Chapter 3 Building a Community Strategy and other Stories

'You're all taking a big step forward in deciding to build a community strategy, and I want you to give yourselves a huge round of applause,' said Steve Paxman, leaning over the conference table in the big impersonal meeting room he had hired at the Holiday Inn Pitkirtly. Christopher had never set foot in the place before, although his sister Caroline was a member of the health club here and visited at least once every six months to get value for money out of her three hundred pounds a year subscription.

There was a stunned silence from the members of PLIF, most of whom, as Christopher was well aware, had not suspected themselves of deciding to build a community strategy. Young Dave poured a glass of water and sipped at it, while Mrs Stevenson stared out of the window at the view of the tarmac car park outside or perhaps at the Lomond Hills in the distance.

'We don't do that kind of thing here, Mr Paxman,' said Big Dave.

'Come on, Davie, I thought I asked you to call me Steve. We're all on the same side, after all.'

'Stalin was on the same side as us once,' said Big Dave, tactful as ever. 'And it's Dave, not Davie. Davie's a diminutive and I find it patronising and insulting.'

'I'm sorry, Dave,' said Steve, floundering a bit but making a reasonable recovery. 'So - let's get on with building the strategy then!'

To Christopher's ears it sounded much the same as 'let's all jump out of an aeroplane, then' or even 'let's all go and jump off a cliff like the lemmings we are', except that he was sure he had read recently that lemmings didn't really jump off cliffs. Jock McLean sucked on his empty pipe, daring Steve to invoke the non-smoking policy of the hotel, and glared alternately at Christopher, whom he blamed, somewhat unfairly, for starting the whole thing, and Amaryllis, who was sitting shuffling papers and as an outsider would be the automatic scapegoat, should one be needed.

'So - what are our aims in building this strategy?' Steve had now produced a big piece of paper, which he unrolled on the table in front of him. It was completely blank so far. 'Amaryllis, would you hand out the Post-Its, please?'

'Here you go,' said Amaryllis, handing round little clumps of the garish sticky notes. Please God, don't let him ask us to write a strategy on a Post-It, thought Christopher, surprising himself by his inner desperation.

'It's amazing what you can get on one of these,' said Steve, waving around a little bundle of bright blue ones. Christopher had deep pink, and he could see that Big Dave was embarrassed by the pale pink pile in front of him.

'I've heard tell there are monks who can write the whole Harry Potter saga on one of those,' observed Jock McLean. Steve gave him a hard look. Christopher waited for Jock to say 'Ooo, I'm really scared', but fortunately he didn't.

'I'd like you to write on one of your Post-Its what you think is the one thing this strategy will achieve,' said Steve. 'Then we'll stick them all on this big piece of paper here and that will enable us to discuss it in more detail.'

In other circumstances Christopher might have enjoyed playing around with Post-Its, sticking bits of paper together, and drawing in different colours, but not in present company. He could see Jock apparently doodling. Amaryllis had written what looked like a chapter of a novel on hers, but then she thought better of it, scrunched up the first one and threw it in her bag, and wrote just a few words on the new one.

He thought about what he would like to achieve, and the first answer that came to him was that he wanted things to move forward extremely slowly, at a snail's pace, so that the movement was imperceptible and painless to everyone. He hastily wrote 'research and consultation' on the Post-It - when it came to delaying things, these were definitely top of the list. Consulting everybody in the town would take months, if not years - even working out how to consult would take some time. Christopher brightened up a little. He smiled at Amaryllis, whom he hadn't spoken to since mentioning the kids. It was a pity he hadn't got the chance to tell her the full story, but if his delaying tactics worked, they would have all the time in the world to talk about these things.

'Chris, you look pretty pleased with yourself,' said Steve suddenly. 'Here, you can be the first to put your Post-It on the page.'

Do I get a gold star as well? Christopher wanted to ask. And don't call me Chris!

He placed his Post-It randomly on the big clean white flip-chart page. One by one Steve invited the others to do the same. Jock had produced a doodle that was indecipherable at first glance. Young Dave had only reluctantly taken time off from his lawyer's practice. 'Time is money, guys' he had said, but had given in on a vague promise that he would get some new legal business out of it, although come to think of it, he would probably be disqualified from using his position here to his own profit. He had written 'go down the pub' in large bold letters. Mrs Stevenson had written 'I don't know what to say' on hers, neatly summing up in one short sentence almost all her previous contributions to all discussions she had taken part in. The boy who had come along with Steve and introduced himself as a youth worker but who looked like a layabout had written 'community integration' on his. Christopher suspected Steve would pounce on this and use it to drive the debate forward.

