OPINION: I Want to go Green.

I’d quite like a wind turbine in the garden, although it would have to be the shape of the one we pass when we’re driving down the M4 towards Reading. I love it. It’s one of the most elegant designs I’ve ever seen for something that is so useful.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but many people don’t like them, or say they’re fine as long as they don’t have to actually look at them. I wonder how quickly they’d change their minds if they were reduced to using oil lamps or candles and cooking on an open fire.

With a home turbine, windy winter days would suddenly become acceptable: welcome even. Instead of worrying about how you’re going to afford the rising cost of keeping warm and donning another layer of woollies rather than turning the thermostat up a notch, you’d cheer when the weather man predicted blizzards.
If it blew hard enough for long enough, there might even be enough electricity left over to contribute to the national grid; in which case the electricity company would be paying you. Fancy that!
Even watching the leaves from a neighbour’s tree billowing en masse over the fence and settling in your garden wouldn’t be half so irritating. You could think, sucks to the electricity company and look forward to a nice fat cheque, as you pulled the curtains, switched on another bar of the electric fire and settled down to toast your toes in front of its artificial flames.

The biggest problem encountered so far with home turbines, is when they are fixed to the roof, chimney stack, or walls of a house. The vibrations caused by cross winds which is common in built up areas, can cause structural damage. Experts are quick to reassure us new designs are overcoming that particular problem and the height of a regular house isn’t optimum for catching every little gust anyway.
High, stand alone turbines are the best option, especially in a chimney free town like Bracknell, with many of its houses half clad in wood.
Fast moving technology will quickly weed out minor problems as they crop up and as more of us rebel against paying through the nose for utilities that are set to become increasingly erratic.

If the energy crisis continues and our utility companies carry on sticking their heads in the sand to the extent they are at present, a bizarre vision of suburban front gardens looking more like bijou prairie homesteads with dust devils and sage brush blowing aimlessly along blistered tarmac roads and up our front paths, will become all too real.
Imagine if you can a blazing hot Sunday afternoon with just a soupcon of breeze. When the only sound to be heard, apart from the irritating buzz of helmet -less youngsters dune surfing on mini bikes, is the monotonous creak of countless wind turbines producing electricity to cook the Sunday lunch, and pumping water from personal wells hundreds of feet below the parched earth so that we can do the washing up afterwards.

I quite fancy my own eggs as well…Does anyone know if you need planning permission for a chicken coop?