Keith Skipper: My top tip for enjoying Norfolk village life

I recall one rustic worthy from my early 1960s days on local newspaper reporting rounds claiming he sought such high office merely to find out what rest of  the village community really thought of him.

“They don’t care if you have two wives, three fancy women and a posh mistress – but God help you if their footpaths, street lights. ditches, hedges and common grazing rights aren’t sorted out properly!”

Still a commendable set of priorities, perhaps, in an eternal quest to keep rural life ticking over although that parish councillor’s colourful honesty betrayed masochistic tendencies  well beyond the call of duty.

“Someone has to do it” and “It’s a  challenge, I suppose” are main stock answers when you ask why anyone should bother to take on such a thankless task. With our villages changing so rapidly and so radically, it can’t be too long before the minute book carries a health warning on the cover.

Events have taken savage turns in recent years, often fuelled by malicious tongues and social  media hyperbole. Parish councils, their virtues and faults constantly jostling against apathy on their own doorsteps, are made to feel  they’re simply going through the motions of grass-roots democracy.

They weigh up local opinion – if such bothers to exist – and pass it on to a  higher authority.

In many cases, even where views are sincerely held and vehemently expressed, the result is no more than a smart crack of the skull against a brick wall.

Some claim it has never been the same since the last reorganisation of local government although I feel more allowance ought be made for reorganisation of Norfolk village life since those big changes took place in 1974.

In any event, it must be accepted that while parish councils may still be heard they are having one heck of a job to get anyone to listen to them.

Big Brother on the district and county councils – let alone Grand Master in Westminster or  Whitehall – is mocking Country Cousin.

Were the old rural district councils more in tune with village views and requirements?

They served a different kind of Norfolk but I’m convinced many of those I saw and heard on Mitford and Launditch business over half-a-century back  would be staggered by the number of parish-pump protests being totally shunned these days.

Perhaps too many small communities are prepared to accept the current trend as inevitable and ignore the system altogether until something comes along to directly affect them.

Like threats to close the village school, pub and post office or chopping the only bus service. Only then does tub-thumping start along with shouts about democratic rights.

If the parish council is to  continue to form an important strand  in the democratic pattern., we must treat it with more respect, not least at election time.

This would set a much-needed good example to those who have the power either to implement village wishes or to provide a perfectly reasonable excuse for overriding them.

Let’s give that old adage a fresh coat of paint: “If you value country life, look after your parish council.”

And that entails newcomers anxious to get involved doing it for the right reasons, not simply “stirring things up” or “leading this place out of The Dark Ages.”

Parish politics can set back the cause of peaceful co-existence by 20 or 30 years every time a silly row spills over the pastoral scene, too easily tagged “old versus new”.

Native stalwarts still relish a chance to pull rank in terms of service even if there’s little scope for manoeuvre in the sort of arguments they used to share exclusively among themselves.

Recent arrivals can be far too ready to feel unloved, unwanted and unappreciated despite the wealth of experience and vision they are capable of offering.

The true art is for the newcomer to come up with a cracking idea and then convince the hard-baked local it was his magnificent ruse after all. In turn, the thoughtful local can credit his new-found friend with providing just the right kind of inspiration and backing for such a far-seeing and mutually beneficial suggestion.

Another useful tip for those determined to take up Norfolk rural cudgels. Make sure you know the difference between  the Parish Council and the Parochial Church Council before you  start criticising the  village envelope plan or insulting the parson.

Remarkably enough, the popular BBC Television comedy show starring Dawn French as the Vicar of Dibley regularly managed to confuse those two august bodies. It made me wonder if scriptwriters, actors and producers really knew what goes on in a country community.

They my have fallen prey to one of those glossy magazines selling countryside images by the hundredweight to avid readers in town and city. Lunch al fresco, William Morris wallpaper in the dining room, best spot for the hammock beyond the vegetable patch, how to buy a pony, how to restore a derelict corn mill and where to hang a 19th century Hindu Peshawar cloth.

All purposeful strands in the major debate about where the countryside is going and if one is inclined to go with it.

Does one have to accept village life is becoming an adjunct of smart urban existence rather than something able to fly the proud flag of independence?