Nine
Well-loved Editor Retires
by Ned Knobwel, Rodney Arsewibe & Rianna Bong
Thursday, 13 February 2014
Double negatives, split infinitives and dangling participles from Switherton to St Anselm rejoiced this week at the news that Duncan Neville, editor and proprietor of the Mercury, was stepping down to spend more time with his lexicon.
Having lost the battle to turn the ‘On This Day’ column into a four-page weekly insert and had his demand to include at least one classical tag or epigram per feature branded ‘dragonian’ (sic) by Mother of the Chapel Sheila Lewis, Neville, who has edited the paper since the age of five, declared that it was time for him to move on.
As news of his departure swept through Francombe, total strangers wept in each other’s arms. Mrs Ava Larfe, 64, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘He was always on the side of the common man – though he was a real gent himself. Who can forget the way he took on the Council over its decision to shut Welch’s whelk stall? Or how he marched up and down the Prom chanting “Hands Off Our Molluscs”?’
Tributes to Neville have been pouring in from across the globe, and even further. Fellow newspaper magnate, Rupert Murdoch, declared: ‘He’s the man! He’s the one we all look up to. Whenever I have a problem, it’s Dunc I turn to for advice. It’s Dunc who showed me a fail-safe way to rig a coffee machine. It’s Dunc who taught me the mantra: “Keep ’em poor; keep ’em raw”.’
Former Mirror group chairman Robert Maxwell, channelled by medium Dotty Flake of the Sunlight Spiritual Centre (dotty@soulsunited. com), recalled an early glimpse of Neville from a stall in the Newspaper Society lavatory: ‘I knew at once he was a man of integrity from the way he washed his hands even when he thought there was nobody watching.’
Neville’s reputation as Mr Clean extends far beyond personal hygiene. Although the victim of countless bribery attempts, from the honey trap sprung by Councillor Wanda Ringhands during the vanishing ice sculpture scandal, to the Mars bar slipped him by eight-year-old Ben de Rules inside his entry to the Primary School Paint Your Pet Guinea Pig competition, he has remained inviolable.
To the end, he has held true to the motto, Celery and Vermouth, which has graced the Mercury’s masthead ever since the paper was founded by his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle-once-removed in 1066.
Meanwhile, in Francombe, speculation about his future has reached fever pitch. According to one source, he is to retrain as a tattoo artist and open a parlour on the Front specialising in designs drawn from Aztec and Mayan mythology; according to another, he is to give tango demonstrations in tea dances at the Metropole Hotel. Close associates of controversial con man, Geoffrey Weedon OBE, claim that he has accepted the post of director of the proposed sex museum on the pier.
Whatever he decides, you can be sure it will be reported in your new relocated Mercury. Remember, Basingstoke is only an email away.
The stopped clock on the Town Hall tower confirmed the drop in temperature. Three years ago Duncan had written an impassioned leader on the blow to civic pride dealt by a mechanism so susceptible to the cold that every winter, ‘as regular as clockwork’, a severe icy spell thickened the oil in the lubrication system and clogged the works. The only official response, however, had been a letter from the Director of Finance citing budgetary cuts. As he walked up the slippery steps into the building, he acknowledged with a mixture of relief and regret that in two days’ time it would be somebody else’s concern.
He entered the lobby, its black lacquer console tables, cream leatherette sofas and angular chrome coat stands (which, as a boy, he had secretly anthropomorphised on visits with his parents) contrasting sharply with the austere neo-classical exterior. He climbed the sweeping white marble staircase to the first floor, his eye as usual drawn to the large mural in which an affluent man sporting a trilby and cane and his elegant wife wearing a cloche hat and wrap-over coat, greeted a heavily mustachioed fisherman who was selling his catch on the Front, while his ruddy-faced, ample-bosomed wife sat placidly mending his nets and their four barefoot children played hopscotch on the sand. Duncan could not restrain a smile at this fantasy of social cohesion painted in 1923, two years after the town had been torn apart and the Town Hall itself burnt down by rioters, many of them ex-servicemen, protesting at rising prices and unemployment. But his smile faded at the thought of how completely the event had faded from the collective memory, with no longer any prospect of an ‘On This Day’ column to bring it back.
