The West of Scotland doesn't really do picturesque villages. They tend to rear up on either side of a main road with a housing scheme tacked on at the back, and then disappear again. The village green with bell-toiling church, village inn, and thatched cottages must have appeared too effete for the Scottish psyche, and never took hold.

So that is why Eaglesham is such a pleasant surprise. Halfway between Glasgow and East Kilbride it somehow over the generations managed to preserve its vast green space in the middle, the Orry, as well as keep its old coaching inn, and many of the eighteenth century, white-washed cottages around it. I like the fact that Orry is not some ancient Scots word meaning the forest of owls or whatever but is the prosaic fact that it was known as the Common Area, and it eventually slurred its way into becoming simply the Orry. Growing up in the West End of Glasgow, all I knew about Eaglesham was the former coaching inn, the Eglinton Arms, known to everyone as the Eggy Arms, when even young men from the West End occasionally ventured there as folklore talked of comely South Side young women attending its weekend discotheques.

Now Eaglesham has the largest windfarm in Europe, Whitelee, just three miles away, and while the windfarm does not overpower the view as much of it is out of sight, it has brought with it money. And where there is money there is usually discord. Not families at war, troops in the street type of discord, but the middle-class mutterings of where is the money going, and is the council to blame for not spending enough of it in the village.

When the windfarm was established, a fund was set up by the power company to help local communities, a benign bribe as it were for building so many wind turbines next door to you. East Renfrewshire Council is given about £100,000 a year to bestow on the towns and villages beside the windfarm. Great news for Eaglesham where the Eaglesham and Waterfoot Community Development Trust, a voluntary group, works to protect and enhance the local environment. They have worked hard. They have created a heritage trail in the village with stone cairns dotted around, many of them on the Orry, with plaques explaining Eaglesham's unique history. I read that Scottish villages were often created by the landowners, and it was Alexander, the 10th Earl of Eglinton, who planned the layout of the village, making it one of the best planned villages in Scotland. He might have achieved more if he had not been shot dead by a local poacher. The Orry, broader at the bottom than at the top, and with a road bisecting it as actually a letter A denoting Alexander's initial. Good job he wasn't an Ian as the centre of Eaglesham would then have been far less spectacular.

The village though fell into disrepair and it was not until after the Second World War that attempts were made to restore it. I read on another plaque on the heritage trail that Kathleen Whyte, a prime mover in Eaglesham's restoration, described it as "a pleasant place but with so many gaps and blemishes - rather like a smile ruined by bad teeth." Now it is a much sought-after commuter village where folk can live the village life so near to the city.

When the Windfarm Fund was established six years ago, money was sought by the Trust to put new play equipment on the Orry's swing-park and it has been a success, filled with screaming delighted children in the summer months. It has a zip slide for goodness sake - you could only dream of such luxury when I were a lad. The Old Carswell Church was renovated as the Carswell Hall, the Boys Brigade company was given a new marquee, and Eaglesham Primary School was given new play equipment.

But then came the suspicions locally that East Renfrewshire Council had become a tad avaricious, and wanted to use the fund for projects they should have been financing out of their own budget. You can hardly blame the council as its budgets have been squeezed, but some locals felt school play equipment should have come from the council's own funds like any other school. Then the council used windfarm money to install traffic lights. Now that really should have come from the council's own cash, say many locals.

Then the boundaries of where they money should be spent became more flexible in the council's eyes, and schemes further and further away from the windfarm have benefitted. It is not helped that the committee set up to disperse the funds is mainly made up of council officials - local representation is minimal. There used to be a member of the local community council on the committee but then East Renfrewshire Council disbanded the local community council. People in Eaglesham do not believe they are being listened to. And there are a lot of people in Eaglesham with a point of view. Even the voluntary development trust cannot please everybody. One of the cairns it erected on the Orry is at the bottom of a popular sledging run in the winter and some folk want it moved. In fact it now has sandbags surrounding it to cushion the blow if anyone sledges into it. The snag is that moving it would mean all the maps explaining where the cairns are would be obsolete so whether the cairn should move divides opinion.

Jim McLean, chairman of the development trust, says the windfarm fund is very welcome. "It's just the way it is managed by the council that's the problem," he says.

The next big project the development trust would like to see is the renovation of the football pitches and pavilion at the Orry - the pitches are so waterlogged they are unplayable in the winter. But will the council spend the windfarm fund on it? One suspects there will be a lot of hot air being blown in that debate before a decision is taken.