The Old Mother Crowe is feeling dejected because her friend Mags has stolen all the attention recently. Even more galling is that slippery fish Lynda Wilcox who knows everything but is never there when you need her. For someone who shrinks from the limelight, she's certainly been getting a lot of air-time, what with her insurance-backed legal opinions and useful contacts. And where is she? Nowhere to be seen as usual.
 
Now look at us. Staring down the barrel of a loaded cannon while that bitch Harvey tamps in a bit more powder. Mags is all cheerfulness and bonhomie. So annoying when things are moving into the appalling bracket.
 
She even had the cheek to tell me to try some concealing eye cream to mask the black circles round my eyes. 'Boots have got some great end of line reductions', she said, trying to be helpful. I know she's a friend, but if you'd not slept a proper wink for months, you'd have eye sockets like Wookey Hole.
 
That Hadley is at the root of the trouble. First he writes about The Trout, then Mags, he's even done a long piece on The Bungalow. Bwaah! What about me?
 
In fairness, I have been trying to keep my head down a bit lately. Gary's cycle race picture of me on the front page of The Reporter was fabulous of course (but sadly they took it off the online version. Pity). Mind I did get a quote. Here is what they said I said:
 
TOWN COUNCILLOR AND HOMEND TRADER, ANNETTE CROWE SAID: "THIS IS A FANTASTIC THING FOR LEDBURY. APPARENTLY, WHEN THEY DO THE SPRINT SECTION, THERE ARE USUALLY THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WATCHING.

"I JUST HOPE THE ROAD SECTION FROM THE ORCHARD LANE JUNCTION TO THE TRAIN STATION WON'T CAUSE TOO MANY PROBLEMS FOR THEM."
 
Gosh those boys look fabulous in their lycra. But other than that, the phone hasn't been ringing. Doesn't my opinion count for anything these days? It's not as if there's nothing to complain about. Littering youth. Loitering burglars. Stone throwing ne'er do wells and fire-raising vandals. Honestly, that Dog Hill Wood is more trouble than it's worth sometimes. The town is lovely, but it is going to pot. And that's another thing. The lads down at the Rec. The clouds of skunk smoke are unbelievable. I've told them so many times. Look love, I said to that burly one on the end, if you must do it, have a bit of respect and pass me a toke, would you? They just cracked up, making croaking and cawing sounds. What's so funny? Especially after all I've done for them setting up and running the Youth Drop-In Centre. There's no gratitude.
 
Never mind. When the brown and sticky hits the fan with Harvey's legal thingy, there'll be plenty of attention on me again. I'll show them. I'm at my finest when they're baying for blood. I love hearing my voice drowning out all those whining halfwits. That snivelling creep Hadley called me Ethyl Merman. Pah. Lightweight. I've said it before. I'm a Brummie. My voice carries for miles.
 
Anyway, I've got this little ditty by some poet or other. I used to be on the Board of the Poetry Festival of course. I had to give it up due to being so busy running my business and the town council. Apparently, this Ted chap was impressed with my contribution so he wrote this piece specially for me. A really nice touch.
 
Crowe's Fall

When Crowe was white she decided the sun was too white. 
She decided it glared much too whitely. 
She decided to attack it and defeat it. 

She got her strength flush and in full glitter. 
She clawed and fluffed her rage up. 
She aimed her beak direct at the sun's centre. 

She laughed herself to the centre of herself.

And attacked. 

At her battle cry trees grew suddenly old, 
Shadows flattened. 

But the sun brightened-
It brightened, and Crowe returned charred black. 

She opened her mouth but what came out was charred black. 

"Up there," she managed, 
"Where white is black and black is white, I won." 
 
(Editor's note. Huge apologies are offered to the memory of poet laureate Ted Hughes. Readers are urged to read his poems in the original. A selection can be found here).

There are moments in history when, against the odds, a female leader rises up and sweeps all before them. So resplendent, so courageous, so audacious in their candor and fortitude are these women, that their male rivals recoil in submission.
 
Felling her enemies, Boadicea was one, fearlessly riding into battle in a scythed chariot. Perhaps Britain's greatest monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, said 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king'. In recent politics there is another. At her zenith, Mrs Thatcher thrillingly declaimed to Parliament and the nation: 'No. No. No.'
 
