No, I really do. Not urban Essex, but out towards the coast. The roads are pretty poor, but that means that not many people go there. The countryside is not remotely pretty (we have Surrey for that. Personally I've always found Surrey unbearably smug) but it's - I dunno, purposeful. It does a job of work. It's not kindly. And of course it's fuller of history than an egg is full of meat. Romans at Colchester, Saxons at Triplow and Vikings at Maldon. Oh, and Beth Chatto gardens there.
It was Maldon this weekend. The docks are so interesting, and if you aren't in time for an actual trip on a Thames sailing barge you can usually blag a scramble over the deck. If you don't fancy the coastal path (which does need stout shoes) the promenade is a gentle stroll. At at the end of the promenade, at last, hurrah hurrah, is the John Doubleday statue of Brythnoth.
Golly, don't the English love a loser. This idiot had an invading horde of Vikings penned on an island off the coast, reachable only by tidal causeway. All the Anglo-saxons had to do was sit there. But oh no, the vikings ask please to be let off the island, because otherwise it isn't really a fair fight now, is it? And this twit says, OK then.
WHAT!
How the subsequent slaughter and total bloody DEFEAT of the Saxons gets turned into literary gold is a trick only an Englishman can pull off.
Oh and? Nowhere on the statue can you find who it is, or indeed who made it. Go figure.
ps talking about losers, last night, as SO is in Bucharest, I thought to treat myself to Severance - not SO's sort of movie at all. It was 20 minutes before I bottled. Couldn't do it. Maybe I'll finish watching it tomorrow morning, about 9:30ish. Or maybe not.
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A perfectly reasonable life spins out of control . . .
About Me
- Mangonel
- Dealer in disease, destruction and death with a kick like a mule. And a BIG crush on Stephen Mangan. Which Significant Other knows nothing about.
Things to do before I die
- See the Aurora Borealis
- Take an actual proper music exam
- Read Clarissa
- Visit Everest Base Camp and see the Khumbu Ice Falls
9 comments:
I'm l♥ving it!
:-)
(oh cripes, now I sound like a McDonald's advert)
:-(
just hugely relieved that I'm not Ms Smug of Surrey. . .
;-)
for some reason I had you down for living to the "left" of me (upstream), not that you said where you lived (or that I've been paying attention along the way)
$-/
I've just searched all my bookshelves, and can't find it. It must have been one of the 200 books destroyed in the flood. It was called something like 'Humour [it may even have been American, and thus Humor] in the Bible'. It had a yellow cover, if that helps.
I love Beth Chatto! One day I will pack my bones and come to see her gardens there...
When my SO is out, it's sci-fi all the way. Sad, I know, but it's philosophical, like.
woo! beth chattos' books helped me put together my first important garden 15 years ago! good thing i didn't live near her then; i'd have been over bugging her constantly, stealing cuttings and seedheading like a maniac.
lucky you!
ILTV - doesn't it depend on which side of the river you are? (And I'm in leafy south Bucks)
Dave - thank you. Amazon yields treasures undreamt of by searching 'humour bible'.
Taiga and FN - let's go together. Maybe we will get a group discount. And from stories I've heard, la Chatto frequently chats to visitors, and will happily allow impromptu propagation if you ask nicely enough.
100 words - any recommendations? I'm not au fait with who's who in the SF world these days.
south, and of course I've just seen you're in Bucks cos it says so on your profile (which is why I thought you weren't from Essex!)(very easily confused, me)
so yes, you're upstream of me
to the left (on a map) (at the moment I'm faving south, so you're to the right)
this Chatto person's gardens look wonderful. . .
very inspiring!
Yes, yes, more Beth Chatto. Big bits of our garden are shameless copies of hers, but what with global warming, droughts etc, it's the only sensible style to adopt.
How strange that so many of your readers are mad about gardens, Mangonel. Or maybe not strange at all because I don't understand how anyone couldn't love gardens.
I also watch TV at breakfast time at the weekend, but I now favour Ugly Betty. It used to be Green Wing of course... It's not sinful honest. There is so much guilt attached to TV, but personally I don't think it's any more brain rotting than the average weekend newspaper.
The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
You are nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth
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