Battening down the hatches

Once a year, life around here gets a little noisy... Between the boundary of my front garden and the end of the runway at Fairford (home of the Royal International Air Tattoo) there is nothing but fields and the odd country lane.

The aircraft have started arriving already — as always, very audible, although visibility this year looks likely to be poor. Some years I can sit out in the garden and watch the whole show for free, which is just as well given the level of visitor traffic that will clog the roads all round here on Saturday and Sunday. This year, I'm expecting the action to be hidden behind the milk-of-magnesia clouds.

I don't really mind the noise or the traffic — I knew about it before I moved in. What can be a problem, however, is the interruption to my broadband service. Too far from the phone exchange to get wired broadband, let alone anything so exotic as cable, I have a wireless aerial on the chimney that is linked (eventually) to a base station on the airfield at Fairford and thence to the big wide world. A base station which once a year is flooded with traffic from the staff and volunteers who run the Tattoo.

So if I go very quiet this weekend, you'll know what's happening.