Keep doing new things - a good motto for life

ON Monday evening last week you’d have found me in the small hall at South Wilts School, wandering up and down among a barefoot crowd, clapping and muttering, with a manic grin on my face.

What was I muttering? If you must know, it was that old Right Said Fred hit, I’m Too Sexy For My Shirt. It’s more than a bit sad at my age, isn’t it? Positively tragic.

But why on earth would I do that, I hear you ask?

Because that was the tune that the rhythm I was clapping brought to mind – as did watching the very charming young man running the workshop in which I was participating.

He was Brazilian Pedro Consorte, formerly a cast member of the long-running West End show Stomp, and he’d been roped in by choir leader Fiona Evans to impart a sense of rhythm to the mainly middle-aged members of two of her ensembles, Babes & Ballads and Guys No Dolls.

It was fun, and at times it was unintentionally funny, because it was clear that many of us were outside our normal comfort zone.

Some of the Guys in particular started out with sheepish looks on their faces as they were made to lie on the floor and meditate, yoga-style, visualising the various bits of their bodies, to chill out and get in tune with their inner selves. “I suppose it’s all right for those Latin types,’ I could imagine them thinking to themselves, ‘but it’s not terribly British.’

The Babes, in general, proved more amenable, though one or two looked resigned rather than relaxed.

Still, in the sweltering heat, they could console themselves that at least a nice lie-down was one way of keeping cool.

And when we stood up I think we were all in a different frame of mind, and astonished ourselves with our ability to take part in some amazing free-style harmonic improvisation without any self-consciousness.

We ended up creating the sounds of a tropical rainstorm by clapping and tapping our hands.

When the workshop came to an end everyone had a huge smile on their face. The whole thing was as unexpected as it was refreshing.

By the time you read this I’ll be on my way to Cornwall, where we’ll be singing at the Minack Theatre, St Michael’s Mount and Truro Cathedral, just for fun. And while we’re on tour we’ll be meeting a choir from Falmouth who are putting on a ceilidh for us.

Keep doing new things, that’s a good motto for life, I reckon.

Happy days.

Questions for the Police and Crime Commissioner

I WAS unable to attend last night’s public meeting at the Guildhall about the proposed closure of Salisbury police station because I was on my way back from my son’s graduation.

Dedicated though I am to the fearless pursuit of truth and the public interest (!) the boy’s big day was not to be missed.

But had I been around, these are some of the questions I’d have asked Police and Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson, or ‘Nine Jobs’ as  he’s been nicknamed by Journal website commentators (surely that should be 999 Jobs?)

Mr Macpherson, I gather you are intending to base emergency response vehicles at the Five Rivers ‘community campus’ once the leisure centre has been extended to accommodate this new role.

I am reliably informed that there can be upwards of a dozen such vehicles parked at the police station at one time.

And then there are the officers’ own cars, needed to get to and from their shifts from all over South Wiltshire. I can’t see officers using the city centre shuttle bus instead.

What I can foresee is a large number of spaces being lost by gym users and swimmers. Unless, of course, you’re going to Tarmac over all the surrounding grassed areas?

Wherever you accommodate them, there’ll be a lot of extra vehicles entering and exiting a family leisure facility where free-range children behave unpredictably (especially, in my experience, after one of those swimming-pool birthday parties when they’re stuffed full of E numbers).

And blimey, what about school sports days on the running track? I’d love to be a fly on the steering wheel when a proud mama in an outsize 4x4, desperately trying to reverse into a parking space so she can watch her little darling win the 100 metres, encounters one of Wiltshire’s finest setting forth, siren blaring, blue lights flashing. It’s a breach of the peace just waiting to happen.

Is it true, by the way, or just a baseless rumour that the Salisbury intelligence unit had thousands of pounds spent on special security doors, only to be moved within months to Melksham?

I’ve heard that a gradual exodus north has been under way for a while now. If so, no wonder you say the station is under-occupied.

Other matters are puzzling people who understand more about police procedures than I do, and I quote: Where will the child protection unit and domestic violence units go? Where will officers carry out video interviews of victims of sexual assault? Where will the sex offenders unit and vulnerable adults unit be based? What about CID?
Then there's the million-dollar question (let's hope that's not what it costs) - where will the new custody unit be?
Finally, who first suggested that a city as important as Salisbury, with its vital military connections, doesn't need a proper police station? This plan was kicking around long before your election, Mr Macpherson. So whose bright idea was it really?

