Unfortunately the ramp is blocked by three shopping trolleys, all chained together. We are used to seeing these trolleys blighting the landscape and decorating front gardens all across the Courts and Guinness Trust estates, but this is moving beyond visual blemish and moving into the realms of actual nuisance and obstruction.

Drop a cigarette butt or crisp packet and council wardens will swoop down with an eighty-quid fine, but it looks like you can leave these things wherever you like with impunity.

A couple of years ago we got so fed up with it all a bunch of us spent an hour or two collecting all the abandoned trolleys just in the Courts area and returning them to the shops. We were told at the time that the shops had someone who goes round collecting trolleys , and we have also been told in the past that the council collect them and sort of hold them hostage, returning them to the supermarket in exchange for some payment or other.

I don’t believe that is happening.

All the evidence points to two things: the shops are not doing enough to recover trolleys, and their customers are abusing the ability to remove the trolleys from the parade. I don’t think that the behaviour of a hard-core of customers is going to change so it must be time to either greatly improve the collection or prevent the trolleys being removed in the first place.

I cannot believe that nobody who lives in this area is annoyed enough to force the issue. I think I would be if I lived in the Courts and was confronted with these all the time.

There is an obvious environmental benefit to having someone who lives within a few hundred metres of the shops walk home with their shopping instead of driving, but there must be a way to encourage that behaviour and not end up with masses of rusty wire trolleys around every corner.

I spotted this while out canvassing this morning. Back in October we (a gang of Labour party members) went round the Courts estate of Broadfield rounding up abandoned trolleys and returning them to the shops.

I think I can remember removing three trolleys from exactly the same place back then, and now they are back.

Perhaps its where they want to be. We all know from supermarket experience that these things have a mind of their own sometimes. It could be that they have a rudimentary migratory instinct and seek out particular places, like salmon returning upstream.

Anyway, I also clocked the graffiti on the wall behind them. “people who tip are pigs”. It just tickles me that someone is upset about their environment being spoiled and decided to express that by spray-painting it on a brick wall. Is graffiti OK when it is ironic?

The first was the Ifield Barn Theatre to see Alladin. Its a great little theatre. Only 80 seats, and a tiny stage, but the auditorium is raked and they are all proper soft tip-up seats. The facilities are superb for such a small theatre.

Its a quirky place (just like its web site) but has a certain visual appeal (unlike its web site – sorry chaps).

I was there with a school party from Manor Green college which had block-booked every seat in the house, but I didn’t take my camera what with it being dark and everything, and that corner of Ifield really is dark! You really are on the edge of town there and it does feel more like a village than anything else.

On Saturday I was over in Bewbush at the Barn Church, which is actually part of the Ifield Parish I believe, for the annual World AIDS Day memorial service – held a week late this year for some reason.

I’m sure I wrote about this last year. Its a brilliant service, kept short and sweet which is the only way I can handle church services, and with a decent buffet laid on afterwards.

Since last year Jayne has got a job with Mid-Sussex Body Positive who organise the service and got roped in to do the food. I was able to take these photos an hour before the service, after dropping off all the plates of goodies.

Its a fascinating building, as conversions so often are. It was a very simple barn – just a plain rectangular footprint – with those great old timber beams. The conversion has also kept it simple. There is a main church room at one end and a small community room at the other end. In the middle is a small entry hall.

The architects did a good job by keeping it simple, and achieved a very light and airy space by glazing the apex at either end and putting a large set of floor-to-ceiling windows on either side wall.

The furnishing of the church is in a similar plain but tasteful vein with an emphasis on blonde wood and wrought iron. Its like the Church of IKEA.

Apart from the building itself, the setting is remarkable. There is a large old house opposite, one of the original buildings from before Crawley started sprawling – now owned by the council – but otherwise its all standard modern Wimpey/Barratt/Persimmon-type houses.

The remarkable thing about it is how quiet it is. At midday on a Saturday there was just one small child on a bike. The place is well worth a visit – how about World AIDS day next year?

