Imagine my excitement when I read on my neighbourhood website that the council were sponsoring an anti-idling day.  There is far too much of it, even in leafy Richmond and it is an all too common error to mistake a higher state of stillness for mere physical inactivity.  Way too many people have jumped on the bandwagon of doing nothing which true devotees like my friend Raymond and myself have spent a lifetime perfecting.  Let’s get out there and get them doing something useful.  (See last week for some very suitable suggestions for idle hands).

However, yet again I fell prey to my own boundless enthusiasm.  It transpires that what the council actually had in mind was engine idling, which for the non-technical is having a vehicle’s engine running when stationary for more than a minute.  What kind of double think is this in a borough where the speed limit is about to be dropped to 20mph?  Cars will hardly be moving at the best of times; during rush hours the average driver will commit about 200 crimes a mile. (It need hardly be said that an entirely unintended side effect of this is that it will generate buckets of money with the poor motorist being charged £40 for each offence).

The day started at a local school which had been built in the middle of a large, busy car park.  Not, I venture, the most obvious commitment to breathing clean air.  There was, it need hardly be said, a health and safety briefing – don’t inhale as you cross the playground – and the donning of hi-viz tunics.  My spirits rose briefly as it seemed like an ideal opportunity to show my sons that I had been part of the gilet jaune movement but sadly they were blue and, worn over my padded coat, made me look like a fat, trainee Hobby Bobby.

There were actually a couple of genuinely interesting facts.  Apparently an idling engine produces enough noxious gases to fill 140 balloons a minute!  Am I the only one who spots a re-cycling opportunity?  And in 2017 one particular street in London, probably somewhere Godless south of the river, exceeded its annual quota of emitting poison in just five days!  Worrying statistics people  although one feels honour bound to mention that at one time 70% of all pollutants came from buses rather than cars.  London air is the filthiest in Europe and that’s another good reason to leave it.  Have your fumes back, Brussels.

We then spent thirty minutes being photographed with the children and some local Councillors.  We waved black balloons about despite a little concern that they were plastic and helium filled and therefore not as green as a zealot might have wished.  (There was muttering in the ranks).  We then ventured forth and preached to the unconverted, all six of whom turned out to be van drivers as they are the only people who would even dare to stop in the red route world that is Richmond town centre.  They were touchingly remorseful and by coincidence, none of them had ever done it before.  What are the chances?

One little thing did occur to me.  How do the emissions of six vans compare to the jumbo jets which fly low over the town every thirty second and whose number will rise when Heathrow is expanded?  I did ask and was reassured that for what didn’t seem entirely convincing  reasons,  they cause no pollution at all for the man in the street struggling to draw breath.  So that’s all right then.  World saved and home for tea.