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman.  
 
In these times of anxiety, fortune has smiled again.  Not quite in the Boadicea class, even so, Ledbury suddenly has its own formidable warrior queen, a true Amazon; fluttering from her dowdy chrysalis, all colour and brilliance, she has emerged into the blinking sunlight.
 
Behold Elaine Fieldhouse, the magnificent one: town mayor, benefactor, businesswoman, and neighbourhood planning expert. Under her ferocious gaze, and withering reproaches, bullies and tyrants all over the town cower in awe. Her commanding presence, announced by the clomp-clack of her kitten heels, is such that rooms often fall silent when she appears. But not always in a good way.

Seeing is believing.
 
Many people know La Magnifica from the ups and downs of her optician's shops. She ran the delightful Dolland and Aitchison franchise in Ledbury for some years, until something ghastly went wrong. She and her husband were mysteriously let go by their parent company and made to sign a contract that prevented them, harshly, from opening another competitor opticians in Ledbury before a considerable time had passed. Goodness knows what the problem was.
 
Ever resourceful, Elaine pressed a family member into loyal service who, after a few months, opened up her current shop, The Glasshouse, but not obviously in the Fieldhouse's name. A little bit naughty, husband David continued to do the ophthalmic testing, while Elaine pulled the administrative strings in the back. Aptly, what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.  And phew, D & A never got wind.
 
Things didn't go well however. Amid much acrimony it all went 'tits up' (Elaine's phrase). Money owed to customers and suppliers, spectacle orders unfulfilled, and the Fieldhouse family rent apart, The Glasshouse closed; so much effort and ingenuity wasted!  
 
Keep calm and carry on is La Mag's motto. Like the Dreadnought, she ploughs onward through choppy waters or calm, undeterred by neither petty bureaucracy, trivial people nor difficult family members.
 
Once the D & A exclusion clause had expired and so finally above board, the shop reopened. Business might not have been stellar, what with disgruntled customers still complaining about their lost money and a new discount Specsavers opening just round the corner, but she sails! Good old hubby, David got himself a part-time job at Tesco's optician's outlet down in Wiltshire to grease the wheels, while Elaine keeps things going womanfully in Ledbury.
​

Binary system.
​
Amid the tribulations, there has been a constant guardian presence in Elaine's wayward orbit: that other vintage trader turned mayor, Annette Crowe. The two women are rarely seen apart, sharing ciggies, tea and gossip in the back of the shop, charming friendly visitors and unsettling others, all the while plotting their next coup de théâtre in town affairs. With all that clanking costume jewellery, the swags and drapes of lorn fabric, the generous clouds of tobacco smoke and outlandish lipstick, these two larger than life ladies make an impressive sight trundling about the High Street, especially when in tandem. There's fog-horn voiced Annette as Ethyl Merman, and her fag-raddled sidekick Carol Channing putting one uncannily in mind of Elaine. Just look at the video footage.
 
By then, Annette was making a play on the alternative wing of Ledbury Town Council, finding merriment with her best friend, running down their pet bêtes noires, town councillors Tony Bradford and Martin Eager among others. If there's one thing Elaine doesn't like, it's a sex pest. She really took exception to Tony popping into her shop making suggestive remarks, particularly while she was trying to concentrate on her Times.
 
But times also change. Elaine and Annette are now on best terms with Tony and Martin, all that mucky sex stuff shoved under the mattress like so many sticky magazines.  They now co-star in Ledbury's latest blockbuster docu-drama 'Get Harvey'. It has turned into one of those big bucks movies where it's difficult to know where to stop, especially with the Town Council bankrolling. Eyes Wide Shut perhaps?
 
Annette and Elaine, (jokingly known around the town as 'A and E'), strongly disagree that they are dishonest or hypocrites or turn-coats, and so they might, for such accusations are always damaging. 
 
Elevation. At last.
 
At the 2015 election, Elaine's lonely years in the social wilderness came to an end. By a miracle (yes, there is a god!), she got herself elected to Ledbury Town Council, despite living miles away from town. As a High Street trader it was her good fortune to be advised (by me actually) that she was eligible to stand for election. Few candidates for the eighteen vacancies meant that the lady scraped over the finishing line almost by default, even surpassing her pal, the slightly less than popular Mother Crowe. You'd have had to be a real dud to fail.
 
