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Jim Greenslade
As a long-standing councillor for Woolston-with-Martinscroft, near Warrington, I have always taken a deep interest in my area since my wife, Mary, and I moved here in 1984. We have fought against bureaucracy, fly-tipping and indiscriminate planning applications in an attempt at keeping the village "A nice place to live".
I only heard mention of the poetry site when listening to Radio Merseyside on my way into work and this storyline came to me instantly. The Manchester Road (A57) runs through Martinscroft on its way to Warrington and was lined with daffodils. However, during the debacle of laying cable access to every home, they were destroyed alongside Martinscroft Village Green. So disappeared the bus shelter and we couldn't prove that it existed until a good year or so later.
In short, we were up against bureaucracy and commercial indifference until someone turned up at the Annual Parish Meeting. The poem tells the tale.
Daffodils IIA hundred thousand daffodils grew gracefully in the grass
of Martinscroft with Woolston. They wavered as you passed.
For many years, they’d been there and formed a yellow gown.
Enjoyed by passing motorists, by residents revered,
until one day, in early May, they simply disappeared
from off the verges by the road that stretched right into town
A contractor began to work along the friendly verge
with power tools and diggers; the holes began to merge
Cables, pipes and other stuff the men began to lay
For goodness knows what services the ‘powers that be’ demand.
They massacred the roadside, moving out of hand
The grass, the soil, the daffodils and whatever in the way
For weeks and weeks they stayed there and left a horrid mess
of mud and weedy hummocks. The place was in distress.
Unnoticed by the villagers, nothing was afoot,
But things got back to normal and winter hid the sun;
along with grass and daffodils, something else had gone,
a favourite with the local youth, the wooden bus stop hut.
Although this fact was mentioned by councillors and all,
No photographic evidence, nor positive recall,
Could prove the hut’s existence and take the firm to task.
“Did they pull the shelter down as they lay their pipes or find
that it was never really there, a product of the mind?”
The council had to ask,
‘Twas at a monthly meeting that the subject was discussed.
The members had to make a move before the people fussed.
Convinced there really was a hut, the others must believe.
Yet delegates and lawyers could not get the firm to sway
From the stance that their bulldozers had not swept the hut away,
but the local population still had something up their sleeve,
At a springtime open forum, a resident caused a laugh
as he showed the council members a recent photograph.
He’d been searching through his records and had called in to complain
About the lack of daffodils, “Had they all been cut?”
The flowers weren’t the gist of it; the photo showed the hut!
It was the end of their campaign.
The Council phoned the lawyers and the lawyers rang the firm.
They checked insurance issues and made the beggars squirm.
For long enough these people had put up with their pain.
A brand new bus stop stands there now; a shelter built with seats
For people heading into town and where the youngsters meet.
We wait now for the daffodils and beauty’s back again!
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