A little treasure that's in need of some TLC

WHY can’t you write about the state of the Poultry Cross, I was asked at a recent book club get-together.

I was quite surprised by how strongly the whole group felt. This quaint little survivor from the 15^th century shouldn’t be allowed to deteriorate further, they said.

So, having mugged up on its history – last week’s Journal Scrapbook article by Peter Daniels was most helpful - I went and had a closer look at it, and decided they’d got a point.

At the beginning of the 19^th century – minus its original decorative topping of flying buttresses, which were restored later – the Cross was the focal point of a painting by Turner.

Now it’s the focal point for pedestrians strolling down Butcher Row, enjoying the burgeoning café culture, yet it’s covered in pigeon droppings and some kind of moss.

The stonework looks as if it could do with a clean. In places it appears to be crumbling, and the paving around it, as elsewhere in the city centre, is pock-marked with chewing gum. All in all, it is a bit of a mess.

It needn’t be like this, said my book-clubbers. And how lovely it has been lately, they added, to see the farmers’ market gathered around it on a Wednesday, using it as its creators intended.

The Cross belongs to Wiltshire Council, not to the city. Grade 1 listed monuments can cost a fortune to keep up. There are many competing demands on the public purse in these hard times.

And they say distance lends enchantment, so it probably doesn’t look quite so neglected from 33 miles away in Trowbridge.

I remember a leading light in the old district council telling me with unholy glee four years ago that Wiltshire didn’t know the headaches it was letting itself in for when it appropriated Salisbury’s ancient treasures, such as the Cross or the prison in Fisherton Street. A bottomless money-pit, was his opinion.

Wiltshire’s leaders were itching to get their hands on our assets, he added sourly. We couldn’t stop them, so let them find out the hard way.

Well, the days when the people of Salisbury had the power to run their own affairs are now long gone and we are, as they say, where we are.

However, structures such as the Cross are the priceless relics of days even longer gone, a past which gives our city its unique character and makes it such a tourist attraction. Someone must take care of them.

I can’t imagine that the Market Place refurbishment will be costing Wiltshire quite as much as was originally budgeted, given the way the project’s been scaled down since those first grandiose plans. I seem to remember a figure of £3million being bandied about. Isn’t any of that left in the Vision’s coffers?

Saving Salisbury's wildlife

I TRIED to ignore the pigeon drooping in the baking heat on my neighbour Mike’s patio.

Hunched and pathetic, it sat there for hours on end, barely stirring on the first really hot day of this so-called summer.

We’ve had landscape gardeners in, extending our own patio, and by midway through the  afternoon they, like me, were tiptoeing over to the fence to keep an eye on the poor little thing.

Coincidentally, I’d been watching a pair of pigeons nesting in Mike’s honeysuckle for a few weeks (whilst trying not to appear as if I was training my binoculars through his bedroom windows).

The female had seemed to be sitting on eggs, and my first, mistaken assumption was that this was a youngster that had tumbled out.

We tried tempting it with birdseed and breadcrumbs and it made a half-hearted attempt to peck. We put down a dish of water but it wasn’t drinking.

In the end I could stand it no longer and rang Creatures In Crisis, previously known as Wiltshire Wildlife Rescue.

Would I mind trying to catch the pigeon, asked their full-time volunteer Kevin, while he finished cooking the family dinner. Then he would take care of it.

So there I was, distracting the bird by inching my way across its line of vision while Ian from over the road, a keen angler, crept up behind it with his landing net.

And bingo! We got it first time, popped it in a shoebox, and took it across town to Kevin, who answered the door with a young jackdaw tucked under one arm, its beak wide open as it anticipated its next mouthful of food.

What a wonderful organisation this is, I thought. Thank goodness it’s there when we need it.

I’ve called it a couple of times before – once for an injured bat on my front path (it later died), and once to remove a panic-stricken pied wagtail from the Bishop Wordsworth’s School kitchen, where I was helping to serve refreshments at a parents’ evening.

If only the mums and dads sipping tea and nibbling biscuits as they waited to talk to the teachers had realised what a chase was going on behind the serving hatch!

Sadly the pigeon turned out to have a head injury and it only lived for a couple of days. But I know I left it in the best possible hands.

The team at Creatures in Crisis deserve our admiration and thanks. Their job is sometimes pretty grim. And if anyone feels moved to offer them help, either practical or financial, I know they’d appreciate it. Just email creaturesincrisis@live.com.