The long meeting room was crowded, some standing behind the twenty seated representatives of organisations such as The Friends of the Forest, Protect the Raptor, and The Ethno-Botany Society. A cultivated wildness of hair was prevalent, like a badge. Most were clothed in brown trousers, jackets and the checked cotton shirts favoured by farmers and racehorse trainers. An urbane Assistant Director chaired with the arresting length of Legal Blair minuting. As instructed, the latter surveyed the attendees. No known troublemakers were amongst them and he imparted this fact to his chief by way of a surreptitious nod.
Many seated were posed in sycophantic attitudes while by contrast those standing were tense, arms folded over their chests, in a peculiar mood of truculent defence. Assistant Director, pinstriped in accustomed authority, waited for a pervasive inertia, a resigned hopelessness, to settle like dust on those present.
Assistant Director brought the meeting to order and smoothly proceeded, from time to time deprecating his powers with little expressive waves of either hand. This brought occasional sharp sounds as his cuff links struck against the tabletop.
“We are the nation’s greatest landowner and very aware of the heavy responsibility that we bear. We also have more than two billion trees from Galloway to Shetland, that is at the present time. Forest cover in land owned is approaching 20%. This alone reduces pressure on our indigenous woodland and creates resilient local economies.”
Mellow tones soothed his listeners. All present accepted that his positive impact was vital to the well being of the entire nation. His dispensations were made in an unmistakable spirit of noblesse oblige, with a measured leavening of humility. Assistant Director’s pitch rolled smoothly over his listeners. The meeting sighed.
“Rural depopulation has been arrested. Communities are being revived. Stagnant economic areas are being revitalised. A barren landscape has been made productive.”
He was interrupted by a rare challenge, which dared to speak of saturation planting of foreign species for wood pulp and clearly smacked of criticism. Assistant Director smiled kindly and responded with fatherly advice, imparted in a benevolent tone. Clearly the previous speaker had a limited vision, unable to comprehend larger issues or see either the ‘way forward’ or the ‘big picture’.
“One must always be conscious of a greater good while pressing one’s particular agenda,” Assistant Director patronised. “There are delicate checks and balances here. We are fully committed to preservation of natural species. Look upon the pulp industry as the cash cow that will provide local prosperity and arrest depopulation, and be a long term means of fulfilling our aims in promoting bio-diversity.”
He thus arrived at his chosen palliative – the pernicious rhododendron. This shrub’s classification by the Commission as a ‘weed’ dated from 1987, the meeting was reminded. A minion having earlier indulged in browsing the archives on Assistant Director’s behalf, AD now scorned his notes and frowned impressively around the table. Slowly, he stated that lateral translocation of rhododendron was known to be extremely poor. Complete foliar cover by a herbicide was essential to ensure the death of this alien species. He paused and looked to his audience.
The response was immediate. There was revulsion. Several gasped aloud. Assistant Director enjoyed the moment. In appeal, he spread his hands on a well varnished table. The rhododendron out-competed all native flora, he added, brutally decreased bio-diversity and was a sporulating host of pathogens (savouring the pronunciation of ‘sporulating’, which had been added to his vocabulary an hour earlier). In sombre tones he announced a drive to eradicate the scourge of rhododendron from all parts of Scotland, whether or not in Commission ownership.
Disdaining to request any final questions, he brought his performance to a close by choosing to honey the weevil biscuit of BAP, the Commission Bio-diversity Action Plan.
“Like all of you here this morning, I am totally committed to an outdoors we can all enjoy in harmony with indigenous creatures of the wild. I will therefore bring forward the report on bio-diversity which focuses on both native species and habitat.”
He glanced around the room. It was time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I must thank you most sincerely for your input and attention. It ensures balance, keeps all of us at the Commission on our toes, I do assure you. We shall reconvene next month when I trust I shall have news of further progress.”
He grimaced vaguely and rose to his feet as though an onerous schedule required an immediate diversion of his attention to other business. Legal Blair also stood and bent forward to gather up his notes. To coughs and shuffling noises, the meeting room emptied. Assistant Director watched them funnel through the doorway.
Legal Blair at heel, Assistant Director strode with purpose into the ante-room to his office, beckoning at Alison, his secretary, who rose from her swivel chair and followed him into a carpeted sanctum sanctorum. He sat and stretched his arms forward to reveal a greater width of white cuff. A noise of cuff links on desktop sounded sharply once more. The secretary smiled tiredly. Legal Blair leaned towards the desk, his body looped, his expression alert.
“Keep the Minutes of Meeting brief,” Assistant Director was not to be trifled with today, “oh, and show what I intended to say, not necessarily what I did say, if I departed from the usual line somewhere. Never mind the nonsense about planting native species of tree in some kind of floral arrangement or the comment about covering Scottish hills with Alaskan timber. What is in the Minutes stands as the record and we are not going to show that anyone here indulged the socialist fantasies of tree huggers. Not on my watch. Poor policy, one might say, Blair.”
Legal Blair nodded vigorously from height, being an angular six foot six in his socks, exactly two metres tall. Aged thirty three, he was whispered around tea-trolleys to be the coming man, though currently but a humble acolyte of Holy Master.
Assistant Director continued. “Blair, I assume that you took a good look at the list of attendees? Did you identify the meat in the room? Seemed to be more than the usual number of hangers-on today. Oh, and remind me later to call whatever Society that outspoken rabble rouser belongs to.”
Assistant Director’s gaze switched to his secretary, who remained silent meanwhile. She calmly met the quiz of her superior in his persona of one belonging to a higher caste, the distinguishing arrogance bestowed by his expensive public school being fully displayed. Assistant Director tended to be expansive after a successful meeting. His chin elevated.
“Alison, kindly phone the Minister, or better still his p.a., and advise him that the bio-diversity report was kicked into the long grass, again. We are going to kill rhododendron bushes instead,” and he laughed aloud before shaking his head in disbelief at the ease of shepherding today’s sheep.
“Oh, and Alison,” he resumed,” that ‘Regional’ appointment to the wilds of Lochaber…I shall let things stand. We shall not replace Munro. God knows what he did anyway. I met the local foresters when I was up there. They seemed a competent enough lot without being higher management material. Send a memo to Director, wherever he happens to be.”
His secretary wrote in a hand-held notebook then stood poised for more.
Assistant Director glanced downward to the surface of his desk then quickly looked up and raised one eyebrow, his signal of dismissal. He fingered a cuff link. Alison and Blair left the office, Alison closing the door behind them.
“Utterly in control of a potentially difficult meeting this morning,” Legal Blair admired his boss. “Bio-diversity groups live in another reality, not our real world. We need to keep perspective, going forward.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Alison said, and Legal Blair for a moment thought he detected sarcasm. It was a foolish notion. The secretary was demurely resuming her humble seat, notebook in hand.