Now, I'm generally quite a quiet person. I keep my head down, I work hard, I have fun with my kids, and though those who know me well are all too aware I have some caustically strong opinions, I generally keep them to myself: I learned the hard way, back in my far-away youth, that if you go around shooting your mouth off, you generally end up putting your foot in it - and that instantly renders you everyone's least favourite person.
But when it's on your doorstep, and when it's affecting your quality of life, your neighbours' quality of life and potentially, the future of your children, sometimes you just have to speak out.
So in nearly-middle-age I've re-discovered the student within and taken up my place on the barricades. I know I'm a little late joining the party, but I've finally signed up to the Air Plot campaign being run by Greenpeace against the proposed third runway at Heathrow.
So, apparently I now own a bit of a field next door to Heathrow Airport. I'm hoping it might be the bit next door to Alys Fowler's allotment, so I can pop along and pick a cabbage or two from time to time.
What with Monty Don lending his support and the backing of one or two of us gardening bloggers I'm tempted to start shouting slogans. How about "Gardeners of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our planes!"
Ah.... Karl would be proud....
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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I have had a simply lovely time over the half-dozen years or so since I
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3 comments:
Good for you.
And if we don't lose our planes (at least some of them) we may lose our planet.
And if we build too many runways, we may lose our fields.
I've got a problem though. I've never owned a car and I've only twice been on a plane and I am certainly into middle age - but I feel I will have wasted my time on earth if I don't look around it before I die. So, one day, I'd like to become a grey traveller. But how will I make sure not to make waste of my life without helping to make waste the planet?
I worry that my student-within gets a little shrivelled from time to time. Posts like this remind me to water it. Hurray!
Lucy
Ah Lucy, that is the million-dollar question.
Actually I think we've lost the romance of travel a bit with all this whizzing around the planet by plane. Some of my best-ever journeys didn't have anything to do with aeroplanes: meandering across the Siberian steppes on the Trans-Siberian to Beijing, or pottering around Czechoslovakia (as it was then) also on the train. Hiking across the Pyrenees is pretty high on my list of must-do trips, as is riding across Iceland on a small and hairy pony.
I would book yourself a place on a train, or a boat, and slow-travel the world. You get to see a lot more out of the window and you don't have to shove tons of carbon into the atmosphere while you're doing it.
Oh! You are deepening my wander-lust.
Lucy
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