Tag Archives: Country Diary of an Edwardian Mayor

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Mayor

The Country Diary

Words on the Development of Hengrove Park

As I sit here taking air at the enervating window of my oak-panelled study and surveying the natural majesty before me, I can only express utter joy and no small sense of wonder at the good news just arrived. Nay, this is more than mere good news. It is a tumult of the most joyous news. For soon these green and pleasant tree-lined fields of west England, which impart the form of my current panorama, shall be better moulded by enlightened man’s industry into the spectacle of a housing estate.

This finest of aspects, alas, currently despoiled by no peasant ever toiling hard under the hot sun as God intended, will receive, by God’s grace, the best of human enrichment and utility. Gone from our land will be the idlers, chokers, hawkers and show men with dog, child, bicycle, car boot or ball perambulating aimlessly upon fruitless, lazy, unprofitable soil and revealing a sordid disposition toward non-labouring activity.

Instead let us rejoice as these loafers are swept beyond view to dwell in chipboard slums of their own making. In their place the hard working peasant and the labouring man will toil, sweat, struggle and overcome upon our imperial soil to yield the finest fruits for the most deserving. Oh how my heart yearns to see 850 trees uprooted and nature’s roughly arranged bounty better diminished to make way for man’s ingenious scheme of road, concrete, congestion and poison fumes.

If you’re a middle class wanker who hates south Bristol and would like Avonmouth to continue to be poisoned, you can vote for ‘Green’ Sandy in the Mayoral Election on 6 May 2020