All that rancour and nastiness was hastily put aside. There was planting in the abandoned town centre flower beds, Christmas lights to be licked into shape, the Queen's birthday and a clutch of other high profile causes to be sprinkled with magic dust. 'Let's be nice to each other' she told the Town Clerk Karen Mitchell. 'Don't worry about Harvey and the other trouble-makers. We'll deal with them'.  Thus began her metamorphosis from hungry caterpillar to gorgeous butterfly.
 
You say 'bitch' like it's a bad thing.
 
Once grand-mère Crowe had been crowned mayor, former friends were swiftly jettisoned, along with all those reformist idiots who made it possible. In her glittering slipstream flitted the ever-flirtatious lady in waiting, Mistress Fieldhouse. It was as if the gates of heaven had been joyfully thrown open. Amid the social whirl, Masonic overtures, and the divine perfume of power, A and E set about clipping political wings and stamping on interfering toes. Even their new-found council chums, Barnes, Eager, Baker and Francis, marvelled at the audacity, the cold brilliance of their assault on old friends like Liz Harvey and Andrew Harrison. 'It's all the art of the possible darling', opined Elaine gruffly. 'Politics. You sink or swim. There's no room for losers.'
 
Charm offensive.
 
She'd done her bit. She'd drunk blood. And it tasted fine, if not good. Harvey and Harrison were banned and the Town Clerk was safe. The bunting scandal was a patriotic godsend: 'she's our queenie, and red, white and blue bunting is what we'll have,' she chipped in winsomely when Liz Harvey had foolishly suggested multi-coloured bunting might look jolly in the town.
 
Unwavering, Elaine Glasshouse was turning into quite the town treasure, sloughing off criticism with tittering scorn, and sweetly bewitching anyone that might be useful, up to and including thoughtful little gifts.  She was risen. May 2016, elected Deputy Mayor. Business picking up. Photo opportunities. (Must get the teeth sorted out). Invitations for coffee in her shop (lots of these). Friends' discounts for cash transactions. Perfect.

​Mind games.

An ex-mental health nurse, she certainly knows the tricks of the trade. Amid all the loveliness, the troubling question is: who is this Elaine Fieldhouse? Can she really be so unconscionable? Or does she genuinely convince herself that all the lies and deceptions are somehow true?
 
At the Christmas lights switch-on celebrations last November (2016), she accosted me in the street, twice. Along with her friend, the ex-deputy clerk, Maria Bradman, they took time out of their grand tour of the rather bizarre entertainments to stop by in 'The Walled Garden' and launch a ferocious verbal assault on me. Brazen with it, and completely undeterred by witnesses, I was told I had mental health problems, that I was a disgusting person, and I needed to clear out of town. All that mulled wine in the town council offices had worked its magic. For my pains, two days later, the police came knocking; the pair had reported me for 'harassment' and 'public disorder', furious that I wouldn't buckle under their drunken onslaught.
 
Police take such complaints seriously, particularly from the Deputy- Mayor and Clerk of the Town Council. The ensuing investigation, over Christmas, turned up many witnesses and recorded sound evidence. Two months later, I was exonerated, while Fieldhouse and Bradman were shown to have told a pack of lies. They were lucky. They got away with a sharp reprimand. Even so, the pair continued to hurry round the town peddling scurrilous gossip about me. Ledbury is a small place.
 
On another occasion, I was berated for 'harassing and bullying' town councillors and staff at a county parish government conference. Senior police officers and the Police Commissioner himself were harangued for not having put a stop to my awful behaviour, particularly my online contributions. Is it my literary style that so irks them?
 
Who was leading the attack? Yup, the Deputy Mayor, Elaine Fieldhouse. Nor are these isolated instances. In council meetings, the lady regularly dissembles tales of 'nastiness' from her foes, principally Harvey, Harrison, Nick Morris, Andrew Warmington, (and me). Though in this, she is not alone. The town council is rather handsomely endowed with big fat liars and polished perjurers just now.
 
Apotheosis.
 
