ANOTHER VOICE
Mrs Pring and the permissive path to patronising power
AUBERON WAUGH
0 n the property where I live there is a small lake at the bottom of the park — others, I suppose, might say there is a pond at the bottom of the field — whose natural population of moorhen, coot, 14 mallard and four visiting Canada geese has recently been joined by a pair of ruddy shelduck from Nepal. They are beautiful creatures, and their introduction has been a great success. I planned the addition of some tufted Indian runners, some Cape teal (among the most delicate of all the smaller waterfowl) and some red-headed pochards when my attention was caught by an item in the local newspaper.
It appeared that a couple of miles to the south of us, in a part of the Brendon Hills called the Enmore Valley, a pair of enthu- siasts had applied to the local council for permission to construct a small private wildfowl sanctuary on their own land. A friendly official in the council told them they had no need for such permission, they could flood their entire part of the valley, if they wished, so lonk as they took responsi- bility for damming it effectively; and he wished them luck. They did not flood the valley, but set about digging two ponds, fencing them against foxes and other pre- dators and introducing about 20 varieties of exotic ducks and geese — a most welcome and decorative addition to the neighbourhood.
Unfortunately for them, their enterprise came to the notice of a local councillor, called Mrs Pring. She demanded to know why they had been given permission, and on being told that no such permission had been given, she hit the proverbial roof. Hell hath no fury like a woman councillor on whose doorstep someone is trying to rear exotic ducks. As a result, the two duck enthusiasts have been served with an order to desist their activities immediately. The council explains that they did indeed need permission, because by introducing foreign duck into their pens they were changing the land's use, from being agricultural to some- thing else. If they had confined themselves to Aylesbury Whites and other domestic fowl they would have been perfectly all right. They, it seems, are agricultural. But the faintest flash of a coloured wing or cheeky foreign tuft, and we are all in serious trouble with Mrs Pring.
So lio wonder I hesitate before introduc- ing my tufted Indian runners — they come in 15 varieties — my Cape Teal and my red-headed pochards. Mrs Pring will be in among them with a bark, a squawk or a quack — I am not sure what sort of noise to expect from a woman councillor, never having met one, so far as I know. In fact, having never voted or taken the slightest interest in local politics. I know nothing of the species. Is one allowed to shoot them, and if so at what times of the year? How has this woman put herself in a position to terrify my waking hours and haunt my dreams?
For miles around Combe Florey there have sprung up horrid little brown notices, put there presumably by Mrs Pring, point- ing straight at it and announcing 'Somerset World'. What can this mean? But Mrs Prings have been busy all over the West Country. Twenty years ago I lived in a pretty Wiltshire village called Chilton Foliat. It is now surrounded by little brown notices pointing at it and announcing 'Land of Littlecote'. This weekend I found a lovely little coastguard's cottage on the Devon coast between Ilfracombe and Combe Martin, about an hour away across Exmoor. Perched 150 feet above the sea, it had magnificent marine views and seemed to promise the ideal occasional retreat for a man to turn his back on everything that was happening in England and contem- plate the ocean. The price was reasonable, and I was just about to buy it when I discovered that roads for 15 miles around had been signposted with these little brown notices, presumably put there by Mrs Pring or her North Devon equivalents, leading straight to the front door of the cottage and bearing the most sinister, inexplicable mes- sage of them all: 'Once Upon a Time'.
Obviously, there is a great passion among the nation's women of a certain type for putting up idiotic notices of this sort. But what are we, the nation's notice- fodder, supposed to make of them? How are we to obey them? Two weeks ago my Wife was walking with two friends on National Trust land along the Pem- brokeshire Coast when they came to a notice saying 'Permissive Path'. They paused for a moment to admire this old fashioned use of the word in its earlier meaning of 'permitted' or 'optional'. But my Wife and her friends had not walked a hundred yards along the Permissive Path when they came to a couple copulating — in broad daylight and in full view of the path. I would not dare tell this story myself, because no one would believe it, but it is my Wife's story, and she is a Protestant.
Obviously this is the sort of reaction one must expect when people like Mrs Pring are allowed to put up notices all over the place. The British are a naturally deferen- tial and obedient race. If they are told go and romp in the Land of Littlecote, they will be delighted to do so. If they are told to act permissively, they will do their best. I wonder if I am alone in having noticed a new tone of voice adopted by people who make announcements over loudspeakers nowadays. They are an even more un- pleasant manifestation of the illness which makes people put up little notices in brown. The tone is a mixture between bureaucratic declamatory and Blue Peter let's-have-fun condescending. Passengers are requested to take all their baggage with them on alighting from the train. Coffee and tea will be served from a trolley after the train has left the station.'
I think that the motive behind this tone, which is the new way of giving orders, is to reassure those who listen: the speaker is bored, he does not really care whether anyone pays attention to him or not. At the same time he (or she, in the case of British air hostesses) despises the people who have to obey these instructions and wishes to establish his or her superiority over them. The British public is plainly half-witted and must be treated as such. Whereas Amer- ican announcers or advertisers will try to flatter their listeners and please them in a hundred subtle ways, British announcers and advertisers are concerned only to patronise them, belittle them and put them in their place. It is a new development in the traditional class war of a nation whose citizens hate each other. If Shirley Wil- liams represented the last dying kick of the old Lady Bountiful, this is the new genera- tion of monsters to which she gave birth.
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