‘And experts have identified Hamble Hill as the ideal location for this simple, elegant structure. I’d like to make a strong visual connection between the windmill and Godminster Hall, which lies only about a mile away, to the north-west. The windmill will capture the wind and, finally’ – he looks around as if this is the decider – ‘windmills have always been part of the Dorset landscape and, indeed, there are the remains of a windmill on the top of Hamble Hill, as I expect many of you may already know.’

After that, the meeting went to the floor, and the fun really started. Ned had the shit kicked out of him by everyone, by the Council for the Protection of Rural England (who talked about topple distance from footpaths), by the RSPB (who talked about birds and flightpaths), by the local Jurassic group (who talked about the integrity of the landscape), by the local archaeological society, and Uncle Tom Cobleigh.

‘Utter tripe, with all due respect,’ was Henry Pike’s intervention, the one which met with the most rapturous approval. ‘The developers are holding us to ransom while offering you, the landowner, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.’

But the most persuasive case against was mounted by a little bearded man in the audience whom no one had ever seen before, which means that he probably lives at least two miles away. He admitted to being an electrical engineer, and furthermore confessed that he had investigated the specification and performance of the intended windmill, and that, basically, the wind turbine couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding, let alone power Godminster Hall’s many mansions.

During all this, I dart a look across at Lulu Bryanston. Her back is straight but rigid, and her rosebud mouth has set into a little mulish moue. There is no sign of the mother-in-law, Celia Bryanston, so there is a mutton-dressed-as-lamb-to-the-slaughter feeling about her as she sits there in her Clash T-shirt.

Then Harvey repeats the information about whom parishioners can write in to with their views, the deadline for submissions, and says that the council is due to take a decision by the end of next month.

Which is all terribly confusing.

I was ready for this windmill thing to be about new green versus old blue. But it doesn’t appear to be so black and white after all.

Nothing ever is.

Mimi

‘Mum, purlease!’ Mirabel orders, ‘Stop scraping! I keep telling you!’, making me think – and not for the first time – if I had ever spoken to my mother like that, she would have given me very short shrift, but now my life seemed to consist of my daughter telling me off, and not the other way round.

Is this normal, I wonder?