2: Saint Maurice of Milltown

Civic pride is one of those virtues - like politeness and sportsmanship - that we seem to have abandoned as quaintly old-fashioned. But Maurice has an old-fashioned view of things, and he doesn’t mind who knows it. With his collarless shirts, waistcoats and corduroy trousers, he even looks like he belongs to another age. Some find his behaviour a little baffling but, if pressed on the matter, will offer grudging admiration. To those of us who know him rather better, he’s a saint. Saint Maurice of Milltown.

Maurice is a fixer, a handyman, a jack-of-all-trades... and master of quite a few. His neat little house confirms the wisdom of doing those vital maintenance jobs a few weeks before they really need to be done. He doesn’t lie awake at night, like so many of Milltown’s more feckless residents, wondering whether his house will still be standing in the morning. He sleeps the untroubled sleep of a man who is up to speed with his maintenance programme. When a job needs doing, Maurice doesn’t talk about it... he just does it.

His pragmatic views aren’t shared by everyone in Milltown. The Holistic Plumbers, for example, have drawn up a programme of principled procrastination which enables them to put off indefinitely what they might more profitably be doing today. They’re so busy trying to create a warm, supportive, egalitarian, non-judgemental working environment, in which the voice of every member will be heard, that some weeks they don’t actually go to work at all. It’s written into the constitution of Milltown’s foremost plumbers’ collective that every decision should be made democratically. So if there’s a choice between, say, going out to a customer and mending a leaky pipe, or just sitting around and sorting out some schism in the space-time continuum... well, there’s just no contest. It's often said that hard work never killed anybody, but, as the plumbers point out, why take that risk?

Having given his lawn one last cut, back in autumn, Maurice sharpened the blades on his mower, oiled every moving part and covered the machine with an old tarpaulin. Now, with spring finally within sight, all that’s needed is a smooth pull on the starter cord to bring his mower purring to life. While Maurice is traversing a front lawn that a Wimbledon groundsman would envy, everybody else in Milltown is dragging rusty machines out of damp cellars and trying, in vain, to breath life into seized-up engines.

Uncooperative mowers, strimmers and power drills eventually find their way to Maurice’s workshop. He lets his neighbours down easy. Instead of giving them a lecture of mild reproof (on the theme of ‘spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar’) he’ll get their machines purring too. He’ll take a fiver in payment, a fraction of what an overhaul would cost in town; it salves his neighbours’ conscience. Maurice could be smug, but he’s not. If he had a halo it would be buffed and polished till it gleamed, but he wouldn’t dream of wearing it in public.

Milltown belongs to Maurice. Most people are fiercely proprietorial about their little fiefdoms. When they trim a hedge, they go to the limit of their property... and not an inch further. If just wouldn’t occur to them to pop next door and say “I’m tidying up my bit of the hedge; shall I do yours while I’ve got the clippers out?” The results look ludicrous, of course. But Maurice has a stake in Milltown that has nothing to do with deeds and contracts. When he says “It’s my town”, he isn’t merely confirming that he was born here fifty-three years ago and that, with luck, he’ll be buried here too. It’s his town because he looks after it.

We live in a litigious age when, instead of taking responsibility for ourselves when accidents happen, we immediately look for someone else to blame. If a careless pedestrian trips over a flagstone and turns an ankle, his first response, as likely as not, will be to sue the council. It’s ‘their’ responsibility. ‘They’ should do something about it. But the wheels of local bureaucracy are notoriously slow to turn. By the time a council workman arrives, rips up the offending flagstone and makes an ugly repair with a barrow-load of lumpy pitch, half a dozen more Milltown folk may be nursing swollen ankles.

Maurice takes pride in his little fiefdom too, and shoos away any cat that might even be thinking of shitting on his lawn. But his gaze extends far beyond the boundary of his property; whenever he spies some little corner of Milltown that needs sprucing up, he takes action. Instead of dashing off a stroppy letter to the council, or the Milltown Times, he changes into his overalls and sets off with his canvas bag of tools to put matters right.

Thanks to Maurice’s efforts, the flagstones fit together as snugly as the pieces in a jigsaw. The war memorial is free from the droppings of unpatriotic pigeons - not just for Poppy Day, but all year round. We can thank the council for putting up hanging baskets of flowers each year, but it’s Maurice who actually remembers to water them. As the river sweeps under the old packhorse bridge, the flow is unhindered by traffic cones, old bicycles and supermarket trolleys. That’s because Maurice pulls on an old pair of fishermens’ waders, every couple of weeks, and hauls the rubbish out. The sign that welcomes careful drivers to Milltown can always be read by day-trippers, because Maurice gives it a wipe with a damp cloth every time he passes.

Milltown is a regular winner in the ‘Beautiful Britain’ competition. When the time comes for the awards to be handed out, the local councillors are happy to accept the judges’ plaudits. The mayor and his cronies need no second bidding to crawl out of the woodwork whenever there’s an opportunity to claim the credit for somebody else’s efforts. They always have a banal soundbite at the ready, and a well-practised smile for the photographer of the Milltown Times.

There’s no justice. Instead of standing in the crowd and applauding these self-important phonies, it’s Maurice who should be up there on the podium. But he’s not bitter about being passed over, as usual, when the vote of thanks is given. Over the years, he’s seen councillors come and he’s seen them go. In truth he wouldn’t give a bucket of warm spit for the lot of them. Maurice has a different agenda altogether. He’s a free spirit, an independent thinker... almost an anarchist. Though he won’t be standing for office when the local elections come around again, he’ll be ready this spring with his whetstone and oil-can when the first knackered lawn-mower arrives in his workshop.

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