BootsnAll Travel Network



2004: a local review

The final edition of the Basingstoke Observer, picked up at Sainsbury’s, carried a review of local events in 2004—”the year of living dangerously”.

Among accounts of vandalism, post office closures, rottweiler attacks, anti-nuclear protests and the (mis-)fortunes of Basingstoke’s seemingly only strip-club, the account reads:

JULY
ARMS-dealing Chineham Granddad David Tomkins pleaded guilty in a Florida courtroom for attempting to assassinate notorious Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar with a Vietnam War-era ground assault aircraft.
Hart celebrated the launch of the nationwide bat-protection programme ‘Operation Bat’ by accidentally chainsawing through an Odiham bat roost, killing at least one bat in the process.
Oakley residents were grinning from ear to ear when a government survey named the village as the happiest place to live in Britain.”
(Basingstoke Observer, Thursday, December 30, 2004, p. 4)

—Quite a lively neighbourhood then, seeing that aircraft assaults merit no more attention than assaults on bat roosts.

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