He made his way down a corridor lined with seascapes of tablemat blandness to the Council Chamber, another striking example of art deco design, with a mosaic allegory of the seasons on the ceiling, pressed-metal panelled walls and bronze-and-alabaster sconces. Having attended more Planning Committee meetings than all but the longest-serving councillors, he knew the form. As an interested party, he took his seat on a cracked leather banquette alongside Glynis Kingswood and Jocelyn Dunning of the High Street Traders Association. Geoffrey Weedon, with his architect and agent, sat two rows in front and Ken Newbold, assiduously covering his last ever story for the Mercury, was in the row behind. Lucy Blackstone, the Committee Chair, flanked by a clerk and a legal adviser, presided beneath a large bronze sunburst. To her left were the planning officers presenting the applications; to her right, twelve of the fifteen councillors who made up the committee. The general public was confined to a cramped gallery at the back. Twisting round, Duncan spotted several familiar faces and one unmistakable hairstyle: Lea Brierley’s multicoloured fringe.
Knowing the pier application to be the last item on the agenda, he had timed his arrival to avoid the usual batch of garage extensions, loft conversions, tree removals and changes of use, along with the routine disclaimers by councillors that any discussions they had held on the proposals were prejudicial. Even so, he had to sit through applications to build four petrol pumps and two jet car washes outside the Bartholomew Road Tesco; to adapt the main gatehouse at Seacombe Court into a farm shop; and to turn a piece of arable land outside Switherton into open storage. The first two were passed, while a decision on the third was deferred pending a site visit.
Finally, they came to item twelve: Application FS2014/37286 for planning permission and listed building consent for the partial demolition and reconstruction of Francombe Pier, the erection of new pier buildings with alternative leisure use, the extension of the existing footprint and landscaping of the immediate surroundings. ‘I’m aware that there’s a lot of feeling locally about this application,’ the Chair said, as an air of anticipation permeated the room, ‘but members of the committee, led by myself, will consider it without fear or favour, just as we have many similar applications in the past.’ As two planning officers placed the architect’s model in front of the dais, several male councillors craned forward to study it with playground excitement. The designated planning officer, whose dark hair, thick-rimmed spectacles, neatly clipped beard and black turtle-necked sweater gave him the look of a man about to deliver a lecture on structuralism at the Sorbonne rather than to discuss the nuts and bolts of a building project in Francombe, set out the application.
After emphasising that his decision to recommend it was based solely on merit, he outlined the conclusions of the Environmental Impact Assessment that there would be no discernible damage to the air, soil, water, natural landscape or cultural heritage either during construction or after completion. The minimal increase in noise in the immediate vicinity, where the only residential dwellings were DSS hostels, would be offset by a significant reduction in both noise and congestion in the centre of town as traffic shifted away from the existing pubs, clubs and leisure facilities. Moreover, the developers had pledged to extend and improve the Promenade in front of the pier, setting back the entrance pavilions and putting up a new pelican crossing.
Dimming the lights, he showed a series of slides of the proposed buildings, followe
d by highly idealised artist’s impressions of the completed pier, both by day beneath a canopy of leaves, and by night as brightly illuminated as a cruise ship in port. He concluded by reminding the committee that ‘this site has a lot of planning history. There’s no reason at all why, in fifty, forty or even twenty years’ time it shouldn’t be transferred to a different usage. But at present, after balancing the protection of the historic and social environment with the need for economic growth and agreeing with the developers an extensive list of Section 106 underpinned controls relating to design, development, implementation and management, I strongly recommend that approval should be granted.’
Having thanked the officer for his concise presentation, the Chair announced that they had received a record 182 objections to the application. Four community representatives had been allotted three minutes each to put these in person, after which the developers would be afforded equal time to reply. She called on Jocelyn Dunning to speak first, failing to mask her surprise at the bass voice that responded. Casting repeated glances at his watch, Jocelyn declared that although the developers had trumpeted the support they had received from hotel owners and the Chamber of Commerce, his own members had grave anxieties about the impact of the scheme on their already ailing businesses. Such a radical reordering of the town’s amenities would leave the centre deserted, particularly at night, resulting in increased antisocial behaviour and crime. Jocelyn was followed by Nigel Taylor, the Methodist minister of St Anne’s, who argued for the preservation of Francombe as a family resort, even if this entailed demolishing the pier. While in the light of recent events Henry’s reluctance to act as clerical spokesman was understandable, Duncan had hoped for a more impressive substitute. For all his sincerity, Taylor’s reasoning was naïve and his delivery surprisingly hesitant for someone with chapel training. It came as a relief when, showing little respect for his cloth, Councillor Blackstone carried out her threat to switch off his microphone when he ran out of time.
