NOT IN MY BACK YARD.

Two villages in Somewhere, but with very different attitudes

Nimby was a sweet little village nestling in a valley that seemed to ripple cosily between low-lying hills. Overhead, in summer, the skies always seemed to be a perfect blue, and in winter ice-diamonds glinted on hedgerow and spinney. And the people who lived there, tall moustachioed men and broad-bottomed ladies with refined voices and whale-boned corsets, all were the happiest people on planet Earth. They were truly contented as they snuggled in their beds at night and listened sleepily to the rustlings in their tidy thatched roofs. Everything in Nimby was perfect until a notice went up.

Miles away was Welcome, a humble town that also nestled between low-lying hills, but it was a great deal more modest in demeanour. The people were equally happy, of course, the men folk with their fishing rods and pigeon lofts and the broad-bottomed women with their tsunami bosoms rippling barely supported beneath bright colourful cotton frocks. The people of Welcome were truly happy and every now and then, when Mr Broadback or Mrs Bumleigh won a small amount on the Lotto or the dogs, there would be a party. Life couldn’t have been better, and they smiled in their sleep as they lay in their comfy beds and listened to the rattling in their lofts as twigs and debris blew against ancient sheets of slate. Everything in Welcome was perfect until a notice went up.

The two notices were essentially the same notice and, to summarise them, suggested that the whole damned planet was on the brink of chaos because the energy was running out and as a consequence there would be a public meeting to discuss the erection of some several wind turbines on the nearby hills.

“Not in my back yard!” crowed Mrs Ponsomby-Smythe in Nimby. “Those hills are a well-known beauty spot and nobody’s going to spoil the view, not in my lifetime they’re not!”

“Over my dead body!” snuffled her moustachioed husband, snorting and trying to make sense of things with a mind more accustomed to shooting pheasants than actually contemplating energy crises

And the considerations of Mr and Mrs Ponsomby-Smythe were reflected by the whole village as they gathered at the meeting alluded to on the notice. The consensus was total: there must be no dratted noisy wretched view-spoiling wind turbines in their back yard, no sirree, not now and not ever and over a huge number of dead bodies.

In Welcome the attitude was somewhat different.

“It’ll mean work for now and security for the future!” declared Mrs Smith of Ponsomby Street. “It’ll mean that our little ones will be able to switch their lights on during future winters when all the gas has run out and the power-stations are on short time!”

“And they’ll be an added attraction on the hills,” enthused Mr Smith, her husband and consequently also of Ponsomby Street. “They’ll make our beautiful scenery even more beautiful and folks’ll come from miles to admire our view!”

And so the turbines were planted on the hills above Welcome whilst a bitter row raged in the houses and streets of Nimby, and the workmen leaned on their shovels waiting for peace to resume so they could erect their turbines according to the letter of bye-laws and legislation, both of which demanded local support for such major contributions to the future.

And so the years passed, and the blades over Welcome turned and fed the National Grid with many kilowatts of clean electrical power whilst Mrs Ponsomby-Smythe in Nimby supervised the signing of ever more Not in My Back Yard petitions.

And the crunch came.

The gas ran low. The power stations went on short time and there were power cuts.

But the winds did blow.

And because of the way that part of the National Grid was wired the wind turbines fed the light switches and fridges and Playstations of Welcome first, and the happy folk there barely noticed that anything was wrong. On the other hand, Mrs Ponsomby-Smythe, now bigger of bottom and more severe of skirt than ever, started moaning in ever louder tones.

“The caviar in the fridge has gorn orf!” she wailed.

“The phone-lines are down!” stammered her elderly husband.

“The Playstation won’t work!” howled her grandson.

And the good lady started a petition, demanding that the turbines above Welcome be diverted to Nimby because caviar tends to turn green when it’s gorn orf.

And the Minister of Power, from his home on Ponsomby Street, filed the correspondence from Nimby in his waste paper bin, from where it would go to be recycled and turned into nice rolls of toilet tissue, which the Ponsomby-Smythes wouldn’t consider buying because neither of them ever quite understood the nature and origin of recycled toilet paper.