Showing Off

 I dream my grandfather is driving his car (IRL it was a Bentley- very nice) down a long straight road and going very fast. I am in the passenger seat. He takes his hands off the wheel to light a cigarette.  "Show off" I mutter. Suddenly the road is no longer there and we have come to a halt at the very edge of a cliff.....

A Side Trip To Aylesbury

 Before taking our side trip to Godstone we took a side trip to Aylesbury- a market town in Buckinghamshire famous for its ducks- which are pure white and were originally bred for their feathers. Wednesday is market day and Ailz bought a hat and a pair of gloves from one of the stalls.

Here's the market square with its clock tower



I wanted to see the church- of course- a handsome building that turns out to be largely Victorian rebuild- by George Gilbert Scott- whose work is decent and solid and characterless.  One precious survival is a late medieval statue of the Virgin which once occupied a niche above the great west window-  so high up that the 17th century Roundheads- who used the church as a military HQ- either overlooked it or thought it would be too much trouble to smash. It has since been moved inside.

The weather has taken its toll, but even in its eroded state it's clearly work of the highest quality. There was great art in England before the Reformation- and most of it has been lost.....



Talking about Puritans, the great parliamentarian John Hampden, who had a home nearby, is commemorated in this statue- which seems to be engaged in vigorous debate with the statue of that other great Parliamentarian, Benjamin Disraeli which stands a few yards away. 



Hampden is remembered as noble and principled and brave- and a great champion of Parliamentary democracy. He died, early on in the Civil War, of gunshot wounds received at the battle of Chalgrove Field in Oxfordshire.