The Dead Shall Rise

 

Since I moved here there had always been this fight. It was a kind of conscious resistance which the villagers had with a man, a rich property developer. The facts of the matter are this – some years ago a man ‘donated’ a piece of land for the council to use as a cemetery. The cemetery was built, with some lovely wooden carving and graves, graves, graves added month by month, year by year. The slight trouble was that the cemetery land flooded. It was not good land. It was a marsh. But the council liked it. It served a purpose.

For many years the villagers had consciously resisted the developer. We had resisted plan upon plan to build on the land behind our houses. If I say that the developer ‘gifted’ the cemetery land during his applications for building would that be seen as more than a fact? In the end, after a number of failed attempts to build on this greenbelt land, the developer sold the land on to a company who had a lot more power. The same fight continues up and down the country.

Well, despite the supposed nimbyism, they won. Despite the many objections. Because it has been a long fight. A fight which has involved petitions, council planning comments (hundreds) and a whole lot of angst among the village. Some villagers were against it because they knew that it would be greenbelt land and, despite the new Tory policy of building on greenbelt land, they intuitively knew that it would cause massive disruption to traffic, services, noise pollution and all kinds of trouble. I resisted it too. But more for the sake of the wildlife. There were mineshafts under the land. Chasms that could take a lot of living bodies. And newts and bats and all kinds of flora and fauna. I suggested to the council that the mineshafts might fall in as if in some kind of Poltergeist (you will understand if you have seen the film) scene. I used every argument I knew. I used the last of my authority. Our MP Gavin Williamson supported us. We give him credit for that even though he was part of a regime that decided that developers could build on greenbelt land in the first place. He was swiftly promoted after his announcement that his constituents problem had passed. He even made it to the Tracy Ullman show as a character. For a while he was a rising star.

Meanwhile the graves in the cemetery continued to rise. And maybe the mineshafts in the land to be built on began to sink a little. We were all haunted one way or another.

This is Tory-ground and most voters are Tory, but the locals are human beings, they are friendly enough.

I did pray sometimes. We are commanded to love our enemies and the developers seemed to have fit the bill like the rich man Dives may have done to Lazarus. I shot prayers their way. Resistance prayers. Just occasionally. Prayers to make things better for all of us. But they didn't work and I'm sorry about that.

Enjoy the cemetery, council, enjoy the policy of building on greenbelt land. Bury your dead there. Maybe they are already dead? After all, that’s what people say.

When I die (and goodness knows it may be sooner rather than later), do not let them bury me in the council’s cemetery. I do not want to rise before my time. Let them sprinkle my ashes in the River Trent, to be carried downstream and out to the sea (or else get caught in some branch or blown back in a beautiful face by the wind).

It sounds so pathetic. ‘We tried’. But we did try. For years. But our prayers were unanswered in any meaningful way.

And this kind of tiny battle goes on up and down the country while the Tories continue with their policy of building unaffordable housing on greenbelt land. The nasty party.

Yet still, the dead shall rise. One way or the other.