Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.

Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.

Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!

Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.

Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/

It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.

Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.

18th August 2017 - these should be the 'dog days' (hot, sultry days) of summer but this has been the coldest, wettest August for thirty years. Just before the title picture, in Skynet Drive, was taken, it was pouring down.

Funny old game, walking in the countryside. As the title picture indicates, I was taking pictures of what remains of our green environment in Skynet Drive and adjacent locales. Threatened over-development make imperative the capturing of these images while we can. So what comes about? Whilst I was taking the picture below (and others), a car went by ...

... what were the driver's thoughts? Not 'bloody hell, someone has chucked some McDonald's detritus into the road, despoiling our countryside' or 'what a great shame, this green field will be consigned to history soon' or 'how quaint - an old git is taking pictures for posterity'. No, it was the modern, perverted, base thought 'an old git taking pictures - he must be up to no good'. Thus, the driver 'reported me' to the Airbus security guard who approached me ... and the conversation went something like this ...

She: "You're not allowed to take pictures here"

Me: "I've been taking pictures in this area for over forty years"

She: "This is an Airbus site and photography is not permitted"

Me: "Where does it say that - there are no signs"

Me (again): "And there will soon be an 88-home estate in the adjacent field where the residents will be able to take pictures of your site to their heart's content from their upstairs windows"

Me (again): "And pictures of this area are freely available on Google Earth, Google Maps, Bing Maps etc, etc"

(With regard to Airbus, see the final paragraphs of the 'Bombing' article on rudloescene here Bombing)

Whereupon she showed me her bona fides (!) by peeling back her jacket to reveal ... (wait for it) the Serco logo on her sweater. This was, I guess, an attempt to add some legitimacy to her approach. On Serco's website, we find such bullshit as the following:

We do this by streamlining frontline and back-office processes and using digital technology to facilitate self-service and increase convenience. As expert service integrators, we form effective partnerships with small enterprises to manage local delivery. We increase satisfaction through improving service user experience, and we upskill the teams who work for us (at minimum wage no doubt) so that all benefit. We apply core and consistent competencies and a set of differentiating capabilities

So that's clear. Any road up, I continued to use my differentiating capabilities to take photographs in Skynet Drive and beyond, ignoring the charade of modern life  Those photos follow: