter now writes a fortnightly column, Island Living, for The Courier
which is published by Mersea Island Communications. Tel: 01206 382935

Reeves Hall

Visit to Boulders, the Free Church Youth Club

Interview with Farmer John Gray

Modern Superstition

Choosing a secondary school – asking the right questions

Education? Education? Education?

Duke of Edinburgh's Award and Sailing

Our island home. Part Four: the last long straight

Our island home. Part Three - Mersea Shared

Our island home. Part Two - The City.

Disposing of materials thoughtfully

Our island home. Part One. On the Edge - North Mersea

The Perils of Cycling

A morning dredging for oysters

TV interviews, beekeeping and other matters

Mersea teens – part four

Mersea Teens – part three

Mersea Teens - part two

Mersea Island Teens

Disabled?

It can be arranged

How will they ever learn? Responding to teenagers

Peter Inson

Author and Journalist

dunno - His First Novel

Buy dunno Online

Peter now writes a fortnightly column, Island Living, for The Courier which is published by Mersea Island Communications. Tel: 01206 382935

Reeves Hall

Visit to Boulders, the Free Church Youth Club

Interview with Farmer John Gray

Modern Superstition

Choosing a secondary school – asking the right questions

Education? Education? Education?

Duke of Edinburgh's Award and Sailing

Our island home. Part Four: the last long straight

Our island home. Part Three - Mersea Shared

Our island home. Part Two - The City.

Disposing of materials thoughtfully

Our island home. Part One. On the Edge - North Mersea

The Perils of Cycling

A morning dredging for oysters

TV interviews, beekeeping and other matters

Mersea teens – part four

Mersea Teens – part three

Mersea Teens - part two

Mersea Island Teens

Disabled?It can be arranged

How will they ever learn? Responding to teenagers

Peter now writes a fortnightly column, Island Living, for The Courier
which is published by Mersea Island Communications. Tel: 01206 382935

Disabled?

It can be arranged