Is it a bird? Is it a...?

"It's a plane! Bye bye plane!" are the boy's favourite words, accompanied by squeals of genuine delight, open-mouthed amazement and vigorous waving.

A while ago we looked into moving to west London so I could cut down my commute and have the luxury of getting up after the radio breakfast shows have started (much as Radio 4's Farming Today really addresses my daily crop rotation issues). We rambled around Richmond, chugged around Chiswick and tootled around Twickenham. But for all that these areas have some gorgeous areas and actual, semi-affordable houses, there was one big problem: the planes. Try as we might to ignore them, the picnic at Kew Gardens where I could only hear half of H's musings thanks to the home-bound holidayers overhead sent us scurrying back to NW3 and early starts.

No planes here! Or so I had conned myself into believing until the boy started speaking and pointing; pointing out that, in fact, we do live under the flight path. There are hundreds of them, all day long. The boy can hear a lone aircraft over a boiling kettle or the Hoover, looking at me with excitement for confirmation that it is indeed yet another aircraft. I sometimes wonder if he conceals a pair of binoculars in his mop of blond hair as he can spot a pinprick of a plane in the widest of skies (and clouds are inevitably a source of some disappointment).

I bought him the sweetest airplane mobile the other day which he adores (and makes bedtime marginally less traumatic -bonus!), fueling his obsession yet further. But as a car-free household that struggles up the hill each week with the recycling, buys local/fairtrade/organic/whatever and is a mere 10 year wait away from being owners of our very own allotment, I'm not sure how we've produced a16 month old that would vote for a third runway at Heathrow...