The Fairways

 

I decided I would draw my alternative Master Plan for the development of the golf course. I based my drawing on the idea of using the existing trees as a starting point for the layout. Seemed as good a starting point as any other. This drawing was also influenced by the houses at Dungeness whose gardens radiated around the property a full 360 degrees. These ideas seemed enough for me to start drawing. Then when I’d drawn a few houses…. other issues start coming in!…!

School, yeh that’s a good idea going to need one, probably a primary then, as there is a massive secondary only a quarter of a mile away.

Shops, yeh going to need those.

There is a lot of old people now as parents are having less children and having them later, generally speaking and Herne Bay where I live has a very high concentration of older people. So I’ll put a health centre and yeh ..I’ll put some gardens in there as well, like the French have medical gardens Herne Bay can have the first medical gardens in the region.

I put this ‘Exchange and Re-Cycling Centre’ in, sounds good, I’m not quite sure how that works if I’m honest. But I thought a place where you dont use money you exchanged things on a points system or made agreements on values!!

Flooding….big issue at the moment and this area did have a history of flooding way back, so a few water features I hope will absorb the Brook of Plenty when if swells.

Sports pitches and a public park, yeh all essential going in, as well as an arts and heritage centre. Perimeter cycle path…..nice look at the highland cattle grazing outside the school. I remember working in an unusual school in Hythe which had live stock which was amazing. And so it goes on a little bit of this…… and I remember that was good, bit of that…. its like being God really!

 

Then I remember vaguely something about how houses should be orientated towards north by the sun (not magnetic north) this was an efficient ecological requirement and I thought my own garden was often in shade. And I had just housed 100’s of people by saying that’s a nice composition on the paper, with the rhythm of those houses and trees..!

What!…. people have to live there, and your just making a nice drawing!

I also realised I was drawing this plan North at the top in the traditional way, had I decided to draw it south up things would have been very different, because this in relation to that type reasons, put that there and this here and as those trees have to be there, this looks good here. Very subjective, unecological and arbitrary really. Had I done the drawing the other way up it would have come out very differently.

I have seen many early maps, the Gough Map for example where the UK is lying on its side. Very disorientating.

Its all an illusion, what is right and what is wrong? Who can tell? I remember the iconic photo of the earth from the appollo moon mission in the 70’s and subsiquently reading that it was actually taken with the south pole at the top. But the coastline of Africa and the Middle East are visable through the clouds and it was pubished the other way up so we could recognise land masses in a North Up orientation.

 

 

I started reading a chapter in my new book by the Rev. Peter Owen Jones who described the way the houses were laid on the shingle peninsular at Dungeness as ‘Organic’ and without structure. He was struck by how obvious it was that any formal planning scheme of any kind was clearly not considered . These dwellings had cropped up seemingly at random, the connecting track meandered on its own course without bearing relation to the position of the houses either.

I have been to this community at Dungeness and now he mentions it the approach was a little random. He also points out that the gardens have no boundaries and radiate around each property. That was one of the most striking memories of the place for me as well.

So why am telling you this?

In my mind I have a half remembered a conversation either on the golf course here with a passerby, or a passerby in a dream about the housing development on this site. We parted company agreeing that what the planners should do was to design the houses around the layout of the existing trees…….how good is that!….eh.. eh!

So I set a short agenda for my walk over the golf course this morning;

1. have a look at the former club house from the road.
2. scope how difficult it might be to plot the position of all the trees (for random house planning locations)
3. check out to see if any new graffiti
4. see if the horse has a shelter

Before I even got to the entrance of the former club house I was reminded of another half remembered conversation about the shrines that pop up at road sides marking the tragic deaths of those taken before their time. They had a name (can’t remember) catholic, southern european influences can’t remember much about the context either though they did explained to me. But I do remember thinking it was true there are a lot of them now!

This one I was walking past now is probably the most elaborate one I have ever seen. It was practically a gateway feature into this new residential development. Again another half remembered conversation with a  local I knew this was a memorial to Adrian Stroud (who I never knew).

Gravel landscaping on a geomembrane

solar powered ground lighting on a considerable scale for these type of installations.

Paper lanterns hanging in the surrounding trees

which had wind chimes, laminated poems, a key ring in the form of a car number plate saying Adrian and other sympathetic plaques hanging from branches.

Large scale planting in car tyres and dozens of bouquet flower tributes.

metal lanterns with tea lights or candles in

Large painted lettering

Framed photograph

plastic windmills rotating in the wind

a small canvas seat/fishing stool

and my favourite tribute was the set of lawn darts.

Quite impressive.

The entrace has a large sign now with flags and a picture of whats to come.

I always look at the graffiti which is really the gateway feature to the site if you enter it from the opposite side and pass under the main road. The graffiti has changed alot different people are doing this now and the tunnel is transformed with new work every time I go there. It is a project in of its own the changes and exchanges going on here. looks like they drink my favourite lager as well as I can see a stella can amongst the empty spray cans.

The horse is so sad, still standing where his stable used to be, without any shelter with the winter and rain approaching. I call to him but he does not respond. I walk away feeling very sad and melancoly wishing I was in my car already and almost home.

As for the plotting of tree locations its a massive task and I’m in no mood for it thinking google from the air will save me an awful lot of work. So  a plan of the tree layout is my next task.

 

 

My Local paper announces this on the front page – Full Story Page 7. Actually it’s on page three not seven! But very enthusiastic with lots of quotes and the submitted proposals received  1200 letters of support. The development will include 572 homes commercial office space, as well as football, hockey, and cricket pitches with  two pavilions. The housing included 4 blocks of flats with the rest designated as housing and would also include a doctors surgery, care home, pub, play areas and landscaping. The article highlights job creation, improvement of roads and  infrastructure and quality homes built by Redrow Homes.