In the biological domain, there is a type of loose textured, gaseous turd which likes to bob about sturdily in water, and despite considerable effort, refuses to be sunk. There are people like this too. They can often be identified by their ascension to the top seat in corrupt institutions. So, joining the mountebanks Barnes, Crowe, Baker, and briefly Eager, Madam Fieldhouse is now mayor of Ledbury Town Council. The Magnificent One, light and airy, if a tad whiffy, has finally broken surface and she's not about to go anywhere soon.
 
La Mag does not so much chair council meetings but directs them, in the theatrical sense.
 
'I'm so sorry,' she recently told a crowd of angry residents petitioning the council about waste of money. Her husky, concerned voice was the essence of sincerity. 'You really must leave now. You see, the business is confidential, and I would love you to stay, but it is out of my hands I'm afraid... I feel your pain, and understand your frustration, but it is time for you to go. Go on now. Hurry along. Thank you. Thank you.' The crowd shuffled out dejected, but also somehow uplifted by the Lady's beatific spell. 'Thank you ladies and gentleman... I'm so sorry'.
 
Like Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Mags feigns solicitude while delivering doses of thick, gloopy medication that is designed to quell dissent and promote compliance.  'You should get professional help,' she once told me, all kindness and venom, 'because you have anger issues. It's such a shame. You could be such a nice person.'
 
There is a hard edge too. In council meetings, if someone utters something that Nursey doesn't like, she swoops in and puts them right instantly.
 
'No that isn't true Councillor Warmington,' she pronounces imperiously, 'as well you know. You are wrong there, you have the facts all muddled up... black is white, we voted on it at a previous meeting. Didn't we?', she says turning to the flustered town clerk. 'And it shall not be any other way.' Bang. 
 
A stickler for detail, the rebellious Cllr. Warmington sometimes refuses to submit to these reprimands.
 
'Please may I finish my point without being interrupted Madam Mayor? It's very tiring and councillors should be allowed to make their point unhindered. And no, black is black, and white is white, despite what the council recently decided,' he says wearily. 
 
'Oh, excuse me', she snaps back. 'There's no need to be so unpleasant. Why are you always so nasty? I was simply correcting you. In any case, I wasn't interrupting. I was interjecting.' The clerk shuffles her papers nervously. 
 
At this, Warmington sits down deflated, just a little dazed, muttering 'you win'. Interrupt or interject: Nursey knows best.
 
Endings and beginnings.
 
And so we approach the end of the Mag-fly's nuptial flight. The metamorphosed creature, her glistening carapace and gorgeous accessories, fluttering like gossamer wings in the summer breeze, has landed. She is generously inseminated with power, enough to last a little while yet. We visit her as she is busy setting up her new colony. Now the vital business of replication must occur. It is an anxious time, for she is vulnerable while gravid. Her drones are about her, the stupid husbands, the inexperienced, the gullible, and the quietly ambitious. They soothe and pamper her, fetching juicy little prey items: she requires the protein of tittle-tattle to nourish the next generation.
 
Tragically, because nature is ruthless, the noble creature will eventually crumple and die, her evolutionary mission completed. And then she will be eaten and all but forgotten. But enough of her being will have been imparted to the next generation to sustain the colony, she hopes. Amid her matriphagous sacrifice, the glorious legacy will live on. Ledbury will be saved.
 
Jean Simpson for mayor in 2018 perhaps?

Whirling about the county in her sleek Mercedes coupe and natty pastel twinsets, Lynda Wilcox cuts a hectic, even heroic, figure in local parish politics. She is the chief executive of Herefordshire's Association of Local Councils, the 'wise owl' of the county's first-tier councils, general factotum and authority on all things parochial.
 
Mrs Wilcox has been a frequent visitor to Ledbury of late. She has been providing welcome advice to the town council in the prosecution of its moral crusade against bullying and harassment by some of its recalcitrant members.
 
The really super thing about Lynda is her great flexibility and versatility. In the cauldron of parish politics, especially if you're in a tight spot, she's the go-to woman in Herefordshire. When under fire she keeps an ice-cool head, and is able calmly to explain, without sounding at all confrontational or patronising, exactly what is, and what is not. "Your Council will decide... " is one of her favourite mantras, always said with grave emphasis on the 'your'.
 