'Research and consultation!' exclaimed Steve. 'Very good - that's just the sort of thing we need.'

Christopher searched his expression for any trace of irony, but it was completely absent. Scary that someone with this big an intellectual vacuum in his head should be helping to shape the future direction of West Fife Council. Scary, but Christopher was not all that surprised.

'Hmm,' was Steve's reaction to 'community integration'. 'Can you expand on that a bit, Darren?'

'Like, we don't feel like part of it,' said Darren the 'youth worker', doing various random basketball moves - without a basketball, fortunately for the management at the Holiday Inn, who might have had to replace all the interior fittings - as he spoke. 'There's nowhere to go. Nothing to do.'

'Ha! That's what they always say!' scoffed Jock. 'Nothing to do so we'll go and vandalise this bus shelter. Nothing to do so we'll go and beat up some poor old soul on her own doorstep...'

'Isn't that a bit derogatory, Jock?' said Steve, gentle reproach oozing out of his vocal cords like the last of the tomato ketchup out of one of these old-fashioned glass bottles. Christopher, to his surprise, had found the new squeezy ones worked much better.

'Derogatory? Ha!' snuffled Jock, absent-mindedly cleaning his pipe out into Darren's backpack. 'Turn your back for a second, you'll be toast!'

'Is that what your cartoon depicts, Jock?' said Steve.

Jock peered at his own drawing as if he'd never seen it before.

'No, don't be daft - it's an abstract work on the subject of local government.'

They all peered at the little drawing. It looked a bit like an unravelled piece of knitting.

'Moving on,' said Steve after a short respectful pause. He homed in on Mrs Stevenson's Post-It.

'Interesting,' he said. 'So in a way you feel as excluded by the whole process as Darren here does.'

Mrs Stevenson and Darren gazed at each other with mutual loathing. Christopher guessed that each was finding it as difficult as the other to be lumped together in this way.

'So - what have we got left?' said Steve. Was it just Christopher's imagination, or was his tone sounding increasingly desperate? He reached Young Dave's effort and smiled in a strained way. 'Yes, here we have another one who feels dissociated from the process. How about you, Dave?'

Amazingly, his face relaxed at last as he read Big Dave's Post-It. 'Listen, you guys, we can work with this.... Point one: survey potential users. Point two: get quotes for building work. Point three: ask for the money. We really can work with this....What can I say? Let's start with point one.'

'You've forgotten mine,' said Amaryllis coldly.

She indicated her Post-It, which lurked at the side of the big piece of paper, hovering on the threshold as she had done herself the previous week, awaiting acceptance into the group.

'Research and consultation,' said Steve blankly. 'But we've already had that one. And it comes into Dave's as well.'

'Because it's the most important,' said Amaryllis. 'Because if nobody wants to do any community activities, we might as well not bother.'

'Not necessarily,' said Steve. 'As a Council we have a duty to provide leisure facilities for the local community we serve, whether they want them or not. We would be negligent if we didn't. Someone could sue us. No, we may stir up a previously unsuspected demand if we get this project up and running. Sometimes the egg has to come before the chicken.'

'If you build it, they will come,' said Mrs Stevenson. 'It worked for Kevin Costner.'

Christopher opened his mouth to start explaining to Mrs Stevenson the difference between real life and the movies, then closed it again without speaking at all. There were certain conversations you just didn't want to start.

'Well, since you're both so interested in this aspect of the strategy, why don't you form a sub-committee to look into research methods,' said Steve smoothly. Christopher could hardly believe his own tactic was being used against him like this. It didn't help that when he caught Amaryllis's eye she was looking at him as coolly and calmly as the fishmonger or butcher might look at the pathetic thing on the slab that had once been a living creature. About to dissect him, was she? We'll see about that, he thought.

'Great idea, Steve,' he heard himself saying with false bonhomie.

'And why don't you, Darren, work together with Jock and me on the master plan?' Steve continued in similar vein. Jock's mouth, open to receive the cold pipe he would suck like a baby's dummy in moments of boredom or stress, stayed open in startlement. For his part Darren laughed derisively, then shrugged his shoulders.

