Monday, April 16, 2012

Places Far From the Madding Crowd

London. The height of summer.

After spending many hours on the plane getting to London, I spent many hours trying to get away from it.

Thankfully, it was a spectacularly freezing summer. But unfortunately that did nothing to deter the hoardes of tourists. Staring at the Egyptian mummies in the Bristish Museum together with a hundred people loses all the mystique and awe that ought to accompany it. And while on the topic of awe, since when did Topshop on Oxford Circus become a tourist detsination?

Luckily I have relatives who live in the sticks. Penn and the area of around it is where I spent many of my impressionable teenage years. I remember the wide open commons fringed by trees, to which we sneaked out of school in the evenings to meet boys (or rather, stare at them from afar). I remember picking wild blackberries and eating them on the railway bridge. I remember chilly summer evenings lying on dry grass, rolling them into 'joints' and trying to smoke them without much success or pleasure.

Duck feeding - a must in the sticks


Country walks cook up huge appetites and the need to eat, al fresco!

The fruits of our hard labour.
Good times. I'm glad I got to relive them again and to share them with my son.

Wide open space!


No comments:

Post a Comment