With Glynis having renounced her right to speak in order that Duncan might present a more sustained argument, he had double the time available to his two associates, a fact to which he drew attention when, constrained by the need both to stay seated and talk into a fixed microphone, he began. ‘I have six minutes – a mere 360 seconds – to save this town from the greatest peril it has faced since the threat of invasion in 1940. Then, Salter Pier was blown up to prevent its furnishing a landing stage for the enemy. Now, the enemy has taken over Francombe Pier and is using it to launch a direct attack on the moral and social fabric of the town. Some of you may accuse me of scaremongering, but anyone who’s read the Mercury over the past few months will be under no illusions about the risk. I trust that I’m as conscious as anyone here of the hardships that Francombe has endured in recent years, but this is no way to set about reversing them. Strange as it sounds, the Recession that has caused us so much pain now hands us a golden opportunity. With more and more families choosing to holiday at home, we should be targeting them, restoring the pier to its glory days as a place of all-round entertainment, not turning it into a replica of a sleazy backstreet in Bangkok.
‘Take this drawing.’ Duncan pointed to the artist’s impression of the pier at night, the final slide, which remained a ghostly presence on the screen in the glare of the overhead lighting. ‘It looks so inoffensive, decked out in fairy lights as if the town is finally enjoying the festive display it was denied on the Parade this Christmas. What it doesn’t show is the corruption, the crime, the intemperance (by which I mean far more than drunkenness), the exploitation and misery that inevitably accompany such enterprises. It doesn’t show the danger to children for whom the illicit amusements will offer both a lure and a challenge. I appeal to the members of the committee not to be deceived by all the talk of profit to the town. This is a project that exists for one reason and one reason only: to line the developers’ pockets.
‘To which end we, or rather you, the members of the Planning and Regeneration Committee, are being asked to grant an application that will change the nature of our town for ever.’ It may have been his reference to 1940 but he heard his cadences becoming Churchillian. ‘I entreat you to save us from a development that will be a blight on our lives and a blight on the lives of all those who come after us, a development that is a betrayal not just of the people of Francombe but people the length and breadth of the country – and beyond – who come here to enjoy the innocent pleasures of the seaside. I speak in fervent opposition to this application, which I ask you to reject.’
Duncan’s plea drew loud cheers from the public gallery and a single clap from one of the councillors, cut short by a glare from her neighbour. Glynis Kingswood clasped his hand in support. Councillor Blackstone, who remained impassive, declared that having heard all the objections (prompting a cry from the gallery of ‘Not half you bloody haven’t!’), she would now call on the applicants. First to speak was the architect, Archana Nayar, wearing a far more sumptuous sari than at the consultation: cream silk with a motif of pink and blue petals. Grinning at the committee as if already thanking it for its endorsement, she defended her designs, explaining that they were inspired – albeit loosely – by several of the previous structures on the site and had received the full support of the Victorian Society, the National Piers Society and the Francombe Civic Society. At the mention of the last, Duncan turned to the gallery where its secretary and leading light, Jamie’s former history teacher, David Westbrook, determinedly avoided his gaze.
Archana was followed by Geoffrey himself, reading from a prepared statement. He spoke so haltingly that Duncan wondered whether the shock of Craig’s imprisonment had triggered a recurrence of his angina, before realising that it was a skilful ploy to avoid sounding overconfident. He began by professing his gratitude, first to the planning officer for presenting the application so cogently, then to the committee for adjudicating on such a vexed issue, knowing that whichever way they voted (‘rightly or wrongly,’ he said with a roguish smile), they would alienate some of their constituents, and finally to the public for its enthusiastic response to the consultation process. ‘We received over a hundred comments on the plans. After examining them closely, we chose to make several modifications to the original designs, as you can see from the model in front of you.’
