Mrs. Marjorie Chamberlain of Purley, near London, had a nanny goat named Gertie and two kids named Snitch and Snatch. She also had a one-eyed, champion egg-laying duck named Belinda, and a Derby racing car. All these chattels needed housing.
She decided to build a goathouse first. But Mrs. Chamberlain reckoned without the small, slow grinding of the bureaucratic mills. Her application for a timber license bounced back & forth for 13 weeks, among six different government agencies. Baffled and angry, Mrs. Chamberlain wrote to the newspapers. Last week her story rang across...