England. Enjoy.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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Those nice people at the Guardian have asked me to blog about three things I do to enjoy England. Well, they came to the right place, obviously. But where on earth, or England, to start? The thing is I’m usually out there most of the time, enjoying it all. The sheer variety of landscape, buildings and infinite detail. Here’s a trio of tasters:If I’m close to home then I’m invariably drawn to Kirby Hall, over the border in Northamptonshire from my home in neighbouring Leicestershire. Originally built in the 1570s-80s, this is a superb example of a ‘prodigy house’. Prodigious in scale, intimate in detail. The Hall sits alone in its park and gardens, found at the end of an avenue of chestnuts alive with the raucous calls of rooks. Part of the house is open to the skies, much more is a succession of echoing rooms- four with tall rounded bay windows that look like the sterns of a pair of galleons. My young boys simply love it, backdrop scenery to their rumbustious adventures.
Pubs figure largely in my wandering itineraries. In London this could mean the Windsor Castle in Notting Hill or the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell. But if I find myself near the Law Courts on the Strand (increasingly likely) then I can’t resist the Seven Stars in Carey Street. A pedigree going back to 1663, well- kept Adnams from the Suffolk coast, posters on the walls for films like Action for Slander, a cat on the bar called Tom Paine. And a redoubtable landlady, Roxy Beaujolais, who keeps it all how I like pubs to be. There’s the inevitable Dickens connection, precipitous stairs to the lavatory, and it survived the Great Fire of London. With the blighting of so many pubs by overt commercial concerns, this a true survivor in anyone’s book.
What else? Well, undeterred by jaded music hall gags- “It’s like a mortuary with the lights on”- we recently spent a week in Barrow-in-Furness. The town was curiously of great interest, but once we’d got beyond submarine buildings (prodigious, but not like Kirby Hall) and Victorian red-brick tenements, we discovered a long walk along the sands to the north. So lonely, so breathtakingly beautiful. The cloud-capped fells of the Lake District rose up over the Duddon estuary, a strange hinterland of alarming sand dunes spread out to the south. We didn’t really see anybody until a bloke in a tracksuit gave us unfathomable directions, but nevertheless we made it back to the car park and welcoming large 99 Flakes from a green-painted hut.
What else? Well, undeterred by jaded music hall gags- “It’s like a mortuary with the lights on”- we recently spent a week in Barrow-in-Furness. The town was curiously of great interest, but once we’d got beyond submarine buildings (prodigious, but not like Kirby Hall) and Victorian red-brick tenements, we discovered a long walk along the sands to the north. So lonely, so breathtakingly beautiful. The cloud-capped fells of the Lake District rose up over the Duddon estuary, a strange hinterland of alarming sand dunes spread out to the south. We didn’t really see anybody until a bloke in a tracksuit gave us unfathomable directions, but nevertheless we made it back to the car park and welcoming large 99 Flakes from a green-painted hut.
So enjoyable, so England.
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