That stuff in the papers about Blair’s missus getting him the sack really pinged my radar. According to the legend, the Wicked Witch of the West got right up the noses of the Labour party by getting the Drowning Street nuclear bunker done up, at great expense to the nation, because she didn’t like the colour. And that threw them all into such a hissy fit that they ganged up on Blair and forced him to tell them when he’d push off.
I’ve got one too - a bunker not a WWotW. Not that it started off as a fallout shelter. According to the archives in my library (a load of stuff abandoned by previous owners), the bunker started off as a root cellar, which was turned into a cess pit. When they got some more modern plumbing installed, it became redundant.
Sometime in the 1930s, the then owner of The Mansion had all the cess cleared out. Later on, he had a roadway built down to an underground car park. This was about the time of the Spanish Civil War and he thought war with Germany was inevitable and he didn’t want the Jerries dropping bombs on his collection of cars.
Come the 1950s, the garage became a fallout shelter. Then, in the late 1990s, it became part of an energy conservation scheme, which can’t have done the last owner much good because he went bankrupt when his Global Warming Scam collapsed about his ears in the Brown recession.
I haven’t really done anything with the bunker yet. I’ve had a look at it, but there’s more than enough space in The Mansion for me, and it’s a bit of a hike to the bunker. Still, it’s always there if the peasants get revolting and I need somewhere to hide out. I wonder what colour the WWotW had hers painted? Mine’s a warmish shade of pastel orange.
