At that time there was a bit of a fashion with national newspapers to publish stories of events on April Fool's Day, which were convincing but false.

The BBC entered into the spirit with their report by Richard Dimbleby on the harvesting of the annual crop of spaghetti from spaghetti trees.

With the enthusiastic support of Pat Holt, who was then editor, it was decided that the Islander should produce its own April 1 report.

I wrote an illustrated report which stated that plans were well advanced to build a large wind farm on the common between Beachlands and the west end of the golf course.

The report said the authorities were confident that in the interest of the environment there would be little objection to the noise of the turbines.

One councillor was very cross about the failure to inform her, but on the whole the reaction to this shock-horror report was not as widespread as we had hoped.

All the same Pat felt it was necessary to write apiece for the May Hayling Islander reminding readers of the date on which the wind farm report came out.

Now, nine years on, in April 2008 the subject appears to have come to life again and there have been many letters on the subject.

Though the erection of one turbine seems pretty pathetic – compared with our 1999 report of a whole wind farm, I do wonder if the Hayling Islander has been at the April 1 game again, with a lot more success this time. If it has, well done!

Sir John Lea
Brights Lane
Hayling
Editor's note: Sorry John, we were not to blame. The council asked the question would the public be happy to see a wind turbine at Langstone as part of the pubic consultation exercise for the Local Development Framework.

They deny there are any serious proposals for a turbine, let alone a wind farm, but obviously there was a strong reaction to any such "testing of the water" so to speak.

This year's April edition was printed on the first, but after some debate, I scrapped plans to run an April Fool's story that Langstone bridge was going to be painted fluorescent green to illuminate it at night… it seems I got half the story right after all. Let's hope the paint stays on this time!