Before I left, one neighbour had been using power tools all day every day for two months, an obsessive bricoleur. Soon there will be a building site opposite and the noise – on top of the usual noise – will be unbearable. But it gets worse – adjacent to the 2 hectares another 1.5-hectare plot is for sale. Given current building trends, an investor could build a sizeable estate on all that land. Yet another cluster of identical, soulless, ugly boxes.