
I'll pass this one on. When I was a lad I did a project about Iron Age works where I lived. Mrs Shelley - no-nonsense widow/teacher/matriarch - took me over the fields all around us, finding old ironworks and slag. She said to me every time - "there's oil here, beneath us - the Weald, Surrey, it's a giant oilfield - don't tell."
And so it is. The "Gatwick Gusher" the initial incursion by the Gas Greed Giants is 2 miles from where I grew up. Go figure.
It's true that I hated growing up in Surrey and its holy triumverate of Tory Party, Church and WI. But I loved its countryside. And I despair of silly old buffers whinging about windfarms - "what part of renewable don't you get, you fascist fuckwit" I think to myself, occasionally outloud. But oil-rigs in Surrey. On Leith Hill? No, I'm definitely with the old bastards on that one...