Hutton Buscel, mon amour

You learn some interesting things from obituaries. For instance, I never knew that the late film director Alain Resnais, was a friend of that chronicler of bourgeois desperation, Alan Ayckbourn, or that he'd made a film, based on an Ayckbourn play, set in North Yorkshire. Called Aimer, boire et chanter (Love, drink and sing), it sounds like a reet treat for fans of quirky cross-cultural hybrids, at least according to this description by Emma Wilson:

There is an identical preface at the start of each film where actor Peter Hudson introduces us to the setting, a fictional village, Hutton Buscel 'dans le Yorkshire'. Resnais's image of Yorkshire is deliberately stylised. French is spoken in Resnais's Yorkshire. This effect is enhanced where each scene is demarcated by a brightly coloured drawing by the artist Floc'h; indeed, as Philip Strick comments, 'its inhabitants all appear to be strikingly overdressed French immigrants engaged in a subtly Anglophobic charade.'

It may have lacked a strikingly overdressed French immigrant population and have been stylised out of all recognition for its film debut, but I can confirm that, far from being fictional, Hutton Buscel is a very real place,* about fifteen miles from where I grew up.

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* Afterthought - come to think of it, a lot of the stuff on the Parish Council website is straight out of a wistful comedy of bourgeois manners (although slightly more Alan Bennett than Alan Ayckbourn). Viz:

• Cllr Carruthers had purchased replacement bulbs to plant.

• The Community Service had brought the tete a tete bulbs to Hutton Buscel.

• The Emergency Plan Working group had had an initial meeting, another is to follow at the end of January.

• There had been no reply in regards to the status of the bridle way.

• Cllr Carruthers reported that 3 residents had died in the war and that 24 had served. The Vicar intends to hold a joint Wykeham and Hutton Buscel memorial service. An update is to follow.

• Cllr Barnett is to investigate grant funding to clean the war memorial...

...COMMEMORATION OF CLLR JEFFELS (40 YEARS)
Cllr Jeffels had previously offered to plant a tree, however this was declined by Council. A new suggestion of a stone trough to be placed on Vicars Walk (which Cllr Jeffels would maintain) was passed by all present.

RESOLVED: That Cllr Jeffels is to place a stone trough on Vicars Walk at his discretion, and maintain said trough for as long as is reasonably practical...


...TO RECEIVE ITEMS FOR THE NEXT AGENDA

• Paving stones at Vicars walk.
• Report on wooden gate site visit findings.
• Solution to loose Guinea Fowl in the area.

Can Hutton Buscel survive the menace of loose Guinea Fowl in the area?  Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of The Minutes of Hutton Buscel Parish Council...

Le Yorkshire, c'est charmant, n'est pas?