Angela Everitt - Community Spirit

Scottish Writers' Podcast

Runner-Up in Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association Flash Fiction Competition 2006. Read by Jo Leavesey.
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Community Spirit
They’d hired the community mini-bus and left the village square just as dusk was falling. The trip had been well organised by the Community Association. Mrs Dugdale was the responsible adult: she’d been through police clearance as the Brown Owl. Young people had an important role to play.
So eight villagers, from thirteen to seventy-three, packed together with black bin liners of rubbish from the cafes, with secateurs from the Horticultural Society, with boxes of chewing gum from the village store, set off to visit three villages that night. They travelled silently and parked just before the first village sign, tubs beneath it all freshly planted. They parted company. The younger members chewed their way round the village centre, spitting out gum and stamping it into its weed-free pavements. The older ones littered the village green, by the dedicated benches and amongst the bushes. The gardeners ‘live-headed’ the strategically placed tubs and the baskets hanging outside the village pub, the cottages and shops.
Jobs done, they turned for home, exhausted, but fired with community spirit, singing together, confident in the knowledge that Little Ousebottom now most certainly would be the best small village in Britain in Bloom.
© Angela Everitt 2006