If History is not what happened, but what you can remember, then Geography is not where things are, but where you left them.
A good thing about the US is that towns and cities stay where they're put. Atlanta, Georgia; Lincoln, Nebraska; Denver, Colorado. You may not be able to point to them on a map, but that doesn't mean that you don't instinctively know where they are, and they prove to be very reliable. Sadly, this is not true of many other places around the world. They've obviously drifted, or meandered off while nobody was looking, like members of your family on a shopping trip. And there is a hard-core cadre of distinctly unhelpful places, proper wrong'uns, who've been bugging me for years.
Why on (Google) Earth, for example, is Billericay in Essex with Basildon and Chelmsford when it should obviously be in Ireland? And Staines, which should be in Essex of course, turns out to be in Middlesex, across the other side of London!
Why do Dungeness and, good grief, the Isle of Sheppey, persist in being in Kent when the western coast of Scotland is clearly where they both yearn to be? It's maddening. (But I have to share with you that there is a tiny place north of Dungeness called Lydd on Sea - if that's not overweening ambition I don't know what is..)
Britain seems to be full of mis-places. Tring in Hertfordshire is another place that sounds like it wants to be in Ireland, as is - of course - County Durham.
Small fry, you may think: British idiosyncrasy. Well, how about a whole country? Oh yes, where's Suriname then? Not in West Africa, tucked up in the Gold Coast. No, not in South East Asia either. It's in South America of all places. What is it doing there?
Perhaps I'm just showing my ignorance, but sometimes geography is deliberately unhelpful. Why Bologna and Boulogne? Is it really necessary for them to be so similar? And FOR CRYING OUT LOUD have you seen how many Guineas there are? It's bordering on obsessive. No wonder the post is always getting lost.
Until this can all be sorted out I suppose I'll just have to muddle through. Now please excuse me - I need to GoogleMap my car keys...
Saturday, 13 August 2011
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Shouldn't I be doing something more useful? Like checking Facebook?
Sigh, and there's sooo much more..
Coupon Code
Consecutive Vowels
Convincing
Mutual
Starlight
Conditional Risk
Coupon Code
Consecutive Vowels
Convincing
Mutual
Starlight
Conditional Risk
XKCD
There are hundreds of wonderful cartoons over at XKCD; a mixture of wit, romance, wisdom and adventure where sometimes simple images capture complex ideas and emotions.
When I find one I adore, I'm going to embed it here, just so I can find it more easily next time. Please remember that all the credit belongs to Randall Munroe at XKCD.com.
Here's a couple of the ones I've fallen in love with so far.
Alternative Energy Revolution
Wasteland
2009 Called
Flying Cars
When I find one I adore, I'm going to embed it here, just so I can find it more easily next time. Please remember that all the credit belongs to Randall Munroe at XKCD.com.
Here's a couple of the ones I've fallen in love with so far.
Alternative Energy Revolution
Wasteland
2009 Called
Flying Cars
Friday, 5 August 2011
Narrative is all.
Storify is a website that allows you to write your own by collating nuggets of the internet. Here's one I made which amused me...
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Transitioning
Six weeks is a very long time to spend anywhere, but I've been back in the UK long enough now that America seems like a bizarre fairy-tale rather than a memory, as if my brain can't allow both places, both homes, to exist at the same time. Our house, our street, the stores and schools in Houston, have all become faded, sun-bleached images during my stay, just as, when I am in Texas, Britain seems faint and distant, reduced to radio and telephone voices from behind a curtain of grey drizzle inside the mind.
On Monday we'll be climbing back through the wardrobe and swapping realities once more. I'm keen to get back now. It's been wonderful being in Britain, renewing memories not just of friends and family, but of the land itself - but this has clearly been a visit, a rapid-fire series of blissful Hellos and bitter-sweet Goodbyes. Normal, the day-to-day calm of Nothing Much and This and That, is now in Houston and that's where we need to return - for a rest as much as anything else.
Whilst we've been here we've covered as much ground as possible, racing about by train and car. We've been up mountains and down mines, hugged the cliffs and beaches and tramped about the very middle; we've soaked up the museums of London and got soaked in country fields. Everywhere we've mixed hugs and handshakes, laughed and talked, restoring and renewing connections and relationships.
Today, on my back from our last stop, our last visit, the rain cleared and the plain old familiar M4 got splashed with late afternoon sunshine. The trees, the yellow-green of the fields, glittered, flicking past on either side; the road itself shone silver. Everything shone, wet with light, and I wanted suddenly to miss the exit, to keep on and drive into the never-darkening summer sky.
There's just packing left now, and then back to normal.
