Remembering Hilarious Parish Council Meeetings
There can’t be anyone in the UK today who hasn’t heard of the hilarious Handforth Parish Council meeting which has gone viral on the internet. The Cheshire councillors met on Zoom and of course it was all recorded for prosperity - and the 18 minutes of crazy shenanigans has made the world laugh in these darks times. So good for them - although I am imagining one or two of the councillors will not be quite so happy about their sudden, unexpected worldwide fame.
For me it brought back hundreds of memories of the time when I was a young cub-reporter going around the parish councils in West Somerset and Exmoor covering their often boring - but sometimes hilarious - meetings. It also reminded me of the 21 long years I served as a parish councillor here at Old Cleeve.
Believe me, I have seen these internecine wars first hand… Which is why I was minded to make this little video as I took the dog for a walk today.
But also today thanks to the Handforth Parish affair, I was reminded of a passage in a novel I wrote many years ago. It was never published - alas - but here is that passage and I’d dearly love anyone to have a quick read of it if you have time…
As they passed into the village chambers most of the councillors replaced their smile at the reporter with an icy glare for Mr Groombridge who, for his part, seemed to enjoy the attention.
“Us’ll ‘ave a chat in the pub after,” said the diminutive old man as he steered the young reporter through the dark doors of the 800-year-old village hall. Melvyn was glad of the escort because no lights had been turned on. They passed through a couple of creaking, dimpsey corridors, across a stage and were now climbing some steps which led to a tiny door through which could be heard the murmur of voices. The door was opened to reveal a small room dominated by a large table which left only just enough space for the chairs placed around it. The table was topped in old green leather and it must have been built in the room, for certainly there was no access capable of allowing such a large piece of furniture to gain entry to the place. Apart from the dozen or so people already seated, only two other objects caught Melvyn’s eye. One was a dusty old safe which lurked in a corner – forgotten, by the looks of it, for a century or more.
The other item was a wide, framed, sepia photograph which spread itself horizontally across the opposite wall. It portrayed three rows of be-capped men - the two rows at the rear, standing, each man with a small white terrier dog held under his left arm; and a front row of some fifteen or twenty men sitting with dogs at their feet. Along their knees had been placed an enormous conger eel. All the men, and the dogs in the picture looked proud. Between them, they had slain this monster of the foreshore. They were, said the caption, “The Glat Hunt”.
Melvyn didn’t know quite why, but he warmed to this council. He’d been to cover so many others for the paper and had been bored stiff. But any organisation that could have - as its one decoration - a photograph of such unique and obscure moment, must surely be filled with potential interest. Later he would research this working man’s sport… While the gentry up in the castle hunted the deer forests, the poor were welcome to have fun of their own down amid the mud and slime of the great beaches, which revealed themselves twice a day thanks to the second highest tide-fall in the world. The specially bred terriers were able to sniff out conger eels which lurked in crooks and crannies among shallow pools.
The enormous conger in the photograph stared balefully down upon the gathering, which had now been joined by its chairman. Here was a sight indeed, thought the impressionable reporter. A small, bird-like man - he stabbed at his papers, nervously glancing around the room and whistling in short rapid bursts. He was completely bald - a fact not peculiar on its own, but made extraordinary by the huge and extensively coiffured French poodle which had taken the seat next to him. Never had such a pair ruled in any such chamber of authority. As people spoke, both chairman and dog whipped their heads around to take full view of the speaker. It was a like a man and his wife sitting somewhere watching tennis from seats near the centre of the court.
Chairman Uphill’s flitting eyes arrived at Melvyn, who by now how been shown to his seat at the back of the room. He nodded, smiled in a most friendly way and proceeded to bang the table with an historic looking device, halfway between a nutcracker and a cudgel. With this he brought the meeting to order and welcomed the new reporter to the village, adding that he’d see him all right for a drink after the meeting. If there was anything unclear to Melvyn during the meeting, then he should not hesitate to raise his hand so that the chairman could furnish him with an explanation. This was excellent, thought the newsman. He had been worried by the idea of being thrown in the deep end. He had reckoned on at least escorting one of the other reporters to a few meetings before being allowed out on his own, but with this sort of help there was obviously no need. Little did he know that not all local councils were so easy-going, not to say idiosyncratic, as this one.
His new friend now butted in on the proceedings: “Mr Chairman, I’ve already put the boy right about the members,” said Councillor Groombridge, and looking around he added with a note of menace… “Such as they be…”
Groans were uttered all around and one haughty looking woman said: “Mr Chairman, I do wish you’d put a stop to this playing up to the press practised by some members.”
Mr Uphill and the giant French poodle swung their heads to see who had spoken and were about to make some kind of pronouncement when Arnie Groombridge struck back: “I ‘ope you ain’t referrin’ to me Missus....”
“I saw no-one else toadying up to the gentleman of the press before the meeting,” retorted the woman who had something of the military about her. The female colonel went on: “Really! Mr Chairman, there are those among us who seem to believe that our monthly meeting is nothing more than a sounding board for their own pathetic ends. I wish the press would ignore these gambits which are designed to do nothing more than inflate one or two of the more rustic egos of this village!”
