A SWINDON Advertiser survey indicates that some two thirds of you are against proposals to run a canal through the town centre as a tourist trap.

Proponents and promoters of the canal say it would be the very model of a modern inland waterway, with pleasure craft puttering prettily about and families coming from miles around to wander the waterside and pause for refreshments at picturesque cafes.

Opponents fear any such waterway will attract supermarket trolleys, dead dogs, stolen mopeds and similar detritus - like a magnet attracts iron filings or the back of a waltzer car's seat attracts loose change from a trouser pocket.

There are also fears that the feral, criminal, pointy-headed scratters who make life on land a misery for all around them, will also head for the water to cause mischief.

After all, most of said scratters come from such close families that they've probably got gills and the odd fin.

In short, many objectors fear the canal, and they may or may not have good reason.

Fortunately, in this neck of the woods, certain things people fear tend to take a long while to materialise - if they materialise at all.

For example, suppose you'd found yourself with a debilitating phobia of shiny new libraries back in the 1950s or 1960s.

As things turned out, you would have ended up with a good 40 or 50 years to seek specialist help or move to another town that already had an old library and was quite happy with it.

In a similar vein, if I were one of those unfortunate few with a morbid dread of monorails, I'd have been reduced to a state of hyperventilating panic some years back, when there was serious talk of using a council windfall to build one.

I don't know whether there is such a thing as a phobia of undergraduates and lecturers, but anybody suffering from such a fear has had a narrow squeak with the University of Bath.

Luckily for whatever phobics there may be, the university only got as far as taking over the Oakfield School building after the pupils and teachers had been chucked out.

Now it's going away again, which is good news for people who fear universities but not such good news for the unique and excellent Museum Of Computing, which is to be rendered homeless.

In conclusion then, if the prospect of having a canal here appals you, don't worry.

If tradition is followed, it will be years before the first stretch is dug - if it's dug at all.

And yes, I know sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but it's handy for dressing up the blindingly obvious.

2:25pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

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