One last picture. I took this snap of a bench outside the church because I just liked the look of it, with the gaily-painted plant pots all weathered and worn. It was only when I loaded it onto the computer that I noticed the detail in the background in the left of the frame, but really it was not intentional. I am not that obsessed with the things. Well only a little.

Anyone from outside Broadfield might see this and wonder why this one has a metal rod sticking into the air as if it has aspirations to be a dogem car. The idea is that the pole is taller than the doorway of Iceland so shoppers can’t take their trolleys out of the shop and abandon them everywhere.

It doesn’t work.

The trolleys will get through the door if you tip them backwards, and if you have so much shopping that its too heavy for you to tilt back the staff are happy to help you tilt it so you can get out. Thats what you call joined-up-thinking!

Today we went out with Labour party colleagues from all over the town and collected them all up, which was quite fun.

Just in case we needed more manpower we took the kids along. The older two were worried that someone they knew would see them, but Charlie was a lot less reluctant: at the moment he is very keen to do anything which helps the community (his words) which seems like an attitude to be encouraged.

Some of the trolleys we picked up were in exactly the same place as we saw them on September 24th when we were out knocking on doors. (I was sad enough to have photos of them from September to prove it)

In the past the council used to collect stray trolleys and keep them in a depot somewhere. Obviously that is not happening any more. All together we collected about 30 trolleys. There were probably more but we made the mistake of not printing out maps and planning a route to take in every little nook and cranny of the estate.

Some of our colleagues were from outside Broadfield, so that would have helped.

One of our group, Councillor Patel from Broadfield North, used to be in the retail trade and reckons the trolleys cost £50 to £60 each. If that is the case we collected at least £1500 worth in just under an hour today.

Jayne took them all to the trolley park outside Somerfields, which caused some amusement to the staff. A lady who I assume to be the person in charge for today came out and spoke to Jayne. She actually seemed quite pleased, rather than pissed-off.

We were told that the supermarket do actually pay someone to go around collecting abandoned trolleys from the neighbourhood, who is obviously not doing the job very well. I suspect he will be getting an appraisal sometime soon, and we may see this problem being dealt with. Perhaps they might find it cheaper to stop them all being removed in the first place?

Full marks for dedication have to go to Bert Crane. I’m not sure exactly how old he is now, but he has been a councillor in Crawley for 51 years. I had heard that he had a bereavement in the family just the other day so did not expect him to turn up, but he did.

It gets its name from the fact that, apart from the odd ‘walk’ nearly all the roads are called Something Court. On the whole it is not a bad area, far better than it could be given the design. Most of the courts are pleasant enough, and this morning it was very quiet, but it does have its low points.

The whole estate is right next to the shopping parade, connected by a footbridge. While this is very convenient for the residents, it does have its drawbacks – namely shopping trolleys.

We only went through a part of the courts but saw at least 25 trolleys littering the place. Some were dumped in the garage blocks, but others were left outside houses. I suspect that most of these are from people bringing their shopping home and then leaving the trolley outside their house. Local kids will then redistribute them around the estate.

The other problems with the estate are the street lighting and the pavements. Unfortunately the telephone and cable companies have dug up every single court to install their services so every single path bears the mark of their trenches down the middle. Any maintenence done now is almost a waste of time as it will still look untidy. The only option is complete re-surfacing, which is unlikely to happen.

In spite of all this, the estate is not bad at all. My colleagues from other parts of town had not really been to Broadfield much and found it a lot better than they had expected from its reputation.

There are a few high points to the courts as well. My favourite is this area. It is a grass bank, leading up to a wooded area which runs through the centre of the courts. Someone living nearby has planted flowers and shrubs in this space, and it looks like they have been cutting the grass too as its much shorter than everywhere else. Behind it are the trunks of large beech (?) trees which are now more like sculpture than anything else.

Although recruiting new members was not the purpose of this morning, we may have picked up one, and identified a lot of Labour voters we had not known about before, it was good exercise and I got to try out the new camera, so all together it was worth giving up my traditional lay-in.