Blissful rural scene we can entrust to our planners (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Blissful rural scene we can entrust to our planners

9:16am Friday 24th August 2012 in Letters

Blissful rural scene we can entrust to our planners

I STOOD upon the Swindon Road roundabout on a beautiful morning we had recently admiring the tranquil rural scene so loved of our planners.

Over to the right were the glistening medieval towers of ye olde Macdonald building, its colourful display of banners advising passing smock clad yeomen on their way to a day's labour in the field, that it was now open at 5am the colours blending with the magnificence of the one advising that they were hiring now.

Further to the south it was possible to see, peeping discreetly through the lattice girder of the footbridge itself being built by the Monks of London town, the neon sign advising local Carter's that fuel was available 24 hours a day and that their £5 vouchers could be exchanged for greater delights in the nearby village shop.

To the east the village houses stood in their huge self sufficiency plots of a full fifty square yards their squat three storey houses nestling comfortably and unobtrusively in a tree clad fold in the green verdure.

The roundabout itself was a scene of great beauty. The overgrown trees and grass gave a much appreciated degree of privacy to approaching traffic, the dappled light reflecting on the broken headlight lenses coyly hiding in the grass between the empty coke bottles and the gaily coloured beef-burger take-away boxes.

Overall the rustic scene was enhanced by the early morning smell of wet meadow land the pleasant odour of healthy cattle replaced by the scent of frying chips at the local transport cafŽ and the more pungent perfume of diesel engines being started in the lorry park.

But it was with a sense of relief that I felt we could be assured that we would be ever protected by our planners from the Philistines who would replace this rural idyll with their hated salvia, geraniums and other tawdry products of a local nursery and who would additionally, advertise their filthy trade by erecting huge signs, sometimes as large as a page of this newspaper to glorify their grotesque vandalism.

T J LEES Kemble