It's a Sign

in Oxfordshire, on the A361, there's an ordinary farm. Low-slung and utilitarian, it faces away from the road towards a modest view, into that Western valley of the Swere.

You wouldn't notice the building at all, if it wasn't for the twenty-foot Ban the Bomb symbol painted in yellow on its roof. Quite a shock, in this terriTory. And this isn't the graffito of some impulsive peacenik. This is a well-executed piece of sign-writing, well maintained, and most deliberately oriented. Follow that eye-line across your map for a few miles and you'll come to Upper Heyford, the air base which promised to launch the prettiest Armageddon, if ever the time had come.

At least when the Four Horsemen pass over, they'll know that someone said no.

This was in 1987. Returning, ten or so years later, the symbol had gone - but there had been a big change in geopolitics, the end of the USSR, and a disarming of nuclear airbases, like Greenham Common & Upper Heyford.

Tew