Deepest Dorset?

          Springtime had me fooled this year: just when it had begun to warm my bones, cold winds blew in and chilled them again. This presented a small dilemma concerning my wardrobe (a noun that, according to my dictionary, has 14 meanings, badger faeces being one, though this is now obsolete, as are the hunters who used it).

          The false start to the warmer season had prompted me to begin extracting lightweight garments from their hidey holes and stashing winter woollies there instead, but I’ve had to reverse that flow. And now I need to start packing for next week’s trip to Greece! So, what ought to have been a tidy transition is now a confused project, with my wardrobe (in the contemporary meaning[s]) in disarray. Hence, a couple of days ago, I set off in the campervan for a short trip with an over-stuffed travel-bag.

          The purpose of the journey was to visit an old girlfriend who lived – and still lives – in Dorset, but I took some time to poke around the area while I was there. I still cling, hopefully, to the nostalgic notion that there are regional differences to be savoured, such as there were before the era of instant-comms eroded them further and faster than industrialisation had. Thomas Hardy is still celebrated in the county, but you have to look closely to see it as he did.

           It has been noted, for example, that regional accents are in decline, so it delights me especially if I hear them still voiced. To this end, I eavesdrop and, sometimes, approach older people to ask for directions that I don’t really need, just to hear them speak like Wurzel Gummidge. Of course, I first assess whether, like me, they might be tourists, which is not so difficult: locals tend to be more purposeful in their perambulations.

          I was in Blandford Forum, a market town named, in part, for its Roman past. I had first set foot in the main square in 1967 when, stepping off the bus that had carried me there to be introduced to the parents of said girlfriend, I realised I had entered a uniquely picturesque environment. I learned later that the coherently Georgian architecture is attributed to the brothers John and William Bastard, local architects, who rebuilt the town after it burned down in 1731.

           The Georgian charm lingers, though the town is suffering the same high street blight that affects so many others. The streets once full of specialist retailers now accommodate charity shops, barbers, fast-food joints and beauty parlours. I was not in need of a haircut, a burger or a makeover, but I was easily lured into the charity shops. There may or may not be bargains within, but as repositories of the town’s unwanted stuff they offer an insight, of sorts, into its life. Time was, you could find things unique to the locale – such as tweed jackets as worn by badger hunters – but nowadays they are much the same everywhere, all the valuable or interesting items having gone upmarket to the antique or collectable trades, leaving the clothes racks full of Primark castoffs. I did think I was in luck when I came across some superior quality summer trousers that had belonged to someone with my taste and waist size, but our similarities ceased when it came to the inside leg measurement.

          Back on the street, I approached a local to ask if there was a deli, where I might buy some local delicacy to take to my rendezvous. She shook her head and gave me a brief history of the decline of the town’s shops before directing me, without irony – and without a regional accent – to Marks & Spencer’s Foodhall, which is tucked out of sight at the end of the main street. It was only when l I got to the checkout at M&S that I caught an earful of West Country burr, though there was no local produce on offer.