(Continued)
The volume begins with an impressive, printed preamble setting out the official "Procedure as to Parish Meetings". This is long, complex and generally tedious, like most Local Government documents, but it does include the interesting regulation ­ presumably still in force ­ that the meetings may at the Council's discretion take place in the School, the Vestry or the Public Baths, but on no account in any licensed premises. The first meeting actually took place in the Schoolroom on 4 December 1894, and true to the spirit of the official preamble concerned itself wholly with procedural matters, as apparently did all the meetings for the next two years up to the end of 1896. These early Councillors ­ six men and one woman ­ seemed to spend their whole time proposing, seconding and agreeing the elections of each other to various official positions on the Council; they solemnly recorded all these appointments in lengthy minutes, which were then lovingly read out at the next meeting, but for a long while there's no evidence that they actually did anything. What you might call the first real business recorded was at the meeting of 22 October 1896, when a Mr Henry Wright made the historic and courageous suggestion that the Parish Council place a drain to carry off water which 'shot from a house on to the road' at Little Thurlow Green. Alas, this was an idea whose time had not quite come and the Councillors, possibly alarmed at having to confront such a practical question, concluded after discussion 'that this did not come within the jurisdiction of the Parish Council'.

However, having put their toes in the water, so to speak, they were emboldened at their next few meetings to tackle such vexed and familiar topics as footpaths, stiles, gates, bridges and parking on the greens (in this case gypsy caravans, in April 1901). Despite this promising burst of activity the business then seemed to peter out again, to such a point that in March 1904 the Council actually voted to abolish itself 'in consequence of the slight amount of work to be done'. But they obviously missed the experience of high office, because in June of that year the same team went and voted themselves back into existence again.

The next few years pass by rather uneventfully again, with the minutes interminably recording the regular elections, the lists of those attending and the reading of earlier sets of minutes, which themselves interminably record . . . and so on.

Just occasionally there are vivid glimpses of life outside these bureaucratic deserts. In November 1910 there was a plague of rats, and the Council considered offering a bounty of 1d a head (of rats, that is), but characteristically then lost their nerve and decided they had better 'leave it in the hands of the Chairman'. His response isn't known, but it is recorded that by 24 February 1911 328 rats had been killed 'at a cost of £1-3-0' (the arithmetic doesn't seem to work, if I remember rightly how to do the sums in the old money, but never mind). On a brighter note, there's a mention in April 1911 of the celebrations for the Coronation of George V (though it's rather an anticlimax because they can't think what to do to celebrate it).