Blow, blow, thou winter wind

...and don't stop in the summer.

From one of our bedroom windows we can just see a little white three-bladed thing on the roof of a house half a mile away.

A chain of DIY stores has been selling these wind turbines for £1500, and apparently they are being bought enthusiastically by people who either wish to slow down global warning and save a bit on their electricity bills, or hope it will impress the neighbours.

Either possibility seems over-optimistic; most people have read by now that unless you live on a storm-lashed promontory of the Outer Hebrides such a device is likely to provide barely enough power to run a hair-dryer, and will take at least a decade to pay for itself, meanwhile making a irritating noise and possibly shaking your house to pieces with its vibrations.

But the one we can see won’t cause much trouble of that kind: it doesn’t seem to be rotating. Perhaps it is a dummy, like those cast-iron cats people put on the roofs of country cottages.