The Great Shoreham Chaos

That summer, that glorious, glorious summer, sat on the shoulder hills of the little village and warmed the hearts of its inhabitants. 

The heat had slowed everything and everyone down to a more comfortable life, more in tune with that of the eighteenth century than today’s horrors. This suited perfectly Miss Sligerhorn, the village spinster – a role, by the way, that she had been born to play. No harsh word would leave her mouth regarding the heatwave, not for her the fast and furious lifestyles of some of her more racy neighbours; no, Miss Sligerhorn was definitely in her comfort zone. 

Each morning at precisely 5.52 am the Colonel, a strange fruit indeed would cross Miss Sligerhorn’s path and they would greet each other politely and courteously. Yet an outsider would probably sense an underlying hostility to the proceedings. There had been talk, and I emphasise that it was only talk, that Miss Sligerhorn had been left at the altar by the Colonel; a most distressing state of affairs.

Every day, pleasantries met, exchanged and forgotten, Miss Sligerhorn would continue on her way to the cake shop which she had inherited from her mother. A mother who deserves a story unto herself, but we will put that excitement aside for another time when the days are shorter and we can rest by a large fire.

Miss Sligerhorn was the gentlest of all creatures and considered most men to be brutes. The Colonel, on the other hand, was a brute and considered most women to be useless. 

They lived in the little village of Shoreham which had one pub, where the men would congregate and quaff ales, and Miss Sligerhorn’s cake shop, where the women would meet to discuss in great detail the men that they had unfortunately married. All of them had entered matrimony with careless haste, and all of them were now regretting their actions at leisure. This had been the way of things since the dawn of time but things, as we shall see, were about to change. 

In London Town life was increasingly fraught and was made all the worse by the heightened temperatures. It would be a truth to say that living and working in the city was far from a pleasant experience.

Especially for the great and good who ran the country. 

For several years now, there had been increasing criticism of the politicians who controlled the purse strings, who made the laws and fiddled the expenses. Greed was the order of the day and such were the financial cutbacks that if one were to be a politician nowadays, it would have to be for the love of the job rather than the benefits.  

In the current dog days, love was a very rare thing, a very rare thing indeed. So one bright Friday afternoon the Prime Minister and the rest of the blameless walked out of Parliament and closed the store, as they say. They shut up shop and refused to return until the people of the land came to their senses and saw what a spectacular job they all had been doing - which was never going to happen if we’re being honest. 

So there we have the situation, a stalemate where neither party is going to back down causing the world around them to begin sinking into the mire.

Some of the local authorities attempted to collect rubbish, clean the streets and keep the services rattling on even as the money ran out.

“Look chaps, we’re looking for volunteers this weekend to clean the sewerage system. So if you could raise your hands to show interest that would be truly marvellous; what, no one, no one at all?”

So not only did the heatwave cause the country to revert to eighteenth-century travel, the simmering politics caused the villages and towns to close in on themselves and each little hamlet became judge, jury and council for all of its inhabitants. 

Shoreham was no exception, but I guess you knew that. If it had been possible to build a castle keep around this village, then they would have done so, but time and money constraints put paid to that idea.

The good folks of Shoreham didn’t want the scoundrels from Axton-under-Soot, the neighbouring village, to come looking for those things that were in short supply in Axton. This was a time for fortitude, for kindness, for mercy, for every village looking after itself and to hang with the rest. 

Shoreham had two streets: Church Street and High Street. They were laid out in a letter ‘T’, meaning there were three entrances to and from the little haven that had to be manned and guarded. The fact that anyone could freely drive through the lanes that crisscrossed the fields did not appear to come into the equation. The defence was more a matter of visibility than practicality. It was a Maginot line populated by Miss Marples and Colonel Blimps.

The kids of the village ignored the gates as if they didn’t exist and when the ‘Gate Controller’ (the Colonel’s idea) asked ‘Who goes there?’ – the kids would stare at the questioner, utter ‘like whatever’ and walk on.  

