So far we have harvested oilseed rape and wheat. We got about 75 tonnes of OSR at 1.25 tonnes per acre and 298 tonnes of wheat at 3.75 tonnes per acre. In the farm office we are pretty happy with that and we just have field beans to go.
The wind has been very high for a few days and it has taken the leafs off the bean plants. The pods are still there and we are hoping the weather will settle down and in about ten days we can get the last crop, the beans, harvested.
If you read my sister’s last post you would know that she predicted a landslide for Mrs May and that our Conservative representative would be on his way back to Westminster where he was safely out of our way and allowing us to get on with our lives here in Wimplebridge.
What sort of shock do you think it was then when I woke up today and found that they had thrown away the script and gone their own way. I mean, for goodness sake, what part of “safe Tory seat” don’t you understand.
Now we have a new MP, a balding ex-councillor who described his own win as “astonishing” and if that’s not bad enough he’s with Labour!
Mrs May is going to make a pact with the devil, or at least the DUP, and move ahead with an even smaller majority than she had before they called the ill-fated election – so much for cementing her mandate to govern.
To give him his due, Mr Corbin did manage to smarten himself up and by polling day he hardly resembled a person wearing the cast-off clothes of a scare crow at all. Mrs May on the other hand had the facial expression of someone licking a turd off a lemon in every photo I saw of her and it appears she was waging war on her own supporters. Cutting the winter fuel allowance and scrapping the triple locked pension were bad enough but who will forget the dementia tax, well the people with dementia will that’s who. Everyone else realised that it was going to take away from their children the only true asset most of us have, our houses, and quite rightly a good proportion decided to kick up a fuss.
I guess that it will all sort itself out eventually and if President Barak Obama is right and “a country gets the politicians they deserve” then I wonder what it says about the rest of us.
I think I’m going to turn off, tune out and drop off for the weekend.
Hubert Belcher
BBC election 2017 logo
Elections seem to be a bit like busses at the moment. You wait five years for one to come along and then we have four in thirty-six months.
Okay, one of them is a local election and here in Wimplebridge we’ve returned the same man for a dozen years. Jeff Dyson (no relation to the vacuum man) is an independent candidate and more conservative than the official party man, as long as he stays that way we will keep voting for him, better the devil you know after all.
But really, do we need a general election too. Well actually yes I think we do. Again, we already know who will win in our area, wherever that is? Wimplebridge sits between Stratford on Avon and Warwick, whenever they change the boundaries we flip flop into the other area. It doesn’t really matter because in our ward, Wimplebridge and Monkstown, they publish the winning majority by weight rather than numbers – it’s that big.
Anyway, Max and I will go to the village hall on Thursday evening, we do anyway because of the WI meeting, but this time I’ve got to put my “X” in a box. I’ll put my cross in the usual box and complain that it’s wrong that Max isn’t allowed a vote. He’s over eighteen, at least in dog years, no madder than any other Red setter I’ve ever met and much more sane than half the village. Time after time he’s shown that he’s a good judge of character – he bit the labour part candidate who came canvasing the other day – if that’s not demonstrating a good judge of character I don’t know what is.
Jeff Dyson (no relation to the vacuum man) will be returned to the local council and in any ordinary year we could all go back to ignoring politics for a few more years. But this isn’t a normal year, Mrs May, or Terrie as we call her around here, is dragging us out again on the 8th of June and it’s going to interrupt another WI meeting.
It really is too bad, we had a fascinating speaker lined up for that night, old Mrs Spencer has just come back from four weeks in Thailand and has agreed to do a talk about meditation and how to harness the power of the inner orgasm. I don’t think some of them know what they’re missing. I heard Karen Harris saying that she can’t see why Mrs Spencer was there for a month and she thought they had closed all the stores anyway. There’s a perfectly good range of ties at M&S in the precinct, near the bus stop, at Warwick.
So were going to miss the secrets of Thailand, probably a good thing, and once again the hall will be a polling station for the night. A few trusty souls will stand outside all day and conduct an exit poll, this is normally given to the newest members of the party in the area, everyone else knows it’s a thankless task and the best you can hope for is sunburn and swollen feet.
If I can make a prediction, Mrs May will be re-elected (I wonder if she is any relation to that nice James May from Top Gear and the Grand tTour, a very sensible man is James May, never drives too fast and won’t be seen running on television) with a much bigger majority which will let her get on with the business of Brexit. Around here we mostly voted to stay in, but the British people made a choice, the wrong one, and now we have to make the best of the choice they have made. It’s time to get united behind the prime minister and let them get on with the job without being sabotaged at every step of the way.
Claudilia Belcher
[huge_it_slider id=”2″] I just wanted a quick beer at the Bridge after a busy day and a stupid drive home.
I was in Warwick all day with clients. As the duty solicitor I was got to the local police station at six this morning when the silly sod who tried to urinate into a speed camera and fell off was finally sober enough to be interviewed. He’d been sick all down himself and he was rancid, I don’t know why I do this work I really don’t – I could have been a gardener or a lory driver.
We got him cleaned up and in front of a magistrate, he was bound over to keep the piece and sent home. I had another appearance in court at 11:30 so I stayed in town and tried to do some work in Costa, it’s like a single mothers meeting house these days, I hardly got anything done and as I was leaving a toddler spilled a milkshake down the front of my trousers. I turned up to court looking like the over excited accused in some perverted public toilet case, not like a highly trained and overworked solicitor.
My second “client” of the day pleaded guilty of house breaking. It was the least he could do, he was caught climbing out of a window with pockets full of jewellery and a DVD player under his arm. I argued his punishment down to nine months inside “your honour, he came from a broken home – he broke it ” and with good behaviour he will be out in time to be nicked and back inside again for Christmas.
By the end of the day I was beat, I mean really wacked, I was sweaty, smelly, had dried mikshake in my crutch and all I wanted was a quick beer before I went home for a bath. With luck the kids would be in bed but I doubt. I do love them but just once in a while I wish they could do as they are told. Never mind Mrs May and “Brexit means Brexit”. How about Mrs Ferrers and Bed means Bed.
When I got to the Bridge in I couldn’t believe my eyes. The whole place had been turned into a tarts bedroom or Cupids firing range. There were couples falling over each other everywhere you looked. I mean for God’s sake – get a room.
I gave up in disgust and went to the Belcher’s Arms instead. At least you can be sure of a miserable landlord and a decent pint there, even if the staff are as ugly as a litter of pugs.
That’s it I’m off to bed, and with a bit of luck the low life of our locality will keep themselves out of trouble for at least the next eight hours. I don’t mind their criminal activity, I’ve made a nice little packet out of it, but if they can confine their arrests to between the hours of nine and five I would be ever so grateful
Matthew Ferrers – Solicitor of this parish