Councillor Groombridge swayed with indignation while the chairman and chair-dog looked around at once as if expectant of ta return volley.
“What the bloody ‘ell are you talking about,” roared Councillor Groombridge. “I’ve been ‘ere for fifty yers and in the old days the meetin’s was all over and done wi’ in twenty five minutes and off to the pub. Not any more, they’re not. Not now the newcomers-who-knows-best ‘as come amongst us, shoutin’ their mouths off. If anybody’s playin’ up to the press Missus, tis you buggers...”
“Shut up and sit down Arnie,” shouted a fat boozy looking woman Melvyn hadn’t noticed before, partly because even her bulk was somewhat obscured by the Herculean poodle. And Arnie did sit down, albeit mumbling to himself. This, thought the reporter, must be a woman of substance.
“Thank you, Madam Clerk,” said the chairman, with a noticeable degree of reverence. To which the reply was: “Well get on with it then! I’ve got the village football shirts to iron when I get home.”
“And a splendid job you do Mrs Guthrie! A splendid job. Let us get down to business then.”
Even the poodle looked down its long nose with expression that suggested serious business was afoot. To the animas left, then, was the real municipal power-house… A woman who could no-doubt slay sea-serpents before glatting kicked-off. Mrs Guthrie: parish clerk, village football club kit person, chairman of the WI, Girl Guide leader, and all round good egg.
The meeting swung into action with much bickering between the rustic and newcomer camps. Melvyn was taken aback by the trivial nature of most of the business. He made notes here and there, but couldn’t imagine more than one or two paragraphs being formed out of street-light-failure-causes-pedestrian-danger type stories. Then there was a row about vehicles using a river ford adjacent to an ancient pack-horse bridge. According to the newcomer camp, big, four-wheel drive vehicles were going through to reach the forest, and were causing such a wash, the river bed was being altered, to the peril of the bridge foundations. The rustic camp viewed this with amusement. Cllr. Groombridge asked what the difference was between one of today’s little Land Rovers and one of the great forestry wagons which used to haul timber through the ford?
Crumbling pack-horse bridges or not, thought Melvyn, here was a decent little story in the making. He’d ask Mrs Mallarby-Junket if she’d be available tomorrow and get old Mr P over to photograph her standing on the bridge while a four-wheel drive splashed through the ford. “Ancient-monument-in-peril …” was at least something to be going on with.
Arnie could see this had grabbed the reporter’s attention and so he became more vociferous in an undisguised attempt to win the quote-of-the-week competition. However, there was nothing much else to report as the meeting began to draw to a close.
“Any other business?” announced Chairman Uphill.
There were a few bits and pieces, all of which seemed to cause Arnie further bitterness in defeat. Then came the story which was to make not only Melvyn’s week, but perhaps his month. A story which, within forty eight hours, was to put him on the reporting map and which would inflate his badly withered bank account for some time to come, not to mention his ego.
“I’ve got summat to say about the graveyard Mr Chairman,” said Arnie Groombridge, “And tis a thing which I do take very seriously.”
He told the meeting how, just after recent heavy rains had eased a little, he’d been walking his dog through the graveyard on the path which led to the hill, when the terrier came bounding up to him with a bone. Cllr. Groombridge said he felt a little chill pass down his spine. And then, up at the back end of the steep yew hedge, he discovered that a small landslide had occurred.
“There was bones everywhere, Mr Chairman. Carnage it was! Leg bones, arm bones, skulls, rib cages, all over the bloody place. What did I do? What do ee think I bloody did? What wi’ me dog ‘aving pulled away one of the bones, I thought I’d better take some sort of action pretty damn quick or there ‘ouldn’t be a thing left once the foxes had been through. So I went ‘ome and got me shovel and dug the buggers back in....”
There was a hush as the councillors allowed this municipal catastrophe to sink in. A murmuring began, but this was cut short by the chairman’s voice. Losing any vestiges of its normal primness, he half-spoke, half-whispered the question: “I’m sure you did right Arnie to get ‘em covered up again. But how did you know you was getting the right bones back down the right ‘oles?”
“Wull… I didn’t bloody well ask ‘em which was which, did I?” erupted Arnie. “When you’m dead, you’m bloody well dead, and there tiz. Anyway they’m back at peace now, wi’ no foxes or badgers eatin’ ‘em for lunch, and that’s the end o’ it!”
But it wasn’t the end of it because Melvyn, who had watched his father selling interesting, out-of-the-ordinary, stories to national newspapers over the years, knew a good thing when he saw one. Here was a story which brought the promise of pound notes, not to mention an element of glory, to a most deserving case. Himself. Odd that in just two days of a new career in journalism he should come across two stories involving bones, but what the hell… The coincidence hardly made him feel funereal in these moments when, inwardly, he was already celebrating his good fortune.
It didn’t take much in the way of pints at the ancient pub across the road, blended with a good deal of talk about national coverage, to persuade Arnie Groombridge to un-bury the story he had previously wanted to hear the end of.
