The Oakhaven Gazette

THERE is eighty-eight thousand six hundred pounds sitting under Radworth, and you are standing on it.

Thirty pieces of gold, silver and bronze have been brought up from a cave system beneath the estate and put a value to. Ten different kinds of object, from a sword pommel to a helmet, and not one of them worth less than a hundred and eighty pounds.

The helmet alone is eight thousand. The pot of coins is seven and a half.

And here is the cruelty of it: the deeper you go, the better it gets. The cheap stuff — a £180 pommel, a £220 brooch — sits near the foot of the ladder where anybody could reach it. The helmet and the coin pot are forty-two to forty-five metres down.

The way in is a well-head on the waste ground, its lid sunk and swung open, with a rope ladder dropping through it into twelve stretches of passage lit by twenty-four wall torches.

Do not go down there for a look.

The shelf at the foot of the ladder runs out thirty centimetres from the bottom rung, and past that it is fourteen metres straight down. There is a second ladder at the drop now, which is the only reason we are printing the story rather than an obituary.

“There has been a hole in that waste ground my whole life and nobody has ever once looked in it,” said Shirley of Radworth Road. “Now I hear there is eighty-eight grand down there and I still cannot get anybody to empty my bin.”

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ALSO INSIDE

Open and shut case

Every amenity in Radworth turns out to have been sealed shut by its own front door. Twenty-nine of them. Page 3.

Snow business

There is snow on the tops, and you can see it from the estate. Page 3.

Off the rails

Two platforms, a staircase and a train that fits them. Still no timetable. Page 3.

RETAIL · PLOT R1

Plaice your order

THE CHIPPY IS OFF THE LATCH. Chish & Fips has its counter in, its board up and its door open — ten till ten, seven days.

Ten lines on the board: fish, chips, sausage, battered sausage, pie, a meal deal, a cold drink, and three to go on top — curry sauce, mushy peas or beans.

Nobody has been served yet.

Not one parcel has gone over that counter since the door was unlocked, and the queue on a Friday teatime currently stands at nought.

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CORNER SHOP · UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

Stock horror

FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT different products have gone onto the shelves at Boss Man's Corner Shop this week. Every deck between forty and a hundred per cent full. New lighting, a radio on the gantry, chillers lit.

There is a man behind the counter. He is dressed, he blinks, and he smiles at you.

He cannot sell you anything.

The till has not been installed and the shopkeeper is not yet taking money. So Radworth now has the best-stocked shop it has ever had and no way to buy a pint of milk out of it.

There are also thirty-eight pieces of litter outside the door, which at least makes it look like a going concern.

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PUBLIC HOUSE · FOUNDRY END

Pint of order

EDWARD GOT SERVED. After weeks of standing at the bar of the Slag & Slurry being looked straight through, the regular was finally handed a drink this week — and then a second one.

“Two full pints,” he said. “Consecutively.” Charlotte behind the bar declined to say what had changed.

Everyone else is still stood there.

Nobody else has managed to join the queue at all, which rather takes the shine off it. The cleaning job is still going: twenty pound an hour, bogs and glasses, cash at the bar, and eight cameras that Charlotte does check.

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PLOT P4 · THE TEMPLE

Eye of the storm

THE BRONZE DOORS OPEN BY THEMSELVES. That is the first thing anybody says about the new building on plot P4, and it is true — walk within five metres of the Order of the Unsleeping Eye and both leaves swing inward at you. Two and a bit seconds, no hands.

Oakhaven Chapter, number 357, founded 1923. Egyptian revival, portico, outer court, hall, library, refectory and a crypt. Over the door it says OCULUS NON DORMIT, which we are told means the eye does not sleep.

“It watches you come up the path,” said Holly of Marlpit Boulevard. “I do not care what it says in Latin.”

Nobody from the Order was available for comment, on the grounds that nobody from the Order has ever been available for comment.

AMENITIES · THE SCANDAL OF THE DOORS

Open and shut case

EVERY SINGLE AMENITY BUILDING IN RADWORTH WAS SEALED SHUT BY ITS OWN FRONT DOOR, and nobody had checked.

The bank. The chemist. The post office. The health centre. The hospital. The station. All twenty-nine of them, solid across the doorway. Of the lot, only six had ever had their doorway measured at all. The other twenty-three had never been looked at.

Forty-eight doors have now been hung, and thirty-one doorways out of thirty-two are clear.

That includes the golf clubhouse, the working men's club, The Baulk Line, Radworth ABC, the leisure centre and the Islamic centre — the five Mitchell of Bleachfield Close has been writing to us about since July.

A doorway being clear is not the same as a building being open. No notice in any window, no hours on any door, nobody behind any counter.

“So I can now walk into an empty leisure centre,” Mitchell said. “Progress, apparently.”

