Erwin the Reporter

Erwin enjoyed a walk in the country. As a man of tidy habits, he bethought the English countryside amongst the finest in the world. There were no grand canyons nor impertinent mountain ranges which outstayed their welcome long after the second international time zone had elapsed: no featureless steppes nor treeless tundras, but rather all was in perfect proportion and elegance. The temperature was affable, the mosquitos had left for the Edinburgh Fringe, and a faint, salty breeze lay on the air. The green pastures beyond the stile rolled gently and without fanfare towards a pale blue sea.

He had come to this blessed plot having read an article about the plight of the common twite, which had found itself Red Listed by the RSPB and is now, not unreasonably, referred to simply as the twite. Erwin had a fondness for birds. They were the only species who could crap on someone’s strawberries and entirely get away with it. It is certainly true that Erwin had metaphorically crapped on a great many punnets himself, which might perhaps explain the affinity with his winged brethren. The thought that such an unobtrusive little finch should suddenly drop off the earth ahead of the vainglorious and more tragic peacock or Slovakian grebe offended his sense of fairness. With this in mind, he had come equipped with his best camera and binoculars in the hope that he might capture one before it met its avian Waterloo. 

To his left was an enclosed field of rape. To his right was a bevy of bovines who were jostling over what appeared to be a sign, and scratching themselves on barbed wire, which, despite what the purists might say, must be a Godsend for quadrupeds with an itch. Above this rural idyll there fluttered an incongruous red flag. 

Ahead of him, however, hoved a less bucolic view. A small hoard of people were chuffing up the gentle slope bearing banners which displayed such sentiments as: EAT THE RICH! BUGGER THE BARONS! - and FUCK THE FUCKING FUCKERS! - this last of which Erwin thought displayed an enterprising economy of time. Another man may have elected to reach the pub he’d spied through his binoculars by a different route, but Erwin had a natural, Forrest Gumpian tendency to find himself in the thick of things, and so he bravely sauntered on, keeping a keen eye out for the twite. 

*

A youth approached him. His working-class bonhomie was delivered with a Cambridge accent reminiscent of those types who are perpetually in their second year of climate studies.

‘Yo!’

‘Ho! Ho!’ said Erwin.

‘You the reporter from the Daily Protest?’ 

‘I suppose I could be,’ said Erwin. 

The young man, who had self-styled himself ‘Bonza,’ greeted him with a poet’s limp hand, which Erwin supposed he ought to shake. 

‘Nothing like a proper camera, is there!’ Bonzo said. ‘I guess you’ll be wanting one of me ..’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Erwin, casting around for the twite.  

‘And you’re ….’ (Bonza clicked his fingers), ‘Alexander Cassidy!’

‘If you say so,’ said Erwin. 

‘Ah! I get it,’ said Bonza. ‘Don’t like the long name, huh? Is it Alex or Al?’

Erwin couldn’t bring himself to be an Al, and so claimed the former appellation. 

‘I’d like to make a statement,’ said Bonza, ‘on behalf of, and as a representative of END THE ENCLOSURES.’

‘Not very catchy,’ Erwin interrupted. ‘Why not Fuck the Fences?’

A look passed across Bonza’s eyes which indicated some regret at the missed opportunity, but that his mother would disapprove. ‘Are you going to record this?’

‘Photographic memory,’ Erwin replied. This was turning out to be quite fun. 

‘Wow man! That must be awesome!’

‘Not really,’ Erwin shuddered. ‘But please, go ahead.’

Bonza adopted a student-y pose and recited:

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common,

But lets the greater villain loose,

Who steals the common from the goose.

The crowd applauded. ‘John Clare, I believe,’ said Bonza. ‘What a tortured poet!’

‘Oh! I shouldn’t think so,’ said Erwin. His poems were much worse that that. I can recite The Mores to you, if you’d like …. It’s enough to make you depressed.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Bonza. ‘May I continue?’

Erwin bowed. ‘Indeed,’ he said. 

