My dear Family & Friends, 14 June
I had to go to speed class yesterday as punishment for driving at 37mph (59km/h) in a 30mph (48km/h) zone. It was either the class or have my license endorsed with three penalty points. You lose your license once you have accumulated 12 points. The points remain on your license for three years. This in no way alters the fact that the operators of mobile “safety” cameras probably had a deprived childhood, and are almost certainly visiting unspecified power fantasies upon unsuspecting motorists. They wouldn’t be allowed to if I were in charge. In fact, if I were in charge, they’d be doing something really useful to suit their skill set, like sweeping the streets. I was half expecting the “speed awareness programme” to be filled with a hardened criminal underclass of dodgy speed demons, but nothing could have been further from the truth. My fellow students were mostly mild, middle-aged, law-abiding men and women who got done for driving around a few miles an hour over the limit. Most of the three-hour class was about the causes and effects of speeding, and included some fairly unlikely accident scenarios. I mean it was fairly obvious to me that subject A managed to crash his/her car at 35mph on a straight road in broad daylight because he/she was a complete tosser who should never have been given permission to ride a bicycle, let alone drive a car in the first place. The only really effective part of the programme to me was the public service advertisements of people being knocked down. They are quite shocking and do give one pause for thought. At the end of the class we had to fill in a biased and manipulative mini survey which asked 1) if we thought speed caused accidents, 2) slowing down saved lives, and 3) if we thought that we (personally) should/would slow down. I delighted in answering no to the last question. I have already slowed down – right after I calculated the petrol consumption of my Honda CRV. And I slowed down again as the petrol price cruised through £1,10/litre. Barbara and Terry, my sister and brother-in-law, have just got back from Canada where Barbara tells me the maximum speed limit is 90km/h (just over 55mph). I guess I won’t be visiting Canada any time soon then.
But let me jump back to last weekend. You may remember from my last missive that I was hoping the weather would remain sunny and warm for the weekend so that I could show Lucia the town of Broadway in the foothills of the Cotswolds about 25 miles away. Well, it did, we went, and Lucia was quite as captivated by the town as I was. (Pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) So thank you once again for the recommendation Andreas. We strolled down the high street peering in at the galleries and estate agents before stopping at a pub for a late morning cappuccino. Along the way Edgar got many admiring glances and a few people stopped to make his (and our) acquaintance. Then we strolled back up the high street on the opposite side of the road following much the same procedure. Outside a wool and tweed outfitters shop I noticed they had PG Field winter weather gear – a brand and style of clothing I really like – on sale at half price, and I managed to buy a waterproof overcoat for a song and a brown felt fedora hat which had also been marked down. Lucia had less luck and came away with nothing much to her chagrin.
After my shopping spree we stowed the purchases in my car and walked up to the Broadway Tower along the public footpaths. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Tower; http://www.broadwaytower.co.uk/.) We had to put Edgar on lead every time we came across sheep lazily grazing away in their fields. Edgar was the picture of terror – tail between legs, walking low on his haunches, and staring nervously around every time he heard a lamb bleat. The poor boy; as I said, he gets very emotional about these things. Hazel, on the other hand, had to restrain her instinct to herd the sheep. For my part, this entailed much whistling and yelling. At each sty between the fields I was physically manhandling the dogs over the obstacle until Lucia sweetly pointed out that one just had to lift the wooden gate thingy alongside to let the dogs crawl through (see pics). (How was I to know that you just needed to lift the damn thing? This is England after all; there should be instructions with a detailed diagram which have been specially approved by the Health & Safety Inspectorate.)
The view from the tower down the escarpment towards Wales is stunning and must look truly spectacular on a clear day. The funny thing is that even though Broadway Tower sits at the second highest point in the Cotswold Hills, it’s still lower than our house was up the slopes of Devil’s Peak in Cape Town. It’s what I miss most from SA, not being able to see for miles and miles. The tower itself is a folly built for the Earl of Coventry in the early 1800’s. My dictionary says a folly as a building constructed strictly as decoration having none of the usual purposes associated with the structure. So while the tower looks like a defensive bastion dating back to the middle ages, it was actually built much later by some dude for fun because he was rich and he could.
On Sunday morning we took the dogs to Draycote Water. (In South Africa we’d call it a dam.) I called before hand to check that we could take the dogs in and was told that they were only allowed in the park and not around the reservoir. What they didn’t explain is that it really isn’t worth the effort if you can’t take the dogs around the reservoir which is a pity because it’s a very pretty area. So after briefly acquainting ourselves with Draycote Water we took a slow drive around the villages winding our way to a hilltop farm shop/ tea room near Leamington for lunch. Except all the outside tables were reserved when we got there, and the only thing for lunch was the Sunday roast. I don’t do daytime roasts. A sandwich and a cool drink or beer is fine for me. So we drove around a bit more towards a pleasant-looking pub we had seen nearby. When we got there, we left the dogs in the back of the car and went in to ask if they had an outside table for us and whether our dogs could join us. They told us to take any table we wanted and said the dogs could join us on lead. Lucia went to get a table and I went to get the dogs. I let the dogs out of the car and, as I was connecting Hazel’s lead top her collar, Edgar bolted off in the direction he’d last seen Lucia. By the time I caught up with him he was causing pandemonium among the guests in the starched-white, stiff and formal dining room. And he knew I was the bliksem in with him and had no intention of being caught. I had to rush outside to yell to Lucia to call him. Once she had collared him, I yanked him back to car along with a couple of hefty cuffs to his rump. I suppose it was quite funny in retrospect, but I was just very embarrassed at the time. (Well, not so embarrassed that we actually left; we stayed for lunch.)
My only other adventure of the week was my search for “water” leisure spots. The dogs always loved a trip to the beach and need little invitation to plunge into the Avon when we walk to the park (despite the objections of one particular swan.) On Tuesday, I took them to Ryton Pools between Leamington Spa and Rugby on the recommendation of one of Lucia’s colleagues, and then to the Boddington Reservoir near Daventry. Richard (as in Richard, Anne and Polly) had mentioned that he goes sailing there, and I couldn’t find any objection to the presence of dogs in my research on the Internet. The reservoir was built as one of the feeder reservoirs to the Oxford Canal in the 1800s and covers about 60 acres. While dogs are not prohibited from the site, there are 120 fishing positions around the dam, and it’s my experience that fishermen don’t really like dogs plunging into the water near where they’re fishing. I eventually found a spot on the far side of the reservoir where I was able to send them in chasing after sticks. I ambled home on the back roads taking the measure of the villages along the way. Wormleighton (http://www.bmsgh.org/parish/warw/tyaiw/wormleighton.html) particularly caught my eye with a manor house dating back to the early 1600s. (Check pics for To Let sign next to 500-year-old barn.)
That’s it for now. There’s soccer on TV.
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