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RAILWAY · RADWORTH CENTRAL

Off the rails

THERE IS TRACK. There are platforms. There is a train that fits them. There is still no timetable and there has never been a passenger.

The line from Radworth Central to Bewsall runs one thousand three hundred and eighty-four metres, and both stations have been sat down onto it properly at last — the step up into the carriage is under twenty centimetres.

Radworth's platform had to be cut from 120 metres to 80.

The reason is the curve. A straight platform against a bending railway drifts further out the longer it gets: at 80 metres the train sat right, at 120 it was fouling the edge.

You can at least get up there on foot now: a switchback staircase of fifty-two steps climbing nine and a third metres off the street, a booking hall, four more steps onto the platform. The whole route has been walked.

“Platforms, stairs, a station clock and a train stood at it,” said Keith of Sawmill Yard. “Now sell me a ticket.”

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WEATHER · THE TOPS

Snow business

THERE IS SNOW ON THE HIGH GROUND and on a clear day you can see it from the estate.

The white line sits at about a hundred metres and it is properly falling up there — flakes, not rain — from roughly two hundred and fifty metres up. Below the line it comes down as wet as ever. The fog thickens with the cloud now too.

And there is talk of a ski run.

A site has been picked out and surveyed for a slope with a jump on it. Two earlier schemes were already thrown out after proper surveys. Nothing has been dug. Do not turn up with a sledge.

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HIGHWAYS · THE PAVEMENTS

Bottle job

ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY BOTTLES were stood bolt upright along the pavements of this estate, like a parade.

They have now been knocked over, which is how litter is supposed to look.

The rocks round the well-head had the opposite problem — balanced on their edges like dominoes stopped mid-fall. Laid flat as well.

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TRANSPORT · ROUTE 4

Bus pass

SOMEBODY LISTENED. After this paper timed the 4 at twenty-two minutes for a lap the board says takes fourteen, the whole route has been re-surveyed — a hundred and sixty-one waypoints re-set to the road surface.

It is now within five and a half centimetres of the tarmac, and it will no longer sit behind a pedestrian for a quarter of a minute nor at a signal for over half a one.

There is still not one shelter on route 4.

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REFUSE · THE CONTRACT

Still bin nothing

A FORTNIGHT ON, Radworth Waste Solutions has a seven-day rota, seven rounds, a lorry, a rate of pay of forty-eight pounds a round plus fifty pence a bin over fifty-five — and has not emptied one.

“I have moved it back in,” said Shirley of Radworth Road. “It was getting embarrassing.”

IN BRIEF

Leaves on the line

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TREES have gone in around Radworth Central — fifty-five birch, twenty-five hornbeam, twenty beech, eleven oak, six poplar and three pine. That takes the estate's planting past five hundred.

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WHEELWRIGHT CLOSE

Boot up

A weekday car boot sale is coming to the field at Wheelwright Close — sellers in from noon, away by six, parked boot-first behind trestle tables. Word is the pitches will run to torches, batteries and rope ladders, which tells you what people here have started buying. No date set, nobody pitched up yet.

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THE EDITOR WRITES

The doors, at last

Two of your longest-running complaints moved this week. Mitchell's five locked buildings can now be walked into, along with twenty-four more nobody had even noticed were sealed. Keith's stations have got track, platforms and stairs.

Neither is finished. You can enter a leisure centre with nobody in it, and you can climb to a platform no train will call at. We print that plainly because the alternative is telling you it is done.

Shirley's bin has still not been emptied.

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You can keep the gold

Eighty-eight thousand pounds under the waste ground, and the paper's advice is to stay out of the hole. Fourteen metres at the bottom of a rope ladder. I have seen what this estate does with a wet kerb.

Fence it or fill it in.

TRACEY, Limekiln Close

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A cat is not a cat

There are eight cats on this estate. I have counted them on my rounds for a year and there have always been eight.

Somebody has been telling this paper there are seventeen. There are eight. The other nine were being counted twice from somewhere they no longer live.

They do all look different this week, mind. Three ginger, three of the black and white ones, two brown tabbies.

GORDON, Kimberton Road

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Wet through and glad of it

I have complained about a lot in this paper. Not this. It rained on Thursday and everyone out in it got visibly soaked — coats darkening, hair flat — and everyone put a yard on their walk to get out of it.

They tramp it into the house afterwards and you can see where they have been until it dries. That is a town, that is.

ROWAN, Lacemakers Court

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Still no children

Third time of asking. A primary school with a path and six steps and no child on this estate to climb them. Five hundred houses, every soul in them a grown adult.

We have now got a golf course, a cave full of treasure, a railway station and a temple with automatic doors. No kids.

TRACEY, Limekiln Close

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The tags are still up

Fourth week. Both ginnels, the gables the far side of the estate, the shutters. Nobody has painted over a single one.

I have stopped withdrawing my letter. I am just going to leave it here permanently.

HOLLY, Marlpit Boulevard