Out and about

LAST week I got out and about right across my vast 700 sq mile constituency.

Along with my usual surgeries — this time in Okehampton, Bovey, Hennock and Northlew I dropped into the Northlew village store to see one of my more inspired constituents , Chris Marson.

Chris is a real community champion and often throws himself into local projects to support his village. He has done a great deal to improve Northlew's internet through helping to build its own broadband network — it now has 200 subscribers.

His latest project is aimed at commemorating the centenary of the start of the First World War — a particularly poignant moment for Northlew as in that dreadful conflict the village was to sacrifice proportionally more of its young men than any other place in the land.

Chris proposes to plant a seven-mile avenue of poppies between Northlew and Okehampton and within the village a Canadian Maple, whose leaves turn blood red around the time of remembrance.

He plans also to help organise a day of remembrance with church services, trench poetry readings and the projection of images on the walls of local buildings.

I am always struck by the number of names engraved on the memorials in our small towns and villages — names that are typically those of established local families. Sadly, of course the Great War, was not, in the end, to be 'the war to end all wars' — its tragic destiny was to fall way short of that noble promise. It was instead to be remembered as the conflict that truly wasted a generation. Next year in Northlew I hope to join Chris and the local community for a moment of quiet reflection and the simple resolve that we should never forget.