Oblivious to the differences, Duncan wished that he had paid more attention to the display in the library.
‘The development is ecologically sustainable and carbon neutral. As you’ve just heard it meets the highest environmental standards. It will create hundreds of jobs both during construction and once it’s operational. I stand accused here tonight – and not for the first time – of selling Francombe down the river (or should that be into the Channel?), sacrificing its identity, its prosperity, even its moral fibre to satisfy my own greed. There’s only one word I can say to that and I’m sorry if it offends any of you but I speak as I find: Balls! I’ll say it again: Balls!’ Councillor Blackstone looked to her right as if for a legal ruling, but none was forthcoming. ‘I love this town. I’ve lived here all my life. I hope to die here – although not for a good while yet! I’ve made my commitment to it clear by funding many community initiatives in the past and I can assure you that my support will continue.’ He put down his notes. ‘This is a planning committee, not a moral rearmament meeting, but I have to address, if only briefly, the concerns raised by one of the speakers, the editor – or rather former editor – of the Mercury. He charges me with destroying the family-friendly atmosphere of the town. So where is it? When I walk along the Front or Jubilee Precinct, I see pensioners; I see drunks and druggies; I see scroungers; I see groups of bored teenagers. But the only families I see – the only mums and dads with their two point two children (though, in this case, it’s seven or eight) – are immigrants and asylum seekers.’ Duncan looked up at the gallery where there was not a single non-white face in evidence. ‘Is this the Francombe Mr Neville is so keen to preserve? I say to him and to all the ot
her opponents of our plans: “Get real! We may look out on to the sand but that’s no reason to stick our heads in it.”
‘Far from undermining families, this development will strengthen them. The work it provides will keep young people – the mothers and fathers of tomorrow – in Francombe. The cash it generates will filter through the community. And as for the danger that our … what was it?’ – he made a play of looking through his notes – ‘“illicit amusements” constitute to children: well, Mr Neville, Dr Kingswood and their friends may not have explored the darker reaches of the Internet, but take it from me, any ten-year-old with a laptop can – and does – access far more hardcore material in his bedroom than anything we propose to allow.’
‘Thirty seconds left, Mr Weedon,’ the Chair interposed.
‘Granting this application will do far more than simply rescue a much loved local landmark (although of course it’ll do that too); it will be the springboard for a groundbreaking leisure concept that will put Francombe back on the holiday map. Tonight you have a unique opportunity to approve a project that will be instrumental – some would say vital – to the survival of the town. I urge you to take it.’
Geoffrey’s exhortation was greeted by an unexpected and, to Duncan’s mind, encouraging silence. The Chair then turned to her right and invited any of the committee who wished to speak to do so. ‘Traditionally, councillors don’t have a time limit on their contributions,’ she said, ‘but in this case I’d ask you to be as succinct as possible and to restrict your comments to planning issues.’ This sparked a protracted debate among members as to whether all of them or only ward councillors had the right to take part, which was finally resolved by the legal adviser’s ruling that everyone had the right but ward councillors the priority.
Duncan was both angered and depressed by the time wasted on procedural issues, which said more about the committee’s self-importance than its civic concern. He was equally frustrated by the inconsequential questions that the members put to the planning officer. One asked whether, since the sex museum was to be built on the site of the Winter Garden, it should be made of glass (‘opaque, of course,’ he added, laughing at his own witticism). Another wanted to know why a bus stop opposite the pier, for which she had led a ten-year campaign, was not included in the artist’s impression. A third queried the appropriateness of the eighteen-foot reliefs of mermaids on the entrance pavilions, only to be told by the increasingly tetchy planning officer that, since the pier was not in a conservation area, the decoration did not fall within his remit. Finally, Jim Dawson, a three-times Mayor, stood up with his hands clasped across what would once have been called his corporation and which remained a fitting term for a man reputed to have the Council in his pocket. ‘I’ve listened to both sides,’ he said in his elder statesman’s voice now choked by emphysema, ‘and find myself more persuaded by the developer. It’s clearly a contentious scheme and one not without risks, but in my view they’re far outweighed by the benefits. I therefore intend to support it.’
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