Our village bonfire night has taken a sinister turn

The children walked with flaming torches ahead of the float bearing the bonfire queen which was headed for the towering monstrosity of pallets and tree branches on the village green.

The builder boyfriend and I stood at the front of the crowds lining the road as the procession came through in the darkness and it struck me, as it always does, how disturbing bonfire night really is, especially when it’s done with this much enthusiasm and attention to detail.

A tractor was pulling a livestock trailer upon which were sitting on chairs two figures wearing fancy dress, adorned in heavy make-up, looking like nothing so much as the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter, and all to the tune of a marching band.

As the procession came through, men shaking buckets shouted boisterously at us to donate money because all of this had to be paid for.

The atmosphere was not what you would term uplifting. Pagan, Neanderthal, macabre, I would call it. And as much as I like a good baked potato with a sparkler and a firework display, I always feel particularly weird on bonfire night, I can’t help it.

‘I think I had better get out of the way before they throw me on the bonfire,’ I joked. I’m not the only Catholic in the village, of course, but the only other ones I know are the local travellers, and they are definitely not flavour of the month round here.

I’m not flavour of the month either. Never have been, never will be. And my latest foot- in-mouth moment is to do with my persistent complaints about why the parish council is not repairing the track to my house.

It has become progressively more potholed since we moved in five years ago, and when this summer a lad attempted to patch it together with some scalpings that bounced straight back out of the holes once people drove down it, I asked the parish clerk where the public money had gone that they were supposed to be spending on essential maintenance.

Our council tax went up, and the letter made it clear that it was because of an increase asked for by our parish rulers.

We look around for evidence of where they’re spending it, and we look down this track across the village green which, admittedly, only leads to eight houses, but which is used by countless dog walkers daily because the parish council effectively opened it up to public use.

A ‘Residents Only’ sign was taken down from the track one day, after a neighbour of mine got out of her box in a moment of madness and told one of the parish elders not to park outside her house. Stupid thing to do, but she did it. A parish councillor came in his truck the next day and ripped the sign down.

With the excess traffic from the dog walkers that puts on the track, it is falling to bits.

The holes get deeper and the track floods so badly after rain that a few weeks ago I took my house off the market and told the BB we might as well forget moving to a farm until next spring, at least.

But when I wrote and asked about the lack of maintenance, I received the most extraordinary reply from the chair of the parish council, a double-barrelled lady.

She began by telling me that the ‘Residents Only’ sign came down because I had complained about excess signage. Well, I had pointed out they had no right to erect ‘No Horse’ signs. So that really is very cheeky of her, isn’t it? But that was only her opening salvo.

She went on to say that if I didn’t like the track, then I should stop using it, park elsewhere and walk home. Or maybe the parish council might just confiscate my right to use the track to park outside my house altogether. So there. And to show me just what deep doo-doo I was in, for daring to complain, she said she was going to write to Surrey county council to verify the exact status of this supposed right of way I claimed I had.

I read down the page to her swirly, overblown signature, then I put my hand into the drawer of my desk and took out a folder containing my copy of an entry at HM Land Registry: statutory declaration of a right of way, going back to the 1970s, lodged with and stamped by Surrey County Council highways.

‘To save you the trouble of looking it up,’ I said to madam chairwoman, emailing her the scanned documents.

When I saw the parish elders following the children carrying torches, therefore, I said to the builder boyfriend: ‘Seriously, let’s get out of here.’