'My social worker never said it would be fun,' he said in a kind of low growl. He reviewed this statement and corrected himself almost at once. 'Well, yeah, she did say it might be fun. Lying cow. Main thing is, though, I have to come along as part of the conditions of supervision. Doesn't matter to me what I do when I get here.'

'Mrs Stevenson and the two Daves? I'd like you to form a social sub-committee. Keep us motivated with coffee and cakes, eh?'

'Coffee and cakes?' said Young Dave incredulously. 'And by the way, Dave and I don't like it when people do that.'

'Do what?' Steve sounded genuinely curious. As far as anything he did could ever be genuine.

'Lump us together,' said Big Dave. Suddenly he was back to his usual self, looming over Steve with the look of someone who could tear him apart with his bare hands, before breakfast. 'We don't like it at all.'

Steve held up his hands in apology. 'Consider me warned off. It won't happen again.'

'And we don't like coffee and cakes,' said Young Dave. 'In fact, why not all go for a beer right now? This place sucks.'

'Well, it's against Council policy to mix alcohol and meetings,' said Steve.

'The writ of Council policy only runs as far as we let it,' said Young Dave mysteriously.

'I think you'll find that's - ' Steve began.

'And don't start telling me what's legal and what isn't,' said Young Dave, 'because I can out-jargon you any day. Right, then, last one in the Queen of Scots gets the drinks in!'

'Oh, Dave, you naughty boy!' said Mrs Stevenson. 'You know I can't run as fast as you with my hip.'

'We're not going to the Queen of Scots,' said Steve.

'See you at the bar!' shouted Amaryllis, scooping up her long black leather coat and understated leather shoulder-bag, and sprinting out of the room like a teenager.

'Wow, she's fit!' said Darren, gazing after her. 'In all senses of the word. Where's this Queen of Scots place then?'

'Just follow us,' said Big Dave as he and Young Dave left the room. Darren collected his backpack, sniffing suspiciously at its interior, and went after them.

Mrs Stevenson lumbered to her feet.

'Come on, last one there's a jessie,' she said to Jock McLean. The two of them limped out of the room, almost in step but not quite.

Christopher and Steve Paxman were left looking at each other. Steve stroked his beard in huffy silence. Christopher had only stayed out of a misplaced sense of responsibility. He was picturing Amaryllis running lithely along the road outside, looking like Atalanta before she was distracted by the golden apples.

'They'll come back when they're ready,' said Steve, gathering all his papers together, neatly folding the large piece of paper with the silly Post-Its stuck on to it and shoving everything in his school satchel-style briefcase.

'But we haven't got a lot of time - have we?' said Christopher.

Steve shook his head.

'The grant application has to be in before the end of the year. Even then it'll be touch and go. I'm sure you realise, Chris - '

'Christopher'.

' - yes, sorry, that you may not get funding for this new venture of yours. That we might have to look for alternatives.'

Christopher didn't like the implication that the whole village hall project had been his idea, but then he wasn't sure how they had all got into this situation in the first place. One minute Steve had been looking into PLIF for no apparent reason, expecting it to have a lot of paperwork in place, and wondering why they hadn't restored the hall already, and the next minute they were meant to invent a community strategy for the town off the tops of their heads. He couldn't work out how they had been so easily swept out of their comfort zone and into the main current of Council policy. It wasn't as if the Council had shown any interest in them previously. As far as he could recall, PLIF had been born out of boredom one wet spring evening in the Queen of Scots. He couldn't even remember exactly whose idea it had been. It seemed to spring simultaneously into the minds of several people, and had taken shape over the months without the benefit of any aims, objectives or constitution.

'So we have to go through all this strategy and sub-committee stuff to be in with a chance, but even then we might not get anything,' said Christopher, summing up the situation for his own benefit. He drummed his fingers on the table. 'Even jumping through all the hoops might not be enough.'

'You need to have a strategy document in place and a tactical plan for carrying it out,' said Steve, reverting, as most dictators do when it looks as if the battle isn't going their way, to quasi-military terminology. By now Steve had put on his black leather jacket and was on his way out the door. 'Could you just close the windows for me? I need to be in Auchterderran - ' he checked his watch in a token gesture, ' - about half an hour ago.'

Scowling to himself, Christopher obediently closed the windows, scooped up his own old black leather jacket and put it on, wishing he didn't now feel as if he was just copying Steve Paxman. There was somebody he didn't want as a rôle model. He'd be trying to grow a silly-looking beard next.