Benchmarking

There’s nothing trivial in a row that has broken out between Canterbury city council and Kent county council – for the bone of contention is a bench. Benches underpin all parts of British life. Backbenchers aspire to the front bench; bishops come in benchfuls and so do judges; substitutes sit restively on theirs; and Chapman, in his celebrated translation of Homer, even put the Grecian gods on benches, though the idea never caught on. Perhaps some memory of the mead-hall makes us count benches as the perfect memorials to loved ones. They strangle urban parks, and downland ridges bristle with them like Shakespeare’s fretful porpentine. Canterbury now insists Kent has not put back a popular bench after mending a lamp-post. Kent denies it. They might sit down and talk it over, if they had a place to sit.