In the mood for a protest

Feb 12 2009 By Mike Lockley

Plans to expand an airfield some 20 miles away will devastate our own idyllic parish, protesters claim.

The microlights that currently use it are bad enough, but at least the pilots are friendly. When the schoolkids wave, they wave back - which is something the Red Arrows never do. Ignorant so-and-so’s.

One waved so heartily, he didn’t even see the big pine tree he crashed into.

Now they want to land commercial craft, which will pass only yards from our bathroom window. This means I will have to get the frosted glass fixed.

I’m angry about this: to prove it, the local weekly newspaper referred to me as ‘angry resident Mike Lockley’. I’m not sure how the reporter could tell - I was drinking a cup of tea and eating a toasted cheese sandwich when she called. Maybe I was eating it in an angry way?

I’ve featured in the rag five times and been ‘angry’ on each occasion. When they pulled the plug on the mobile library, which I never used, I was an ‘outraged villager’. When the service was re-introduced I was ‘overjoyed’.

I’d like to be simply ‘mildly irritated’ from time-to-time so outsiders don’t think I suffer from violent mood swings.

In truth, I’m a bit baffled by the airfield bombshell. A hastily-convened public meeting at the parish assembly rooms was told a new runway would be built by 2014.

This is extraordinary. A runway is a strip of tarmac that stretches less than a mile.

The two Irish chappies who offered to do my drive could knock one up in an afternoon, I’m sure.

Some bloke from Friends of the Earth said we’d suffer from noise pollution and the government should invest in alternative, more environmentally friendly, forms of transport, but what’s the alternative to a plane? I wouldn’t even consider going to Benidorm by glider.

He reckons passengers will clog our community, which I can’t see happening. We have only a newsagents and farm shop - no-one flies hundreds of miles for 20 fags and a jar of lemon curd.

The FofE bod also reckoned the hole in the ozone would get bigger, but that doesn’t bother me - I never use it, don’t even know where it is. At the base of a women’s spine, my mate reckons.

I think both he and the aviation authority have missed the real problem. Those rich enough to blast pheasants