I WANT to tell you a fairy story.

Once upon a time, in Lower Darwen, on a corner, at a road junction, there stood a thriving greengrocer's shop.

The traffic used to queue quite a lot at this corner, so along came the wicked ogres from the council. They said: "This shop will have to go so that we can widen the road to let the cars out."

They sent the tax-collectors to rob the people of their gold and with this money they paid the shopkeeper to leave. Then they huffed and they puffed and they knocked the shop down and the cars all got out easier.

A few years later, the same wicked ogres from the council came along and saw that the traffic was moving quite well.

They realised that they could not allow this. So they decided that the road would have to be made narrow again - even narrower than it was before.

Using the gold that they had continued to take from the people, they paid more men to go to Lower Darwen to make it harder for the cars to move once again.

Unbelievable, isn't it!

PETER DUERDEN, Countess Road, Lower Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.