Let it be said that Mrs Wilcox is renowned for her quicksilver intelligence, swift to recognise the most subtle of distinctions, so that what might appear to be contradictory at first, is in point of fact, a logically ineluctable truth; a comma here, a word there. Sorted! As a mere consultant to town clerks, her forensic legal skills are truly wasted. What a shame that she never did fulfill her lawyerly calling - even though it would have been to Herefordshire's detriment.
 
Not wanted.
 
At one of its many acrimonious committee meetings, Ledbury town councillors resolved that it would not be appropriate to have Lynda Wilcox provide administrative and advisory support concerning an 'employment matter'. There was talk of a conflict of interests and a lack of impartiality; such calumnies; how unkind.
 
Worry not, she told her protégé, the fretting town clerk Mrs Karen Mitchell and her supplicant councillor friends.
 
In a procedural gavotte of outstanding grace, the lady simply recommended that the 'employment matter' be taken off said committee and given to the whole council to consider. The main thing then was to ensure that said committee would not be convened until the 'employment matter' was concluded with the banning and denunciation of the two bullying councillors concerned. The grateful smiles of Mayor Annette Crowe and her Deputy Keith Francis told their own story. 'Your council can do exactly what it wants,' she reassured them in her distinctive creamy voice. 'There's not a thing they can do.'
 
Distinguished Tory lady.
 
Don't be deceived by Lynda's quietly dulcet tones. Her professional hand of steel and head of ice has been behind the rise of her well-known husband, Cllr Brian Wilcox, Chairman of Herefordshire Council, bastion of the local Tory establishment and something very high up in the Freemasons, a grand wizard or some such. (Apologies if I have the title wrong; I am hazy on the ways of the Masons). As such La Wilcox, has become a qua personage hereabouts, consorting regally with the County Lieutenant Dowager Lady Darnley, the Bishop and other local luminaries. Kremlin-watchers say that it isn't so much the ceremonials that she relishes, but more the heady nip of political influence that fires her up.
 
No wonder that Mrs Wilcox has emerged as a thought-leader among the national network of county umbrellas like HALC, a true maven of clerks and clerking. As the National Association of Local Council's chair of the parish council forum, she is able to draw on best practice from all and sundry, as well as promote causes dear to her heart.
 
Minutes are a particular bugbear. Why do people continue to flesh out meeting reports with key points of discussion and contextual detail, when everyone knows that the baldest of accounts is perfectly adequate, indeed, preferable? Lynda has learned well the pitfalls of putting too much in writing. She is always careful to provide verbal advice to parish clerks on procedural and governance matters but never in writing. Any two-bit solicitor will tell you that! The less you commit to the record, the less argument can there be about accuracy. In this way, Mrs Wilcox and her clients, often remain gloriously unimpeachable.
 
Reality check.
 
Actually, Lynda's ideal minutes would say nothing at all, and sometimes they don't. Like those fleeting quantum particles which both exist and don't exist at the same time, Mrs Wilcox's meeting reports challenge conventional notions of ontological understanding.
 
When it comes to agreeing the accuracy of minutes in committee meetings, she has been firm in stressing that it is only what is written that can be subject to debate. Things that are left out, are not strictly inaccuracies and therefore shouldn't be open to challenge. This much, to impressive effect, Ledbury's Town Clerk has learnt from her alma mater.
 
At that awful meeting where she was cashiered, such minutes as were eventually produced by Mrs W omitted the inconvenient detail that she had been let go. This meant that fortunately for all concerned, most Ledbury town councillors had no idea that the unkind, hurtful and frankly damaging allegations about her lack of objectivity had ever been raised. Months of tiresome wrangling eventually revealed that there were in fact two sets of minutes for that meeting: an 'official' one in the public record, and a 'confidential' one, yet to be written, where all the missing information would be detailed.
 
Stone the crows, but when Lynda was finally compelled to write up the confidential version, they still didn't mention that she had been given her marching orders by the committee! Councillors pressed her on why she had not included the missing resolution concerning her discontinued employment by Ledbury Town Council and she said: because that's what I did. Next?
 
Sheer brilliance.
 
