Magwitch

Twenty years ago or so, there was a man who lived in Faversham who presented a terrifying appearance. Six feet tall, broad and heavy, with coarsely cropped silver and black hair, his skin was pockmarked and often smeared and dirty. He lurched rather than walked, and his clothing was a choice assortment of old cast-offs, tied around with a stretch of rope as a belt. His shoes were home-made, cut from old car-tyre treads he later told me. He looked like a tramp yet was settled here, one of the marginalised people, and I was frightened of him. He was astonishingly well-cast for the character of Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict who so scared young Pip in the churchyard at the beginning of Dickens' 'Great Expectations'.

It was impossible to dissociate his appearance and my instincts - especially as I had small children and so lived partly in their world, of magic, dark woods, demons, giants and monsters.

Sometimes this man would come into the Marketplace with a filthy bandage wrapped round his head. Injury, and rough medication. Had he had to deal with his cut head alone? The bandaging did not look very professional It happened once, twice. What was going on? One day I plucked up courage to ask him. He said kids would set about him sometimes as he slept. I had no idea where that might be but it conjured up a vision of somewhere unsafe, open to attack and vandalism.

We started a tentative acquaintance. I would no longer move out of the way to avoid going near him but greet him and ask after him. One day he asked me this: 'Do you know what Oi eats?' I said I did not. He said 'Well, Oi don't eat bread, and Oi don't eat meat and Oi don't eat carrots and Oi don't eat pertaters and Oi don't eat apples and Oi don't eat fish and Oi don't eat biscuits and Oi don't eat cabbage and Oi don't eat beans and Oi don't eat termaters and Oi don't eat oranges and Oi don't eat onions and Oi don't eat sweets and Oi don't eat cheese.......' As you can imagine I was starting to wonder what on earth the man did live on. His list went on, almost voluptuously. '....and Oi don't eat bananas.....so do you know what Oi does eat?' We looked at each other in silence and I nodded. He said, triumphantly, 'Well yer know, Oi eats cake!'

He told me that each week he'd take whatever he could get, anything from his long list of ingredients and with all this he would create and cook a great cake, enough for him to live on for a period. He would eat his cake every day and he liked it. When it came to an end he'd start collecting ingredients again. At this time he also told me about how he tried to make all his own clothes, including his shoes with their sturdy treads. He was proud of his self-sufficiency.

But it was not enough. He disappeared, and someone said he'd been set alight by his old enemies the local lads, and then died of his burns. Nothing appeared in the papers about it so I think and hope that was not his ending. More likely he expired of cold or a passing virus. I miss him. He was my own personal Magwitch and I am sorry now that I did not do more for him.

Creek Matters

Dr Arthur Percival proposes the establishment or re-establishment of a Festival to celebrate the Creek. He has dreamed up a vivid list of events and activities. Now we have to find a team of volunteers to make it all happen.

Community

Trees are planted along streets to bring grace, greenery and gratitude...(enough alliteration! Ed) to households and townscapes. Twenty years ago, presumably, councils bought job lots of saplings from gypsy nurseries and planted them in regular plots along the pavements, and householders have suffered ever since. Trees which would have been or would be at home in forests now live in urban roads. Nightmare plantations have erupted, with these huge longlived forest trees thrusting their invincible roots into the ancient foundations of medieval buildings, willow roots seeking out and clogging drains, towering canopies darkening modest windows. Householders are in despair. Asking to have trees removed is sacreligious. No good saying that tilia attracts aphids which drop vile sticky sap onto everything below. No good saying that Acers cast dark shadows. No good saying that these trees have roots which heave pavements up and cause old ladies to trip and fall over. How long will it before common sense prevails?

Waterside footpath

On December 5th, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will authorize an Inspector to determine whether or not a footpath along the water's edge at Faversham should remain on its ancient route, or whether a local landowner should be allowed to alter the route - send the public around the back of his property, to protect his privacy, security and view. This small local question has been hovering over the statute books for a few years. Documents have been submitted, requests made. Legal procedures have been duly observed. No-one lost their temper. (I might, if I had to type my words in perpetuity in the slow, time-lag system demanded by this blogger site).

The path in question runs along the eastern bank of Faversham Creek. It starts in a pretty, medieval setting of the old merchants' houses of Abbey Street, then moves into a quaint quayside area with low old wooden warehouses and sheds, then a muddy boat yard, then a narrow fenced footpath, and eventually a nationally adopted pathway through marshlands which eventually leads out around the coast of the whole of the British Isles. Once this path gets out onto the marshy farmland, there is not much between a walker and prehistoric times. You are actually in a place of air, wind, quiet, weeds and reeds, light, silence, birds, your own heartbeats and footsteps, and slow time. It is about sixty miles from the centre of London and yet you could be in a timewarp of 5,000 years ago. Not much has changed.

We have a surprising amount of archaeology for this area. Hollywood has a blockbuster launch waiting for BEOWULF for the 13-year old boy-market, but historians, archeologists, learned professors of Anglo-Saxon and Early English, and all sorts of tourism chiefs ought to be taking notice.

For this quiet, dull, open ancient landscape is where the action of Beowulf took place. I will not give you all the details here, but refer you to the Faversham Society, and its published paper no 64, 1998, titled 'Beowulf in Kent, ISBN 1 900214 11 3

OK - I am a co-author of the piece, and it's in my interests to talk about it. But my co-author is the genius of the whole idea. He is Paul Wilkinson and it is he who identified this ancient, rich coastline as the scene of the poem. He's the marine archeaologist. He's the one who keeps on identifying the real landscape of Kent.

He's as outraged about the assault on the Faversham Creek footpath as I am. He's the one whose doctorate into the history of the Port of Faversham identified so many important and fascinating facts.

But the main point is this. We mostly live by rules - laws. Astonishingly, in the UK, laws do still mostly seem to protect the lowly rights of ordinary people to go about their honest business. This includes walking peacefully alongside the water's edge, to get out to the sea, or to haul a barge against the tide or the wind, into the town quay or back out to deep water.

When someone decides that they'd like to change things - cut off a footpath, or fence off a hauling path, we all need to take notice.

If you think you have something to say about this, come to the Public Inquiry. Dec th, Graveney Village Hall, 10am. The Queen will guarantee your right to speak.

Be thankful this is not a country where the Head of State is also in direct control of the Army, and can sack Judges, and appoint news ones at will.