Sunday, March 11, 2007

Gone with the wind by HARRY MOUNT

On a sunny spring morning, Deeping St Nicholas provides a perfect snapshot of English country life. The only buildings that break the flat horizon of the Lincolnshire fens are silver-grey church spires and neat red-brick farmhouses, around which are clustered barns and silos. A covey of wood pigeons clap their wings as they take off from the black, loamy, fertile soil striped with green lines of oilseed rape. And then you hear it. "Whoompf ... whoompf ... whoompf ..."

Like the sound of an approaching train that never comes, the thumps that break the still air are not overpoweringly loud - at about 65 decibels, they're the level of a lorry going by at 30 miles an hour 100 yards away.

But what is so menacing is the regularity and the scope of the noise, which feels like a giant heartbeat shaking the earth.

(click to read entire article)

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