Stoat

To the annual parish meeting. Thankfully I am no longer a parish councillor so am not obliged to go; but since a friend told me it was on I turned up. Of those who did, most were parish councillors, one was the district councillor, two were dogs walkers (I'll come on to that), two were my friend and me, and the remaining one was my friends daughter (who had done a very good hand-drawn childrens newspaper). [Update: oops, I forgot the sole stoic parishioner who turned up, and has turned up to every one for the last 20 years.]

Humour of the evening came from the county councillors report. The county councillor is notorious for never turning up to PC meetings, but had instead submitted a 5 page report, which appeared from its language to have been pasted together from press releases. The clerk read out a succession of gobbledegook headings, we all laughed gently, and when no-one asked to have that section read we moved on. We did read the congestion section - everyone cares about cars in cambridge.

There must be a name for this effect, but not knowing it I shall have to call it WC's law, which is that nothing consumes more time in a meeting than dog poo. Should you ban dogs from the rec (well, they just have, so actually the issue was, was it a good idea?). Yes, because it stops the mess and children don't go blind. No, because it just pushes the problem elsewhere and anyway only the responsible dog-owners will obey, and they pick up anyway. Then repeat those two points with minor variations until bored (a phrase: "that terrible point in a meeting when everything has been said but not everyone has said it").

And then we have the evil yoof driving onto the rec and blaring their car stereos and generally disturbing the peace. And of course if you phone the police they either don't care or they come too late. And even though they say they'd talk to the car owners if we give them the numbers, they don't. Ah well, something might actually come of this, we'll have a vigilante posse.

We could have worse problems. Maybe if fuel prices rise enough the noise from the M11 might decrease a bit.