Writing about the Arundel Bypass

Many people are passionately opposed to the destruction of the countryside of Binsted and Walberton, Arundel and Tortington.

Their love and concern for this landscape is finding expression in creative writing.

Den

Is that my shadow, or the tree’s?

 Long, leaning over, craning to see the rara skirt fungi we are careful not to touch,

 As we make our den, pretending to be estate agents, which is funny because you are only three,

 Good-sized bedroom, bracken roof, story of king Alfred’s cakes told as we test out the soil with our knees,

 A better offer of a road, our careful sticks and ancient neighbours crushed,

 Gazumped by a bulldozer.

Matilda Tristram, June 2018

Totem Pole at Binsted

The tree that was

Is always there

It stands its ground

with Corvid stare

 

With limbs outspread

Like angels wings

It brings to mind

Once sacred things

 

Like land and sea

And earth and sky

And great directions

Of the eye

 

I hope the tree

That never dies

Will never see

Its friends' demise

 

The oaken beings

That stand around

Spread the message

Through the ground

 

Come stand with us

Come stand up strong

Let’s save the place

Where we belong

 

The sacred truth

Of all we know

Is how we reap

Just what we sow

 

In ancient times

The people knew

To stand with us

In all we do

 

It is time again

For us to grow

So raise your prayers

With sacred crow

Paul Ayling, June 2018

The Paper Dart

Binsted Woods are in the shape of a crab.

The crab and the village play an ancient ring game

Round the three fields which went on rotating.

 

The sloping long-shaped parish contained all you need,

Sandy gravel, clay, woods, fields, meadows, pasture and streams.

A half-ring of water and marsh kept it an island.

 

The outlying farms never formed a street

With a complacent cricket-field.   But a wide track

Led crowds of complainants to the Anglo-Saxon Moot Mound.

 

Species counts rise higher and higher.   Bats smudge

Your torchlight edge as you help breeding toads off the lane.

Leaf litter heaves round the Madonna Pond.

 

Inside the woods there’s a secret garden.

Here Laurie and Lorna were intent as insects while bombs fell.

Here Michael took his harm to the abandoned shooting lodge.

 

The Purple Emperor quest yields the rarer White Admiral.

A pointless winter meander revealed the blasted tree

Its downed branches round it like the hands of a clock.

 

This sheltering tent of possibility and history

Is in danger of becoming nothing but a tube sign,

Its circle shattered by a dual carriageway.

 

We can trade numbers with the Department of Transport.

Five to eight thousand toads, does it make a difference?

We can input to consultations about the National Planning Policy Framework.

 

But there’s a black hole in their millions of documents

Gushing crude lies and plastic misinformation.

A village drowned by a road causes more roads.

 

It’s all for nothing, helping the great vanishing.

All I can do is polish my micro-bead

Of protest and fix it to my paper dart.

Emma Tristram, June 2018

Matilda Tristram grew up in Binsted, studied animation at the Royal College of Art, and works as a children’s writer, lecturer, illustrator and animator.

Some of her work can be seen on www.mmaattiillddaa.com .  

She has been published by Penguin and other imprints but her latest book is "Binsted - the Heart of our Horizon", on sale at the Binsted Strawberry Fair or email Emma Tristram.

This comic strip vividly illustrates her sense of the place of Binsted and the threat of loss through a possible Arundel Bypass route.