This whole indiscipline issue was beginning to annoy the Colonel, so much so, that he’d teamed up with Roger Hartness – agreed by all, to be the angriest man in the village. Roger was known to shout at cats that’d peed anywhere other than their own gardens. He had photographs in his study of which animals belonged to which property. Roger was married, which came as a shock to most people when they first found out. His wife, Tina, was the gentlest soul in the universe, perhaps she had to be – two angry people in the one house would have been difficult to maintain. 

“Curfew!” that was Roger’s summation of the problem. “The oldies are always in bed relatively early, so the only folks to be upset with the curfew would be the youngsters. I propose a village-wide curfew of say, 9 pm.”

To enforce the curfew Roger and 'friends' would patrol the streets after that time and ‘encourage’ the stragglers to get home as quickly as possible. Naturally, there would be shift workers, but as long as they registered with Ground Control (Roger’s idea that one), things would go smoothly or ‘tickety boo’ as Roger liked to say. 

Now this is where things get a little sticky – the Colonel, Roger and 'friends’ controlled the south gate, at the bottom of Church Street. Miss Sligerhorn and her posse controlled the High Street and the two exits involved with that road. Since the Colonel suggested a curfew and patrol, then you can bet your sweet bottom that Miss Sligerhorn went out of her way to avoid such an action. 

There was a demilitarised zone at the junction of the High Street and Church Street which had to be crossed frequently by the drinkers of the former since the Pub was in Church Street and therefore under the jurisdiction of the Colonel. The cake shop and tea rooms, on the other hand, sat on the High Street and were under the patronage of Team Sligerhorn. 

A meeting had to be set-up between both parties, and the Village Hall proposed as a venue, except it was found to be situated too deep into the Sligerhorn camp to be considered a neutral venue.

Outside the village, and on the main city road, stood a burger van which sold coffee, burgers and onions with fries at very reasonable prices (their slogan). So this was to be the setting for the summit. 

Miss Sligerhorn and her followers turned up first and were heard to say ‘typical’ quite a few times under their breaths, even although they had just passed through the Colonel’s territory and saw that his team were still in the stages of getting ready. Thirty minutes later and all in red berets, the Colonel’s Church Street gang arrived.

Miss Sligerhorn had done much ‘tutting’ over the last half hour not just because of the lateness of the other lot but also because of the prices the burger van man was charging. 

“We’re in the middle of the Great Chaos or hadn’t you heard Miss Prim and Proper,” said the burger van owner with a hint of disgust.

“And that means you can charge what you like, does it?” asked an angry Miss Sligerhorn, who turned away from the van without waiting for an answer. 

It didn’t stop the burger van man shouting after her “I’ve got overheads to consider. I’ve got to go and collect the burgers myself, thanks for asking” but she wasn’t asking, she was already drinking tea from a flask she had brought herself. She then turned to Irene, her Lieutenant, and issued a statement “Irene, fifteen pence on all our buns. Make a note of it, if you please.” Irene scribbled the message with a large butcher’s pencil and her tongue hanging out.

“Fifteen pence on buns,” said a self-satisfied Irene as she hit the notebook with the lead end of her big pencil.

“And twenty pence on fondant fancies” shouted Miss Sligerhorn causing Irene to bring out her large butcher’s pencil and tongue once again.  

When the meeting began, Miss Sligerhorn was the first to speak “We are not at war, Colonel” she said, suddenly realising there was a double meaning to her statement.

“Agreed”

“So why the need for a curfew?” asked the lady who he may have jilted at the marriage altar (or not).    

“Because we are in the midst of the Great Chaos” shouted the burger van owner who had heard that phrase from one of the more downmarket newspapers. 

The Colonel stood up to show off his very impressive 6 foot 4 inches of height and demanded a hush from the throng.

