PRICED OUT OF BIRTHPLACE

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin...

OH, didn’t we have a whale of a time! Happy memories dominated my mind as I admired our new garden furniture, above which I’d just hoisted a sunshade. The loveseat, with its little shared table for drinks and snacks, looked most comely by the ruined shed – just the thing for Summer 2021 now the new brolly is there to keep the sun from our elderly hides.

I used to spend money on drinks in late-night dives in places like Amsterdam. I’ve spent my last dimes on Greyhound bus tickets to forgettable places in woebegone corners of America. I have been lost for weeks in what used to be Yugoslavia, then wasted too many drachmas on large meals in tiny harbourside tavernas in the Greek isles. Not to mention countless francs and liras on bottles of French and Italian wine.

I have nightclubbed, boozed and caroused my way around the globe. I have spent a reckless life enjoying myself irresponsibly, devoid of anything that could be described as a plan.

Now I buy twee garden furniture to sit on and parasols to keep the joyous sun at bay.

As I gazed at the seat, a voice inside croaked ‘what is happening to you Hespie? Where did all the adventure go?’

Next I’ll be purchasing grey windcheaters and stay-press slacks so I can visit garden centres. And maybe one of those cloth caps that has earflaps you can button up on top. I have never wanted one of those. But you never know. Old age does strange things.

All of which brings me to what I wanted to write about, which is the lack of affordable housing… If there is one thing that really rattles my cage, it is the fact that one day soon there will be no West Country person left in the West Country. We’ll be gone, like one of those ancient civilisations that has vanished without trace,

So why my garden-seat build-up for such an important issue?

Because I wanted to illustrate just how comfortable, cushioned and unchallenging life can be when you’ve reached a certain age and you own the roof over your head. All I can moan about is getting old – which is not something to moan about because the other option is nowhere near as good.

I also wanted to put my cards on the table and say I’ve no selfish reason to rail against the lack of affordable housing. Through hard work we’ve paid for this cottage, and it happens our offspring are more-orless sorted. But while there’s no panic at Hesp Towers, I regard the region’s worsening housing situation as desperate, intolerable and ultimately unworkable.

Anyone who keeps an eye on regional news will know the situation has suddenly become intensified. As people from other parts of the country realise they no longer have to be tied to a workplace, they are escaping the grime of city life in droves. Property prices here are rocketing way beyond the means of working country folk. Some will say it’s all fair – an open market – but try telling that to a farmworker, nurse or fisherman.

I know someone who recently sold the Westminster council flat they bought for a song in the 1990s for over a million quid. They’ve purchased a large renovated West Country farmhouse and put £600,000 in change in the bank. They moaned recently that they were having to eke out funds and live on £40,000 a year.

I’m all for the rewards of hard work, but not much of it had occurred there. They’d just been lucky on life’s Monopoly board. I know some local folk who have too. Sold off barns for conversion, one by one, at two hundred grand apiece… Not bad work if you can get it.

But the majority of folk west of Bristol cannot get it.

As I sit comfortably on my new garden seat pondering the matter, the thought strikes me that we are talking about the threat of a displaced population. That term usually describes violent and horrific situations which occur in war-torn parts of the planet, but this silent creeping banishment of local youth from our landscape is cruel enough in its own incipient way.

I’ve written about the problem before in this column and one reader harangued me by saying: “There is no human right that declares a person should be able to live in the place where they were born.”

I think there should be. The sense of belonging can be very strong. So strong that, turn on the radio, and you’ll often hear displaced refugees talking about their plight – and we feel sorry for them because we know the importance of being close to one’s roots.

In a few years time, maybe Radio Four will devote programmes to the predicament of the sons and daughters of West Country fishermen, nurses or shepherds, forced to live in human battery farms just off the M4 corridor, lamenting the lost world of their childhood.

As I sit in my new chair, I realise I am very fortunate indeed to grow old just over the hill from the place where I was born. It seems my generation of West Country folk will be the last that can do such a thing.

A voice inside croaked ‘what is happening to you Hespie? Where did all the adventure go?’