Heaven is in England

Here's a little something about nothing, just because I felt like writing it. You may have noticed that I haven't written anything here for over two weeks. The reason is that I have been away. Yes, yes, I hear you: "Where have you been, pray tell?" Well, "pray tell" is rather apt, because I've been to... Heaven.No, but really, bear with me. Heaven, or more precisely, Heaven Farm, is situated in Sussex, very near a lovely little village called Dane Hill, to be exact. It's a combination of a tea room, a farming museum, and a camp site. Run by a very nice elderly couple, Mr & Mrs John Butler, it's a charming place to stay for a holiday in the English countryside, and a perfect spot for a base camp if you're on a mission to see as many beautiful English public gardens as you can in a fortnight. Here are a few pictures of gardens we've seen. But we didn't only visit gardens. We did country and costal walks too. On one of those walks, we came across this sign: Having heard of the Piltdown Man, I decided to investigate. I went to Piltdown, and looked at some of the men there. I even spoke to a few of them. But try as I might, I could not get one of them to convince me he was the Piltdown Man. I must therefore conclude that we are probably dealing with a hoax. Just so you know.Now, on a holiday, you can't visit gardens and walk the countryside 24-7. You have to have some time off to do things like eating, sleeping, and... reading! So, naturally, when I packed my stuff before we went, I stacked some books in a box. Over the years, we've come to call this box the "literature box", although most of what's in it could not rightly be called 'literature'. In the box there are magazines, assorted maps, folders and guides, and of course my books. Here's a list of the books I took with me this year:

• "The Adventure of English - The Biography of a Language", by Melvyn Bragg
• "The Vesuvius Club", by Mark Gatiss (recommended by Stephen Fry)
• "Don't you have time to think?", collected correspondence of Richard Feynman, edited by his daughter Michelle Feyman.
• "Freedom Evolves", by Daniel Dennett

I admit, it's a modest list, but there's a reason for that. It's this: if you put only four books in the box, it means there's room for more. And that's where things get interesting...Because, you see, when one does one's shopping for lunch or dinner, one may easily come across a bookshop or two. (Or three.) And for me, "coming across a bookshop" usually means that I will be adding a few books to my collection within no time at all. You may think it an affliction, or even an addiction, I just think it's marvellous. Anyway, here's the list of books I came back with:

• "Seed to Seed - The Secret Life of Plants", by Nicholas Harberd
• "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", by a certain C.R. Darwin
• "The Thirteenth Tribe", by Arthur Koestler
• "Does Anything Eat Wasps, and 101 Other Questions", a publication of New Scientist
• "Truth, A Guide for the Perplexed", by Simon Blackburn
• "The Funniest Thing You Never Said - the Ultimate Collection of Humorous Quotations", by Rosemarie Jarski
• "A Teaspoon and an Open Mind - The Science of Doctor Who", by Michael White
• "Eight Little Piggies - Reflections in Natural History", by Stephen Jay Gould
• "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory", by Stephen Jay Gould
• "The Total Library, Non-Fiction 1922-1986, Jorge Luis Borges", edited by Eliot Weinberger
• And last but not least: the books I originally brought along. (In case you were thinking I threw them away. One shudders at the thought of such an unspeakable act of depravity.)

How's that for a list? Not so modest anymore, right? Indeed, I couldn't even fit them all in the lit-box anymore. And that's only a foreboding of an unfortunate downside to not-so-modest lists of bought books: I am slowly but assuredly approaching the point where I will be out of shelf space in my home.The upside this year was that my partner said that I had been a good boy and restrained myself on the book-buying front. I can't believe it, she actually said that! Maybe it's because I indulged her by coming along to each and every garden she fancied going to. She's really the garden person in our little household, but ever since we moved to the country, I've slowly become more interested in gardening. For now, I still occupy myself with doing the "technical" things, like driving the lawn-mower (you can actually sit on it!), tilling the soil with another machine, mending the fences, tending to the watering system that's layed out in the ground, clearing out the pond every so often, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think I'm quite ready for the real thing: getting my fingers in the soil and handling plants in all their nakedness - you know, roots and all that. But it'll come, no doubt.Now, enough about books and gardening. There's something else I have to tell you about. Not five minutes walking from the camp site, the owner of the land, Mr Butler, had laid out a "nature trail", along which he had placed a number of signs indicating interesting things like rare trees, the old remains of an iron smelting place, and places where the BBC had done some filming. (There were three such places: one where a film had been made about Heaven Farm, another where Alan Titchmarsh had filmed Bluebells and yet another where Hercule Poirot had been shot - with a camera that is, not with a pistol - in an Agatha Christy whodunnit.) But the best thing was - to my mind at least - the Greenwich Meridian. At a particular spot along the trail you could plant one foot in the Western Hemisphere and the other in the Eastern Hemisphere, thus straddling the Greenwich Meridian. Here are some pictures. Isn't England great?Well, that's it for now. Over to you. "I dont't kill flies. I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high.' - Bruce Baum (Taken from "The Funniest Thing You Never Said")Edited by Parasomnium, : Moved pictures of gardens upEdited by Parasomnium, : Some more improvementsEdited by Parasomnium, : Re-uploaded picture

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I'm not surprised you couldn't fit those books in the box. Structure of Evolutionary Theory is enormous. Sussex is a pretty place - I went camping for a week there in the middle of nowhere last year and enjoyed it tremendously.

[Deleted]Edited by RickJB, : Wrong recipient.

Nice to hear you're having a good time!Be sure to pay a visit to Manchester!

Out of curiosity, do you know where that is? Does it still exist? The angle (and the normal narrowness of the roads in terraced areas) suggests that it was taken from a pile of rubble recently created by mr JCB, I wouldn't be surprised if that sorry row of houses rests in peace now.

Heh heh, I *think* it's somewhere around Clayton before they bullt the City of Manchester Stadium.Just my little joke...

To be frank, I'm a secret Anglophile--knowing very little about it.

So am I, knowing alot about it.Great people the English. They have a really soft underbelly - if you know how to scratch it.(Hint: heap praises upon them for any century involving ??66 and you'll go far)Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Actually, by "Anglophile" I was thinking of the British Isles in general. It all blends together in my mind.

Important tip from one of the Anglos.Never call somebody from one of the non-English countries of the British Isles English. It will always end in tears.The only exception to this rule is in pubs in Glasgow - call a Glaswegian an Englishman and he'll probably give you a kiss...

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Oops! Wrong Planet

...you would be advised to google 'glasgow kiss' before venturing to comment - in the unlikely event that you find yourself in a Glasgow pub.

Spoilsport!

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Oops! Wrong Planet