So there you have it – how long will it be before the diggers arrive? I thought I better nip over there right now and see if things were still calm and tranquil.

Yes it looks more like a golf course now than ever before. All the long grass growing on the awkward to cut bits over the undulations and the bunkers has been cut, so it is almost back to being a golf course at the moment. Though strangely a lot of the putting greens and tees have been left uncut, making them look like large table top wild flower gardens.

I walk around remembering snow, floods, fire, sheep, a man with a tatooed face and much much more. Then I find myself thinking of a new housing development I worked on just outside Leicester. This was a few years ago now, a new housing development with new residents just moving in and starting a community, and as part of the research for the project I was working on I compiled a questionnaire and poked it through peoples letter boxes. Basically asking people what were the places of note or interest and why did they choose this location. These were returned to me in due course for analysis.

One response from dozens and dozens stood out by miles..absolutely  made me drop my pencil, spill my tea, fall off my chair or my chin hit the floor any of those will do. I read it and threw my head back and went phewwwwwww it was so poignant and lazered everything that was bad in one short paragraph into my head.

‘I like it here because when I come home from work I can go and look round the shops, and after that I like to go to the shops, then on the way back I can do a bit of shopping, look round the shops and if I have forgotten anything I can just nip into the shop. Later in the evening if I need a pint of milk for the morning breakfasts its great as I can just pop round the corner to the shop and get some milk and that. And have a look at the shops while I’m out.

There were no shops, there was no community, there was no place to go, no place to play no place to meet. People just went home slept and went back to work next day. That was the point of the arts project to make a community.

Sounds like the one in Herne Bay will be so much better.

I am surprised the golf course has remained undeveloped as long as it has. I hope it is because the council are waiting or negotiating for a good scheme to be delivered. It is clear there will be whats is called a sports hub built, but it is not quick to begin.

I tried to make a map of the things I remember happening there, but I have just looked at it, and realise I have omited the people I met, the conversations I have had, the floods, the annual occupation by sheep and the times I’ve had security drive over and tell me to keep to the footpath. So many things. Yet at the same time I think its been uneventful.

The biggest disapointments have been the fact that I have tried to grow wild flowers over there, geurilla gardening you might say but on 4-5 occasions I have scattered wild flower seeds to no avail! The other is my reluctance to use the place more efectively. Right at the start of the blog I believed I would make a set of flags and here we are three years later I have still made no flags. Why is that?

Because flags feel big, by that I mean they represent important things, symbolise something that unites people. Alfred the Great captured the Vikings Black Raven Flag and they ran in retreat with the emblem lost and so was the battle. Alfred was victorious.

There are no Ravens on the golf course, but there are plenty of crows. I believe crows get a bad press: They mate for life, develop social communities with their own dialects to set themselves apart from other groups (murders) in the area. They collectivly help mothers in their community while incubating eggs and feeding young. Here is an amazing crow fact, they have memories and are able to recognise human faces, humans who have been nice to them and those that have tried to hurt them. More than that they can pass on this information to their friends and younger generations. This is a kind of crow folk lore or history. They can use tools and even make their own tools to access hard to reach food.

I had an odd encounter with a crow once, I belive one would have let me touch it, but instead I took a photo of it!

Since then I have thought about crows a little more.

 

 

It’s pouring with rain and it’s about that time I would have taken the dog for a walk. And I would have moaned about it as it was raining, but do you know what? I put my water proof jacket on and went for that walk. I went over the golf course like we used to,  keeping up to date with developments over there.

My waterproof jacket is a bright green hi-viz one and I thought that if any building work was going on I would be able to get a little closer to it, as if I was a contractor looking in a hole for a spade or measuring something. I thought I might blend in slightly and get away with looking around before I was told to go away. I no longer have the excuse of the dog being off the lead. I have before had conversations without any words with builders and security staff by holding up a dog lead with no dog on the end, and pointing at a dog 30 yards away. Waving as if to say ‘Thanks’ and walking on undisturbed. I can’t pull that one off any more.

But as it turned out there was no building work, no diggers, no workmen. It was as it has always been. Just empty land, like a country park. I did see a single circular weight from a set of dumbbells, probably a 5lbs, then I thought it would be kilos and I just stopped myself as I started walking to pick it up to see what it did weigh, thinking why are you bothering with that? I saw a bedraggled sleeping bag and a plastic washing basket?I could see the trenches that had been dug and filled in again, there were dozens and dozens of these, just big brown lines on the ground, kind of like Nasca lines in Peru? No they were not that good, it would be interesting to see what they looked like from above though.

I tell you what they did remind me of; even though they were a bit  too long for this, it did feel like being in a cricket match. As a bowler you have walk up to the wicket or the ‘strip’ and say to the umpire ‘right arm over’ or ‘left arm round’ or whatever your bowling action is. Then you have to pace out your run up, by starting at the batting crease with your back to the wicket you’re going to bowl at and walking off towards the boundary counting however many yards you feel is right for you run up. All the players are watching you do this as the tension builds. You go back to the umpire and give him your jumper and your cap, he has already got one on his head so he has two caps on now. Then you start pointing at a few fielders making gestures with your arms and hands, left a bit, bit more and shouting things like..deeper….more … then another fielder no no shorter .. shorter that’s it. Then you want a gully and someone has to run round from a long way to get there…no no just behind square….no too much.. square’er  square’er ..that’s it. Then the non strike batsman starts  sledging you! Saying ‘It aint a Fkcunig Test Match Mate. You can’t let that go and you have to say something back like, ‘that’s right because you’re playing’.  I did not pace out my run up, or run in as if I was going to bowl, it was way too muddy and I had me wellies on. Can’t play cricket in wellies.