On Monday we'll be climbing back through the wardrobe and swapping realities once more. I'm keen to get back now. It's been wonderful being in Britain, renewing memories not just of friends and family, but of the land itself - but this has clearly been a visit, a rapid-fire series of blissful Hellos and bitter-sweet Goodbyes. Normal, the day-to-day calm of Nothing Much and This and That, is now in Houston and that's where we need to return - for a rest as much as anything else.
Whilst we've been here we've covered as much ground as possible, racing about by train and car. We've been up mountains and down mines, hugged the cliffs and beaches and tramped about the very middle; we've soaked up the museums of London and got soaked in country fields. Everywhere we've mixed hugs and handshakes, laughed and talked, restoring and renewing connections and relationships.
Today, on my back from our last stop, our last visit, the rain cleared and the plain old familiar M4 got splashed with late afternoon sunshine. The trees, the yellow-green of the fields, glittered, flicking past on either side; the road itself shone silver. Everything shone, wet with light, and I wanted suddenly to miss the exit, to keep on and drive into the never-darkening summer sky.
There's just packing left now, and then back to normal.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Home
No no no, but the BEST thing is seeing people repeatedly. Meeting up with old friends, lifelong friends, and saying 'see you next year' is rubbish. It hurts; a knife with two blades and no handle.
Saying 'see you on Wednesday' or whatever is bliss. It postpones the inevitable. It means we can pretend, for a week or so, that we are always here, that we are part of the whole, that we are not distant, not lost, not gone.
The best of times are stolen times: moments of serendipity snatched from weightier duties.
Saying 'see you on Wednesday' or whatever is bliss. It postpones the inevitable. It means we can pretend, for a week or so, that we are always here, that we are part of the whole, that we are not distant, not lost, not gone.
The best of times are stolen times: moments of serendipity snatched from weightier duties.
Friday, 17 June 2011
There's Lovely
Wales will always feel like home although perhaps it's blasphemy for me, being Saesneg, to say so. Coming back, even to a new part of the country, feels cosy and familiar. I lived in Wales for twelve years and still want to belong to it, if that is at all possible for an Englishman.
The relationship between the English and Welsh is a close one, still sore in places. We've been exploring some of the monuments to our joint history here in North Wales: the castles built by Edward I at the end of the 13th century. This was when Wales was subdued by the powerful English crown. By building massive castles like Harlech and Caernarfon, Edward followed up his military victories with psychologically crippling blows. These fortresses are massive, beautifully designed and brutally imposing. Today, of course, they serve the Welsh, boosting trade and tourism; nobody thinks of them as English castles anymore...
And outside of the towns, the mountains rise up, covered in grass and sheep, mottled and dappled by the shadows of the broken clouds that scud across the sky and obscure the peaks. Up and down the steep-sided valleys run tiny green steam trains on their narrow rails, belching yellow smoke into the clouds, their carriages full of waving passengers. The hills that aren't green are black, piled with broken slate from which burst blooms of purple rhododendron. And through all this twists the road, rising and falling and turning.
There's water everywhere. It rains, of course, but it also bubbles up, trickles down the mountainside and collects into streams that rush and gurgle over edges, bursting down in falls and cataracts. It drips inside the mines, sliding over the smooth rock in the darkness into the black stillness of an underground lake. Meanwhile the sea sparkles in the sunshine, rushing and moving, breaking against the cliffs and the cries of the gulls.
It's magical place; a great big country folded up into a smaller area. And this corner feels concentrated, more intensely Welsh than the rest, almost a caricature.
It's easy to leave, knowing we will always return.
The relationship between the English and Welsh is a close one, still sore in places. We've been exploring some of the monuments to our joint history here in North Wales: the castles built by Edward I at the end of the 13th century. This was when Wales was subdued by the powerful English crown. By building massive castles like Harlech and Caernarfon, Edward followed up his military victories with psychologically crippling blows. These fortresses are massive, beautifully designed and brutally imposing. Today, of course, they serve the Welsh, boosting trade and tourism; nobody thinks of them as English castles anymore...
And outside of the towns, the mountains rise up, covered in grass and sheep, mottled and dappled by the shadows of the broken clouds that scud across the sky and obscure the peaks. Up and down the steep-sided valleys run tiny green steam trains on their narrow rails, belching yellow smoke into the clouds, their carriages full of waving passengers. The hills that aren't green are black, piled with broken slate from which burst blooms of purple rhododendron. And through all this twists the road, rising and falling and turning.
There's water everywhere. It rains, of course, but it also bubbles up, trickles down the mountainside and collects into streams that rush and gurgle over edges, bursting down in falls and cataracts. It drips inside the mines, sliding over the smooth rock in the darkness into the black stillness of an underground lake. Meanwhile the sea sparkles in the sunshine, rushing and moving, breaking against the cliffs and the cries of the gulls.
It's magical place; a great big country folded up into a smaller area. And this corner feels concentrated, more intensely Welsh than the rest, almost a caricature.
It's easy to leave, knowing we will always return.
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