On this siteMessagesRonald Blair, landlord of the Three Degrees public house in Clanfield was furious today at reports that his 17th Century pub may become the site a third runway for Heathrow airport.
He was visited yesterday by two men with briefcases from West Oxfordshire District Council. They informed him that plans were afoot to turn the snug into a departure lounge and to site a runway along the bar top. At first Blair assumed they were joking. He pointed out that the bar was too short for a Boeing 747 to reach take-off speed and furthermore that the ice bucket was really too short to be a control tower. "But then they showed me something that made me think they must be serious," Blair told us. "They had a miniaturisation device that they said would be able to shrink all inbound and outbound aircraft so that the bar would support their weight perfectly. All they would need to do would be to replace the heat-conducting copper top with flame-retardant Kevlar and the South-East's transport problems would be sold." The news clearly took Ronald Blair, 43, by surprise. "When they first came in there was no sign that they might drop this bombshell. They only revealed themselves after they had been sitting there for a couple of hours like normal customers. They had in fact been drinking quite heavily but of course now I realise they were just trying to soften me up by giving me lots of money," admitted Blair. "I feel so stupid and used." West Oxfordshire District Council would not have been available for comment even if we had contacted them. Typical. |