It isn't just Ledbury's minutes that defy the laws of physics. Lynda's riverine approach to the public record is as sinuous as a slippery trout coursing its watery way up and down the county. In the quiet Wyeside village of Hampton Bishop (where she is parish clerk: how does she make the time?) minutes of parish council meetings might or might not be produced or at least posted on the council's website: who can say? As of today, the last published minutes appear to be those for 24 November 2016, and the last draft minutes for the January 2017 meeting.
 
A local resident drew attention to the parish council's non-compliance with the Transparency Code recently introduced for first-tier councils. He said mischievously: 'One might suggest that the Clerk (Mrs W) should be sent on one of the Transparency courses being run by HALC, but that would clearly be worthless because they are being run by the Clerk's alter ego (Mrs W)'. Ho, ho.

Over in Whitbourne, Mrs Wilcox parachuted in at short notice to administer their important 'annual council meeting', which went well by all accounts. Afterwards, the local parish council patiently awaited the arrival of the minutes, and waited some more, before chasing their trusty stand-in. According to statute, draft minutes, after all should be produced within four weeks of a meeting. Oh dear no, she told them frostily: since they hadn't yet settled her invoice for running the meeting, she wouldn't be troubled to let them have the minutes until they did. Don't these people understand anything? You pay for work before it is completed, not afterwards. Mrs Wilcox kept her wintry cool, no money upfront, no minutes. Three years later, Whitbourne is still waiting.
 
Who's the mug?

Evidence of involvement in rancourous situations is rare in the usually serene Wilcox universe.  Some years ago, an elderly parish councillor got into hot water over the purchase of china mugs to be given to local school children to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Flouting strict financial procedures, the well-meaning gent paid £390 in advance to a local market trader so as to ensure they'd be ready in time for the big day. So outraged were Little Dewchurch parish council at this unlawful breach of financial procedures, that they called in HALC to investigate.
 
As reported by the Daily Mail, "Lynda Wilcox said: ‘When you’re dealing with public money you need to debate the issue at hand as a council before you agree to spend the money. On this occasion an individual spent money without prior agreement and then expected the council to pay him back. Procedures were not followed.’ She said allowing a retrospective payment to Mr Sainsbury would amount to the council condoning what had happened and would set a precedent for the future. She added: ‘The mugs are his to do with what he wants to do.’" Quite so.
 
This is a fine example of one of those thrilling reality flips in which quicksilver Lynda is so adept. A retrospective £390 for Jubilee mugs is clearly unlawful and so morally unacceptable that the gentleman responsible should resign. Yet in Ledbury under her tutelage just last year, a good few thousand quid was committed for legal advice to fortify Ledbury's drive on bullying; this was many months before the Council had been consulted on whether it wanted to spend so much.
 
The critical difference is in the philosophical underpinning of the two situations; it all comes down to questions of moral obligation, mutual loyalty and higher purpose. As any upright Freemason would attest, these aspects can easily supersede the mundane legalities when needed. So befitting of this doyen of Herefordshire conservatism, Lynda Wilcox is imbued with that fiery righteous spirit of the Knights Templar, our county's illustrious crusaders of yore.
 
What, still no gong?
 
Back to earth, on her website, HALC is described as 'the only specialist source of insurance backed information & advice for your Parish Council. Without HALC, obtaining robust insurance-backed advice for the benefit of your council can be difficult & costly... the only specialist source of insurance backed information & advice for your Parish Council.'
 
Once more with feeling, she continues: 'Without HALC obtaining robust insurance-backed advice for the benefit of your council can be difficult & costly.' Gracious, how could anyone resist this remarkable outfit, buttressed by so much insurance-backed advice? Notice the paucity of punctuation: a small legal tic. The ampersands too are all hers, a useful timesaver.
 
It seems that Ledbury Town Council could soon be drawing freely on HALC's insurance-backers. The council is about to embark on a long court adventure fighting Cllr Liz Harvey's wholly unwarranted Judicial Review into her 'alleged banning'. Central to the case will be Mrs Wilcox's insurance-backed advice.  
 
When the lady emerges triumphant from this imbroglio as all respectable people sincerely hope, surely it won't be long before she receives her invitation to the Palace? A little bauble perhaps, but it's so nice to be appreciated. ​