Last weekend we met up with a couple of old friends we've managed to stay in touch with since our university days. Socially-distanced, of course. They had escaped from London to spend a couple of nights in a hotel in Lyndhurst, just over the other side of the estuary from Southampton, and self-styled "capital of the New Forest". Which, although technically accurate, is quite a boast for a town with just one main street. I'd call it a one-horse town, except that it's one of the few places where traffic can be halted by equine jaywalkers: the ubiquitous New Forest ponies have no road-sense at all when in town.
It's been some time since we spent any time in the Forest, but for a decade or so it used to be a regular venue for walks and outings when the kids were small, not least because it housed various animal-oriented attractions that seemed to change their name and emphasis every few years but remained essentially the same: World of Badgers seeming pretty much identical to Otters 'R' Us, which had strongly resembled Just Deer, the uncannily similar successor establishment to Nature Farm [1]. I don't suppose the assorted animals in their pens and paddocks ever noticed or cared that there had been a change of management or which of them was receiving star billing this year.
Although there is no shortage of trees, a lot of the "forest" is actually heathland patrolled by free-range ponies and sullen cattle, although it is nowhere near as desolate as the Radnor Forest in mid-Wales, which is effectively a treeless tract of bleak upland. The word "forest" can be misleading: it often designates a royal hunting-ground, set aside (in the sense of "cleared of indigenous peasants") in the days when the preferred leisure activity of the aristocratic class was chasing deer and wild boar around the landscape on horseback. In these lazier times, of course, they prefer to have witless game-birds driven towards them, to be shot out of the air like some upscale fairground entertainment.
However, although a lot of Robin Hood era stuff does still cling to the place – inherited rights like "pannage", i.e. the right to let your gigantic pigs roam free in the woods and terrorise picnic sites, are still enjoyed by true-born Foresters, and policed by "verderers" and "agisters" – for most non-residents it's an open-plan leisure resource. To be honest, never mind the word "forest", I begin to suspect that too many of my fellow citizens have misunderstood the meaning of the word "park" in "national park". Like a lot of quaint corners of England, the infrastructure of the New Forest simply cannot cope with the seasonal onslaught of leisured pleasure-seekers, which has clearly increased dramatically since we last visited the area. I was amazed at the volume of traffic on a late September Sunday afternoon passing through Lyndhurst's narrow one-way system, a solid line stretching back along the single-carriage A35 most of the way to Southampton. To the best of my knowledge, there are just two small carparks in Lyndhurst. And nowhere near enough litter-bins or public toilets, evidently.
I suppose it shouldn't be such a surprise. The Forest is not exactly an up-market holiday destination: people have always been coming to the area for a cheap holiday, camping and caravanning, and in this plague year cheap trips abroad to the sun are out of the question. So, come September, and a wave of pensioners starts heading out in camper-vans or with caravans in tow for a cut-price, child-free break. Which must be trying for the permanent residents, some of whom are very up-market indeed: Lyndhurst may be small, but it's the only town I know which has sustained a Maserati dealership for several decades. Although why anyone would want a Maserati deep in the woods is mystifying, not least because a strict 40 m.p.h. speed limit is in force in an attempt to lessen the number of fatal nocturnal pony-collisions. As I say, no road-sense at all.
Talking of holidays, cars, and up- and down-market entertainment, our London friends reminded us of a holiday long ago, in 1981, when the four of us drove in an overstuffed Ford Fiesta through France to the north of Spain, in that strange post-Franco, pre-EEC interlude, when much of rural Spain seemed preserved in a pre-industrial peasant economy where bullock-carts were a more frequent sight than tractors. We had a great time, playing cards at night in Basque-country and coastal bars, and were often the only tourists in town, because of a widespread fear of ETA's Basque separatist terror campaign. Spirits were high everywhere, though, and many towns were in a summer fiesta mood: indeed, nearly everywhere it seemed the same celebratory folk-dance was being performed to the same, perky, faintly Germanic folk-tune, played by small bands or through PA systems strung up around the village square. It may have been corny but, as with the bullock-carts and hand-flailed threshing floors, you felt these people were still in touch with a deeper, unselfconscious sense of continuity and community, something that we had lost along the way in Britain. I don't recall now, but I'm sure we shared many profound reflections on the gains and losses of modernity over the Rioja.
It was only when we got back home that we discovered that this very same perky, faintly Germanic folk-tune and its accompanying dance had in fact been the euro-pop sensation of summer '81: El Baile de los Pajaritos, De Vogeltjesdans, Der Vogeltanz, La Danse des Canards, or in plain English "The Birdie Song", with its accompanying Chicken Dance. Ah... Right... Hilarious, horrific, or humbling, according to taste. The bloody thing was even on Top of the Pops. So, not so much tradition, continuity, and community, as an early taste of the McDonaldization of cultures already unstoppably underway. Come on everybody, all together now, one-two-three...
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