“Dear, dear lady I am not the power-hungry mad man that your people are putting about the cake shop, I am just a concerned citizen that worries about the youth of this nation, the youth of this country - after all these people are our future, our investment, as it were” and the Colonel started to hit his palm with his fist as if this was the culmination of a lifetime of struggle until someone shouted “Sit down you old fart, you’re ruining my business” and as you may have guessed, it was the burger van man. 

A vote was taken and the Colonel’s people voted, not surprisingly, for a curfew and all the Sligerhorn gang voted against a curfew. Someone mentioned that the Sligerhorn part of the village was in the more posh area and that votes should count double over there but that lady was told to take a walk, by someone from the Colonel’s team who also said they would punch her on the nose if she didn’t shut up this minute. 

So nothing was decided that day, and the village grew, sadly, a little further apart as a result. 

On the Church Street side were the village tennis courts, available for hire at subsidised rates. They were now no longer in use, that is until the Colonel came up with an idea. 

The courts had a wire mesh surrounding them up to a good height of 12 feet. This allowed the balls to avoid hitting the nice people of Shoreham. The fence would be hard to scale, and that is why the by the following morning most of the curfew breakers who attempted to enter the village by the Church Street entrance were now being held prisoner in the tennis courts. 

“We’ll hold them until they’ve learnt their lesson” decreed the Colonel. Standing at each corner on step ladders were men holding buckets full of tennis balls. If any of the curfew breakers had dared to move, one of the men would throw a tennis ball to deter them. However, being British and in charge of a tennis ball meant that not one curfew breaker ever got hit; a very sad but true fact. 

The Colonel had attempted to curtail visiting times to deprive the youngsters of family support, but it had a limited effect as the families just sat on the hill above the courts throwing chocolate bars and packets of crisps into the ‘prison’. 

By Saturday the whole of the youth of the village, including those that lived in High Street had been imprisoned. If we are really honest, most of the parents were enjoying the break. They knew where their kids were, that they were being looked after and couldn’t get into trouble. 

“Let the Colonel sort them out. See how he likes it” was the common response and to be honest, the Colonel was at his wit’s end. 

He had attempted to keep the kids entertained by playing something called a ‘record player’ and music by people called ‘The Beatles’ – but none of the kids seemed that interested until he threatened to take away their phones and music players if they didn’t listen. 

A child without a phone is a child ready to start a revolution.

The Colonel sent in his men with berets to take away the kid’s phones and pods. Asking them to hand them over hadn’t been a huge success, so forced removal seemed the only option. The team was to be led by Angry Roger, who as it happens had found himself not to be as angry as the Colonel and was more of a slightly miffed Roger.

As soon as the team entered the compound (the Colonel’s description), they were surrounded, stripped naked and tied to the fences. Within fifteen minutes, the kids had walked out of the tennis courts free as the day they were born and still in possession of their phones.  

But they didn’t stop there, the Colonel was dragged outside his home, and a rope tied around his ankles, then hung upside down from a lamppost. Even though he kept shouting that the blood was running to his head, no one paid the slightest bit of attention to him. Later in the day, the kids started to play a game where they used the upside-down Colonel to play a kind of skittles. Large plastic bottles were placed on end and the Colonel was swung around to see how many he could knockdown. Miss Sligerhorn and her team took on the village teenagers and did themselves proud by winning after a tie break. 

The following Monday the ‘Great Chaos’ was over as the politicians had had enough of sitting at home; the Government returned to making laws and fiddling expenses, Miss Sligerhorn had a re-launch of her cake shop but, like the burger van man, refused to reduce her prices to pre-Chaos levels, especially on those fondant fancies. 

Without much ado, the world returned to where it had been before, that is in a much bigger mess but with people talking to each other. 

By Tuesday of the following week, Miss Sligerhorn and the Colonel were wishing each other a ‘good morning’ with the usual unspoken reservations at 5.52 am.

All was right with the world.

bobby stevenson 2020