The imposter...
What's with that?
King's Bruton Boarding School.
John lost in memories.
Bruton village.
The Church of St Mary's.
Exmouth Beach.
Apparently a common sight in coastal towns.
John's sister Chrissie.
Lodgers Kaitlin, Jazz and Roy.
Sunday, August 27th.
The plan today was to drive to see the
white horse of Uffington in Wiltshire, that XTC used for their 1982
album English Settlement. John entered 'white horse Wiltshire' in the
GPS and away we went. We drove out of Wales and back into England and
an hour and a half later we saw a white horse on a hill, but it
looked much more modern and realistic than the stylized one I was
looking for. I thought that perhaps it was an indicator to point the
way to the real one on the other side of the hill. So we drove up the
hill and parked. There were other people up there flying kites and
picnicing. I asked a guy where the horse was and he pointed us in the
right direction. When we got the edge we could look over the hill and
there was the same horse imposter! I asked another bloke about the
Uffington horse and he told me we were at the Westbury White Horse.
Who knew there were two?? Apparently there are others too. He said
the one I wanted was another hour and a half way, in the opposite
direction that we wanted to go. I was very disappointed, but at this
point John realized where it really was and said we should have
stopped there on the way to Wales from Dottie's place, but since we
will be going back that way at the end of the week, we will visit it
then. John and I have a tendency to not fully research or sort out
our plans and although usually all goes well, occasionally things go
awry. Hence the name of this post.
Anyway, we spent a bit of time on the
hill enjoying the view on this spectacular, warm, clear day and then
we drove to the town of Bruton. This is where John and his sister
Chrissie attended boarding school. John was at the King's Bruton boys
boarding school for 6 years, basically his high school years. The
school was founded in 1519! As we walked around the grounds of the
school, through the village and into the Church of St Mary, where
John sang as a baritone choirboy, he was lost in memories, thoughts
and revisiting ghosts of his past. We ordered a pizza and sat in the
grounds of the church soaking up the sun. They started construction
of the Church of St Mary in the 12th century and and
finished it about two hundred years later. It is built on the site of
one of the earliest churches in England, which was constructed in the
7th century.
After lunch we drove south to meet
John's sister, Chrissie, in Exmouth, at the mouth of the Exe River.
The last time I visited Exeter she was in Spain, so we had not met
previously. We wandered around the beach enjoying the sights and
flavour of the place before going to an outside cafe for a couple of
pints. Then we walked back to the carpark and drove to Exeter where
John and Chrissie live. She has recently left her partner and moved
in with him. We had a salad and salmon dinner and talked to John's
three lodgers: Roy, and Jazz and Kaitlyn. John rents rooms here as a
money maker but also because he spends about half his time at
Dottie's place near London. We had a couple of glasses of wine talked
about life in Northern Ireland (where Kaitlyn is from), which is
apparently still very conflicted, and talked about travelling, how
John and I met and many other things.
No comments:
Post a Comment