Hurry Through while the Watch Sleeps

A rather fierce sign greets you as you leave Hutton on the Hutton Castle road:

'YOU ARE BEING WATCHED'

SO make sure you are leaving-and empty handed?

Actually the Neighbourhood watch concept is quite new and was a Community Council initiative about 5 years ago. When we arrived in Hutton just about 10 years ago someone told us that there was no crime worth mentioning around these parts-apart from a recent stealing of a bicycle. True? I don't know but Robert Mossom the 'Incomer Poet' as he is called (well, some one called him that) was inspired to produce the following ditty


Neighbourhood Watch Hutton Style


‘Community Alert’* they call it here.
Oxymoronic surely.
Our rural calm is soporific.
Unbroken by any suspicion
of criminal intent ever since
the village burglar was apprehended
escaping from the scene of his crime
on a stolen bicycle.

He might even have got away
had he not been walking the bike
uphill. (He had nicked the one
without gears.)

Now if you venture through the village
in its post neutron bomb like emptiness
all you get is
the occasional curtained twitch**
of the neighbourhood watch
going about
your business.

* They don't actually but it is a better oxymoron than 'Neighbourhood Watch'

** Not quite accurate. Many uncurtained windows, as it happens

The same poet also wrote about the apparent emptiness of the hamlet in his seminal ground breaking:

'Collecting for Christian Aid'(But that was about Paxton)

We are more generous here  ¶ 1:37 PM