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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

This land is our land

“Mary Berry’s family is flogging my mum’s old home for ÂŁ800,000 – but they can’t sell our memories”

Outrageous! Relatives of a famous person are crassly selling the house where Rebecca Hardy’s grandparents once lived! In the 1950s. OK, Ms Hardy herself never lived in this house, or even entered it. But she has often looked at it. Although her grandparents did not formally own the house as such, as it came with her grandfather’s job as a minister of the local chapel, I think that qualifies as a sort of spiritual ownership, don’t you?

To be fair Rebecca Hardy almost certainly did not write that subhead herself. On the other hand the unknown subeditor has caught rather well the spirit of a woman awakening to political consciousness that hers are a people dispossessed:

When I was 18, I spent one summer working as a chambermaid in the nearby Gara Rock hotel, and I can remember how even back in the late 80s people complained about what was happening in Salcombe. I remember the hotel occupants too, in their boating shoes and Breton tops, and how I served them cream teas and eavesdropped on their conversations as they muttered about the costs of mooring their yachts. “Well, we’ve bloody well worked for it,” one particularly well-dressed lady said. As if no one else had.

For all her hands calloused from teenage waitressing and more recently being “a freelance journalist and author who writes mostly about food, health and wellbeing”, Ms Hardy’s tone reminds me irresistibly of an exiled Russian aristocrat circa 1980 wistfully unfolding the yellowed title deeds of the family estates confiscated by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Except that the Berry relatives did not actually storm the front doors as the elder Hardys fled down a secret tunnel. It was more that they bought the house from someone else who bought it from someone else who bought it from the chapel. Anyway, what with them being related to a person on TV, the bastards, and house prices having gone up something shocking there was definitely some oppression going on there somewhere.

14 comments to This land is our land

  • Paul Marks

    All a bit odd.

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray

    Once again, this Paul Marks impersonator puts in an appearance! Give it up! You’re not fooling anyone.
    Why can’t you sell memories? Is there an actual law against it?

  • Mr Ed

    I would expect that ‘Featured in the Guardian‘ might knock 5% off the price, as you might get demented squatters breaking in (funny how finally criminalising residential squatting in England and Wales has all but killed it off, a step Mrs Thatcher never took) or Guardian readers who on their public sector pay can afford houses in that area as curious visitors.

    I think this article encapsulates the socialist mentality of ‘I should be in charge and enjoy all the best things, because I am better than you.‘.

  • Mr Ed

    Nicholas, there are times when Mr Marks can find no link between a nice house in Salcombe, Devon in the 21st Century and Charles the Bald, but this thread is still young.

    As for selling memories, they would have to be sold not as land but as ‘incorporeal hereditaments’ which normally relates to easements, Lordship of the Manor etc. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/incorporeal+hereditaments

    But again, a Guardian writer’s memories would be a horrific encumbrance on the property, it’s a home for holidays, not Hell.

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray

    Mred, your memories would be worth more, surely? I was just wondering if this was another European directive to preserve the dignity of the individual, like those laws forbidding you to sell your organs.
    And if a guardian writer wants to sell encumbered properties to another Guardian writer and/or reader, why should libertarians stand in the way? Indeed, the more, the merrier! If we can create a Guardian Ghetto, things are better for the rest of us!

  • Heh! They just had to get the actual price of the house in that headline, didn’t they? 🙂

  • The comments on that article have increased my opinion of Guardian readers.

  • staghounds

    “…what followed were long, hot summers straight out of an Enid Blyton book…”

    So your grandmother was a racist, sexist exploiter of privilege? Why would you want to revive that experience, unless you were a racist, sexist exploiter yourself?

    Huh? Answer me that, Ms. Hardy!

  • Eric

    In a generation the family that sold the house will be able to reprint the article just by changing a name or two.

  • R. Dawes

    The Marxist doctrine of alienation appeals to such persons who are in so a parlous psychological state of fear of reality as to cling to unchanging concrete things with emotional ties attached to them with a ferocity that goes far beyond the normal bounds of the regular levels of sentimentality proper to the mentally healthy. Marxism appears to those who act like lost-soul children with severe abandonment issues.

  • R. Dawes

    *appeals to those…

  • llamas

    I learned to sail a dinghy on a week’s course in Salcombe, quite some time ago now ;-). Back then – which must be about the time that this soi-disant social-justice worrier is speaking of – Salcombe was a sleepy backwater, miles from anywhere. It was a great place for a kid to holiday, in an Enid Blyton/Swallows and Amazons sort of way, but it was pretty – basic.

    Cracked two ribs sailing a 24-footer from Salcombe to Weymouth – but that’s another story.

    Now it has become attractive and popular to a large group of people, which means that property prices have risen. What is her complaint, exactly? That somebody is realizing in money the gains in attractiveness that the place has reaped? What does she want to do – turn it into some sort of Salcombe Butlins, where everyone can enjoy the lovely place that it is, but at group rates? Will Salcombe be improved and made more attractive if the city fathers are compelled to build ‘affordable’ housing, and preferably along the most-pleasant scenic views?

    This is what all ‘social justice’ activism eventually boils down to – envy and spite at those who have something nice, together with a best-effort to try and devalue it and (if possible) wrestle it away from them. And better that it be spoiled for everyone, than that a select few continue to ‘unjustly’ enjoy it.

    llater,

    llamas

  • Laird

    “social-justice worrier”

    If that was a typo it was a felicitous one.

  • llamas

    Laird – no, I was very proud of that one. Why am I not surprised that you were the first to catch it?

    llater,

    llamas