If we discount for the moment that Pat’s sorting depot is now better equipped than Tracy Island, and instead focus on the strange shiftings in the populace between the original series and the modern, I feel the most important and pressing issue from a humanitarian perspective is that of those subtly erased from Greendale. There is something akin to a totalitarian state in a dystopian novel about the disappearances.
I’m using ‘Greendale’ in a broader than its literal sense to encapsulate all the residence of the series as the location of the programme has broadened. Pat himself is still situated in the Yorkshire idyll of Greendale, but his side-line in package delivery is based in the regional hub of the town Pencaster. They even troll off to the seaside every so often. One of the benefits of this increase in number of locations is the rise in ethnic diversity. Chillingly though, perhaps the influx of new characters has blinded us to those that have been subtly erased from the Greendale collective conscience. But who are these lost souls?
As I carried out my research for this treatise, I discovered with an increasing creeping dread that they numbered more than I could have possibly imagined. Let us start though with Mrs Hubbard.
Mrs Hubbard rode around the village upon her wicker basket adorned bicycle, tutting. She tutted a lot. Perhaps too much for someone? It would seem a small thing to eradicate a person for but people have been ‘done-in’ for less. Her austere manner and disapproving oral tick would undoubtedly have made her a staunch member of the WI. And we all know the power inherent in the WI. Look what they did to Blair. Slow handclaps and withholding jumble sale services until demands are met – perhaps such behaviour led to her downfall – she became too powerful and influential a figure for those behind the Greendale cull.
But what was the most sinister and heart-breaking element of this all was the silence. No-one mentions her. No-one. Such a pivotal figure in the life of Greendale and particularly the unfolding saga of Pat Clifton’s life, disappeared from the collective conscience like Akhenaten chiselled from the hieroglyphs. All it needed to assuage the sense of dread in my gut would be an offhand comment about having received a postcard from Miss Hubbard from Bournemouth where she’d gone to live with her fellow spinster sister. But no. Instead there is the silence. Instead there is the dread. If only she was the only one . . .
Peter Fogg, mutton-chopped farmhand and frequent rescuer of mud-stuck Pat has also disappeared. Admittedly, his Noddy Holder appearance would somewhat jar with 21st century Greendale, but surely a simple trim is more humane than a brutal cull? Apparently this was of little concern for our mysterious Diablo in their pursuit of controlling this small Yorkshire community.
It isn’t just Fogg who has felt the pinch of agricultural decline; George Lancaster of the curiously named ‘Intake Farm’ has also vanished. There is an Orwellian feel to the name in its simplicity. The dystopian analogy grows stronger and the malevolent scale of the issue becomes more apparent. There is a cancerous element woven into the very fabric of Greendale society, and this writer has lost control of his metaphors.
The diminished role of Reverend Timms is reflective of the move of rural vicars to having responsibility for a series of parishes across the diocese. He simply is carrying out his responsibilities in his other parishes and has fewer occasions in which he can be involved in postal-related escapades. However, he is not numbered amongst ‘the lost’ whereas Granny Dryden is.
I am willing to believe that age simply caught up with Granny Dryden. Being stuck in an isolated cottage in the wilds of Yorkshire, away from her ‘loving’ family in London, one fears the horrors of a ‘big freeze’ and Granny being dead for days and chewed on lovingly by her cats before a distraught and somewhat traumatised Pat, breaks down her down to find her. Once again however, it is the silence that is most chilling. One could understand that people would not want to mention it in front of Pat for fear of triggering recurring nightmares and undoing the work of a trained psychologist, but surely it would come out in the idle gossip of the villagers, a “wasn’t it awful?” or “her own cats” or “they say the stench was appalling” coupled with a furtive crossing of themselves as they purchased a samosa from the station café.
Having successfully removed the WI powerhouse Mrs Hubbard and weakened the religious figurehead of Timms in the village, it was time to emasculate the military: Major Forbes at Garner Hall. A symbol of a strictly class-led social hierarchy and remnant of an Imperialistic age, for the anarchic mastermind behind the slaughter, he had to go. Garner Hall, the seat of power for several centuries, now not only presumably lies empty but has not been mentioned since. Has it been bull-dozed? Reduced to rubble like the cornerstones of traditional power in this pocket of rural Britain? Have we experienced ISIL in Palmyra in our very own Yorkshire Dales? Can we expect new edifices extoling the supposed virtues of the new power behind Greendale? We must be told the truth!
