What are we talking about here? Extra moorings for luxury yachts in our multi million pound marina? New helipads at our state-of-the-art airport? Er, neither actually.
The Isle of Oxney might technically be an island but the nearest we get to being surrounded by water nowadays is if a leaking water main causes a puddle to form at the bottom of one of our hills.
And as for helicopters: the first mechanical bird-in-the-sky to venture over this forsaken isle got shot down by the local gun club because they thought we were being invaded.
Just kidding. In reality the only helicopter we get is the air ambulance, not a common occurrence nowadays as we’ve managed to beat the system that says you can’t have one by road if the patient is awake. The number one rule here when calling for an ambulance is to never admit that the patient is conscious, even if it’s you and you’re the one making the phone call.
No, our change of infrastructure is a new bus service, announced with the appropriate flag waving procession and an opening ceremony attended by local parish bigwigs.
I’m lying. The first we knew about it was the arrival of some temporary looking bus stops and ‘A’ frames displaying the new timetable. Crowding round, we were ecstatic to find that a whole bus would be ours with a new circular route operating between 10.31am and 1.42pm, visiting our hallowed isle twice a day, Monday to Friday only. Whoopee do. We managed to contain our excitement, which wasn’t easy.
Those of you blessed with the intricacies of a city infrastructure are probably wondering how on earth we can live like this. The answer is we don’t, we all use our cars.
Still, some people were happy, namely Mrs Martin whose non driving son Richard, Rich to his friends, found he could start paying his mother the occasional two hour visit by hopping onto the new bus.
It won’t last of course. That’s the rural trend. Provide an inadequate bus service that only operates within the confines of a few hours and then cancel it because not enough people use it.
You couldn’t make it up.