SCANNING my airmail edition of The Advertiser, I was struck by the pertinence of my most recent literary research to the current Eco-business Park controversy raging amid your columns.

Only last Friday, I came across the (admittedly 'impure') manuscript of a playful parody on Lewis Carol by (possibly) A E Housman, where with poignant prescience he anticipates and scourges the latest threat to Ludlow's integrity.

I hope the good yeomen and yeowomen will rally to his clarion call.

Said the walrus to the carpenter

As they walked upon the Sheet:

"What is this steel I seem to feel

Beneath my flippered feet?

Is that a JCB I see

Astride the Ledwyche Brook?

And where's the glade where once I played

Among the standing stook?"

The carpenter did clench his pipe,

And sagely shook his head:

"From here, my friend, to Bennett's End

The land has blanched and bled.

No more the curlew's warbling call,

No more the exultant lark.

This asphalt shroud with engines loud

Is Ludlow's Eco Park."

"Forgive me," said the walrus, "if

I sound a touch perplexed.

It's rather like expecting Nike

To advertise for Next.

The Ludlow by-pass was, I thought,

A Cordon Sanitaire.

Where will it end, my dear old friend?

My Eco's parked out there."

He turned and swept a flippered arm

To Clee and Abdon Burf.

"Let's stroll," he cried, "on Brown Clee side,

On God's own Eco Turf!"

Hiram K Budweiser,

(alias: I Barge, Old Street, Ludlow)

'Faculty of Comparative Semiotics,

University of Moosejaw,

Montana 1768,

USA'.

"Ecce Eco!" - ("Who can object to a bulldozer if it's painted green?")