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PC Holder’s Report to the Annual Parish Meeting this year itemised a mixed bag of local criminality:
- 3 burglaries
- 5 shed break-ins
- 2 criminal damages
- 1 harassment
- 3 assaults
- 2 motor vehicle thefts
- and 1 indecent exposure
of these 17, five had been solved; a proportion which is apparently spot on the national average. Most of these offences seem sadly commonplace enough these days, but the indecent exposure may represent a first for Longworth; though whether this is down to a real upsurge of activity or to more pro-active reporting is unclear. It is hardly a modern offence; in Dickens’s Dictionary of London, published in 1888, indecent exposure ranks, alongside carpet-beating, careless driving of cattle, dogs (loose or mad), exercising horses to the annoyance of persons, reins (persons driving without) and mat shaking after 8am, as a nuisance that will be summarily suppressed on appeal to the nearest police constable. The same book then goes on to list some presumably more heinous offences, that will require application to the courts: these include cock-crowing, dead bodies (infectious), houses (filthy or injurious to health) infected bedding (sale of), manure (non removal of), powder magazine (keeping too large a quantity), and (how times have really changed) lotteries.
The Parish Council acknowledged at its last meeting that the oft-vandalised notice-board on the old A420 in Longworth South is a poor advert for the village, but thought the expense of some £600 that would be needed to replace it with a brand spanking new one would be a misuse of village funds; two or three coats of good varnish on the existing board would have to suffice to keep up appearances. But now the Clerk has dutifully applied the prescribed three coats, there seems little visual improvement; perhaps a cheap tin of plain brown paint would have been a better idea. The Council did decide that a grant of £300 for the Village Hall, for ten of the proposed new chairs, would be a more direct and justified benefit to both parish ambience and parishioner comfort. The Council also granted an initial £100 funding for setting up the Village Website. A Village Webmaster has accordingly been appointed - Martin Taylor from Hinton. Martin is currently in design mode, and we are now looking to local organisations for initial material for the site. The domain-name, when duly registered and set-up, will be longworthvillage.org.uk.
The allotments are now sporting a fine spring display of wooden sheds, in a pleasing range of styles and colours. The plots themselves have lately been showing a more exotic side; soft-fruit bushes shielded behind windbreaks, fruit trees, raised zucchini beds, seed tunnels and glass frames and yards of colourful protective fencing have all suddenly sprung up. Nor is it all just for human consumption; the rabbits are out there already, claiming their proper share.
Alan Boyce
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