As a young man H.G. Wells had spent an unhappy time living with an aunt in Horsell which was then close to Woking and is now part of the overall sprawl..
So,
when he wrote his great science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, he had
the Martians land on Horsell common, in sight of where Wells had once lived.
This
enabled him to have that area of Woking become the first to fall victim to the
terrifying invaders weaponry.
In
the novel the hero of the tale, having witnessed the first meteor fall to
earth, was pursued by the merciless tripods from the common and along Maybury
hill.
Were
the invaders to land today they would have to negotiate a huge six-way
roundabout, dissect a one-way system, a no left turn, a no right turn, two
traffic light junctions, three pelican crossings and two quite appallingly
designed mini roundabouts.
I
think faced with the product of 21st century traffic management and
in particular Woking Borough Councils ill-judged town planning, that the
Martians would have given up and returned home long before they were exposed to
the pathogenic bacteria that eventually saw them off.
The
world saved by the ineptitude of local government, what Irony.