As well as incinerating the past, any new power needs to embed its ideology in the youth to stand any chance of flourishing long term. Hitler had his Hitler Youth; Lenin had the Komsomol and Dolly Parton the Dollywood field trip experience. As such, the village school becomes an obvious target, and in particular its teacher, Jeff Pringle, who can now be counted as one of ‘The Lost’. The ‘disappearance’ of teacher Jeff Pringle was much later than most of the other ‘lost’ and coincided with Pat’s branching out into Special Delivery Service for parcels. He was a victim of a secondary cull – or great extinction epoch depending on your view of scale here. One possible explanation is that the class simply moved up a year, but this seems deeply unsatisfactory explanation-wise for a couple of reasons. The main one seems to me to be this: there was never any hint of any other children at all in the school. None whatsoever. Zilch. This is a rural school and the notion of there only being a dozen children on-site is perfectly understandable. What is slightly less understandable is why they are of the same age. The next eldest child, in fact the only other child, is a baby. Is the strange ‘breeding curse’ of Greendale part of some form of ‘Wicker Man-esque’ culture that underpins the isolated community? Were all other children born after this fruitful year sacrificed to Wotan in a giant Wicker Jess? The baby, Nikhil, the first maybe of the next breeding season, has a big sister but all other children, bar the Pottage twins are single children. Statistically unlikely at best. A sign of a devotion to a twisted pyre-orientated form of paganism at worse.
There is no doubt in my mind that the toxic rise of Tescos in the late 90s and earlier noughties was the death knell for mobile shopkeeper Sam Waldron – apologies to those of a sensitive disposition for the mixed metaphor. And further apologies now, as I undermine my previous ‘no doubt’ claims, as I believe there to be a small furry explanation other than simply the worse excesses of a Capitalist-driven society. The moustache. Sam had a Chaplin moustache or as it became known ‘The Hitler Moustache’. Why would a travelling greengrocer, a purveyor of vegetables and chocolates to rural areas that in 1980s Britain were beyond the Triffid tendrils of the major supermarkets, don fascistic facial fur? Let’s take his surname “Waldron”. There are several explanations as to the origins of its meaning ‘son of Waleran’, ‘foreign raven’ or if it is based on the place-name ‘forest dwelling’. This last one I feel is of most significance, his keen association with nature and the religious rites therein. Clearly, this unabashed Adolf-coiffured grocer is a devotee of right-wing Wiccanree. There can be no other explanation. He blends the ideologies of the Third Reich with the most extreme and perverted concepts in ancient Pagan believes. All behind the mask of a jovial mobile shopkeeper.
So what happened? I think we have to assume that Sam was the driving force in the village behind the slaughter of the innocence, the pyre-based purging of pre-pubescent Greendalers, that left only the ‘Children of Corn’. If this is true, and I can see no rational reason to see otherwise, then where is Sam now? His apparent replacement, Michael Lam, whose mobile shop specialises more specifically in refreshments, is perhaps the most obvious choice for his killer. Yes, that’s right, killer. Sam’s disappearance, I believe, is a result of a power grab, and if that is the case, the question has to be who now has the power in Greendale? Who is the Pimp Extraordinaire of Pencaster? It is not Lam. I don’t believe the Triad rumours and he wasn’t even a resident until long after Sam’s mysterious demise. So, who?
The answer is obvious. Goggins.
Mrs Goggins herself, the septuagenarian post-mistress has stood the test of time and weathered the national slaughter of local post offices that affected so many rural villages. Perhaps this was due to her Celtic spirit, an inbuilt fiery resistance to overwhelming English capitalist streamlining where financial viability was placed above human cost. Since the early version of Postman Pat, the reimagined Goggins is now with hound, a Highland Terrier of course, brought into the series as both a way to externalise the internal thoughts, the workings and machinations of Goggins, that during previous incarnations would have gone frustratingly unsaid, and also to act as a canine foil to the feline Jess. A festering Moriarty, Goggins, I firmly believe, is the silent partner behind the myriad of disasters that seem to beset Pat in his relatively straight forward task of delivering a package from point a to point b; a feat that seems beyond Mr Clifton. Where does this leave us? What can, or rather should, be done? PC Selby for one reason or another seems either oblivious to the situation or, and this I fear is the more likely of the two options, has been paid off in some fashion to turn a blind-eye to the absent faces. Pat himself wouldn’t rock the boat, and Ted Glen has his attention fully occupied with errant ruminants and unruly weather systems. Clearly, the help needs to come from outside of Greendale and Pencaster. We must lobby our MPs, harangue policing authorities until action is taken and a full investigation is carried out into the ‘lost of Greendale’. We must not let Granny Dryden’s death be in vain. Remember the names: Mrs Hubbard, Peter Fogg, Granny Dryden, Major Forbes, Jeff Pringle, Sam Waldron. They must not be forgotten.
Treatises of Gloria 