On a recent Saturday morning I was woken early by a call from a girl who works at my new pub. She’s a stoic soul who can weightlift 185kg, but she sounded quite distressed as she explained that a gang of 150 burly men from the travelling community had cut the padlock to our car park and were now in there unloading a fleet of horses and traps. She’d asked them to stop but had been told that if she didn’t leave them alone, they would smash her f***ing face in.
“What should I do?” she asked. This is a tricky one. In the olden days you’d call the police and they would at least try to sort it out, but times have changed. Today we all sort of know that Plod will simply stand and observe until you use a word other than “traveller”, and then you will be carted off to prison for breaching one of Comrade Starmer’s hate-speech laws.
As a result, dealing with the travelling community has become increasingly vexing for farmers and landowners. Earlier this year we read reports about how a squadron of 4x4s and quad bikes had roared into a Cambridgeshire farmyard and set up a hare coursing event. Pickaxe handles were deployed to deter any opposition, lurchers were released to chase the hares and the whole event was almost certainly live streamed to gambling enthusiasts in China.
Hare coursing is barbaric and horrible, and not just for the hare. Because in order to follow the action, these guys drive their 4x4s over crops and use them to smash down gates.
One thing many people believe is that you absolutely must not attempt to take them on yourself. Because if you do, that night your hay barn will suddenly catch fire and the next morning you’ll learn, to your distress, that your tractor has fallen into your slurry pit. All you can do is sit in your cellar till they’ve gone and hope they haven’t made too much mess.
But is that right? I must admit I’d quite like to be a tinker. Or, to use the rather less romantic term, “member of the travelling community”. I’m rather envious of the way they live among us while taking absolutely no part in the society we’ve created. The question of who owns something is a kind of vexing grey area, and if you want to break into a pub car park and then spend the morning racing your horses and traps up and down the A40, then you go right ahead. That’s broadly speaking what I was like as a schoolboy. It was the teachers’ job to make the rules and my job to completely ignore them.
There’s a camp for “members of the travelling community” next to my farm. It’s a big one and is home, I’m told, to a branch of Tyson Fury’s family. Friends ask if this is annoying, to which I say, “Well, I’d rather that than a church.” At least the travellers don’t wake me every Sunday morning with their campanology.
And there’s more. My son used to play rugby with their sons in Chipping Norton. And we get on. Lisa does too. Just recently there was a big funeral for a “member of the travelling community” in the town and the police advised all the pubs to shut their doors for the day. But she didn’t close the bar at the Diddly Squat farm shop, and this was “noticed and appreciated”.
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Meanwhile, I appreciate some of their behaviour because it’s funny. I was told recently that one camp had been visited by someone from the television licensing authority. The poor deluded fool, in a government-issue short-sleeved shirt with a Biro in the top pocket, pulled up outside one of the caravans in his rented Vauxhall and knocked on the door. This was a mistake.
The man inside opened it and asked what he wanted. “Well,” said our adenoidal friend in the Vauxhall, “our records show that you don’t have a television licence.” In a situation like that, you or I would panic but the traveller didn’t. Instead he replied, “So why were you looking through the window at my kiddies?”
By the time Vauxhall man had finished denying he’d done any such thing, a large crowd of other travellers from the camp had gathered, wanting to know why he was there. “He was looking through the window of the van at my kiddies,” our hero said. It’s safe to assume the BBC is having to soldier on without his contribution.
I love that. And there’s more. Various farmers round here recently had some problems with a gang of poachers. Even though we had pictures of their faces, the police could do nothing. But my mate at the traveller camp recognised them immediately and said they’d be “straightened out”.
The essence of what I’m saying is if you treat travellers with respect, life in the sticks is a lot easier. Basically, treat them like the Canadians treat their neighbours south of the border. Smile sweetly and hope they don’t come over. And of course that brings me back to the very large gang that broke into our pub car park so that they could do horse racing on the nearby dual carriageway.
I must admit that on this occasion the police responded as if someone had just sent an unpleasant tweet about Sir Starmer himself. They turned up, fast, in great numbers, did vehicle checks and organised a fleet of lorries to tow away those that had some kind of defect. It was an impressive operation.
But the travellers were impressive too, in their own weird way. Because when everyone had gone and we were able to open the pub, the organiser of the horsey road races turned up and gave me £150 to cover the cost of replacing the padlock they had broken and clearing up the litter. Then he asked if it’d be all right to come back another time.
Finding an answer to that one is not easy. Because if you think about it, I let the hunt park their horseboxes on the farm and ride their pets all over the fields. And what’s the difference?
Am I being a snob, allowing people who speak the King’s English to come while banning those who converse by making Brad Pitt noises that even Lisa can’t understand? Or am I being a coward? Am I worried that if I say no to the people on piebalds, my pub will explode?
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Well, again, I have to make comparisons with the hunt. I once said no to the people on their Cheltenham-type horses, and while nothing was burnt down, the letters I received said they’d be very “disappointed” if I refused again. Which is the posh-speak equivalent of saying that my social life would be affected. Which is a Tatler way of saying I’d get my effing face smashed in. Also, the hunt has never given me £150 to cover the damage that results every single time they come here.
It comes down to this. One of the piebald people was abusive to one of the girls at the pub and that’s unforgivable. And we do need our car park for customers. So for those reasons it’s a no. But in the spirit of getting on, I do wish them well because racing horses on a fully open dual carriageway looks a damn sight more fun than chasing an imaginary fox over a hedge.