‘Around here somewhere,’ Bonza began, ‘lives a baron with a two hundred room palace and thousands of acres of land —’ (Erwin cheerfully tuned out whilst fixing his eye on Bonza with an award-winning pretence of interest. He was thinking that geese actually were quite common, and no one should mind if someone enclosed a few, and he was also certain that the landowner in these parts was a marquis, not a baron. In the pursuit of good alliteration, the plaque held by the lumpen lady with the orange hair ought to read: ‘MURDER THE MARQUIS,’ rather than ‘BUGGER THE BARON,’ although the former would be unacceptable whilst the latter would depend on taste) — ‘And so we say to this privileged wanker, leave our land alone! The common people should be free to roam wherever they please without fear or favour. We intend to gain access to all areas today …. (some of the protestors didn’t seem too pleased by this development), and we won’t stop until the Enclosures Act of 1773 is repealed and all aristocrats and rich people in general are made to disappear up their own fetid arseholes!’

He finished with a growl of outraged approval from his acolytes and asked Erwin, in the form of Alex, whether ‘he’d got all that.’

‘Every word,’ Erwin said. ‘Although we might need to edit a few bits. For instance, I believe the mansion you speak of in such titanic terms has no more than twenty rooms which are currently used by various charitable organisations at peppercorn rates, and the resident himself lives in the Lodge House he shares with abandoned dogs —‘

‘Whose side are you on, Alex?’ asked Bonza. 

‘On the side of the righteous,’ said Erwin who, as a roving reporter for The Daily Protest, was generally considered to be on their side of it. 

‘Well, that’s that then,’ said Bonza. ‘We’ll look forward to seeing ourselves in print.’

‘Oh I’m sure you will,’ Erwin replied, although he was not sure how.  

‘Right,’ said Bonza. ‘We’re off to set up an afternoon’s squat on the Marquis’s lawn —‘

‘You might want to watch the dogs,’ said Erwin. 

‘Privileged dogs,’ corrected Bonza. ‘Any idea how to get there? We have the technology, of course’, (he waved his phone), ‘but local knowledge might give us a short cut?’

‘I’m obliged,’ said Erwin. I suggest you walk through the woods.’ He waved in the direction of cows a’cudding on the plywood sign, and the red flag, which, he assumed, must have been catnip to the protesters. 

*

Erwin spent a pleasant hour meandering through the meadows, which led him maternally towards the sea and the Crooked Oak, whose shingled roof glowed in in the sunlight. He did not see the endangered twite but he wished it well. 

*

‘Erwin! shouted the Marquis of Gainsborough. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘I was detained,’ said his friend. 'Mistaken identity.'

The forecourt of the public house was awash with cheery-faced people who looked like Ramblers. They all seemed to be getting along swimmingly with the Marquis, a man who would rather shoot his favourite dog than deny them access to his land.  

‘Do you know what I love about this country?’ said Erwin. 

‘Let me count the ways,’ said the Marquis. 

‘You are rarely more than 3.4 miles from a pub.’

A rambler piped up: ‘Not if you live in Rockall! That would be 243 miles.’ There is always at least one in the Ramblers. 

‘No-one lives in Rockall,’ said Erwin. ‘It’s a rock, and that’s all.’ 

In a quiet moment, nursing a honey-dewed beer, Erwin asked the Marquis why the Ramblers weren’t rambling, as was their wont. 

‘Some of my property is closed today. I’m quite sure I told you that.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ said Erwin. 

‘Yes. Every third Tuesday I rent my land out to the Ministry of Defence. Not all of it, but the wooded part. There are signs put up, barbed wire, red flags. Anyone who’s anyone knows about it.’ He looked approvingly towards the Ramblers. 

‘What’s on the menu today?’ asked Erwin.

‘Same as always,’ said the Marquis. ‘On account of the twite, we can’t do landmines or explosives of any sort. We don’t want to frighten the poor buggers.’

‘I see,’ said Erwin. ‘I suppose that just leaves ambush training.’ 

Which of course he knew all along.