Just been watching Rococo on BBC iplayer, and on talking about Canaletto's paintings of Warwick Castle the narrator Waldemar Janusczak has said that you only get skies like that in your dreams in Britain. Have to say I don't agree, you do get sunshine here. It's rare, and the transport system goes nearly as daft as when it snows, but we do get at least a few days of blue skies every year. No snow though, in 2013-14, and I'm very disappointed.
Also where is Waldemar from? He sounds so terribly British (even to the point of whinging about the weather, every Brits' prerogative.) that the name is a surprise.
Anyway, it turns out he's from Basingstoke.
Home Counties Drear, if that were only a movement.
My brother nearly decided to live in to Basingstoke once (he worked for Arding and Hobbs before they went bust and there was a big store there.) so I'm reasonably familiar with it. I think I'd take a deep intoxicating dive into the baroque and rococo if I were from there as well. There is an old town core, with a church and so on, but sometimes that's more depressing than a new town made from nothing. At least then they've only insulted the wheat fields by plonking an invading new town on top, not a nice little place that might have grown quite organically if it had only been left alone.
I have no clever finish to this blog entry. Write your own.
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