Selborne, Hants

I recently read Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne (1788). Selborne, the Hampshire village of which he was curate, is walkable (10km) from Alton, an hour down the line from my station. It was nice the other day, I needed air and exercise so off I went.

I got the route from a Time Out website and followed it on the OS map:


Click (as always) to enlarge. Alton is just off the map, top left. I followed the green blobbed footpath to Selborne.

The countryside in the south-east can be boring -- vast fields of monoculture -- and especially when either the sun’s not out or wind and sky aren’t in some way lively. Sun there was when I left Alton station, though it didn’t last the whole walk, but also monotonous fields, if interestingly contoured, this being chalk country. And unlike Surrey, where one spends too much time in dark woods, after the first mile or two there was alternating woodland, some of it lovely oak, and small fields. And unlike in Surrey where the only livestock are girls’ horses, there were proper animals -- cows and sheep -- as well.

I took some photos, though as a photographer I've rather lost heart since Neil, my son-in-law, got a new camera that takes images that are sharper, brighter and more interesting. I suppose I could buy one but doubt if I’d want to carry it on walks: it’s bulkier and heavier, against mine which could go in my pocket if the dust and fluff didn’t get in the works.

Anyway, by the time the scenery got nice, the sun had gone in and I've concluded that, at least with my camera, taking photographs when there’s no sun is a waste of time. But here are some of the least useless -- including a couple for which the flash provided the sun.

The sort of countryside White walked and rode (and observed and hunted) in:


Inside his church (the arches are Norman, at the stage en route from rounded to pointed):

London, Berlin, Mexico

What a week for treats I could have had in very few other places than London.

Sometimes I fantasise about a move to the country (where I've never lived), partly in preparation for the coming breakdown of environment and society, which may or may not happen, in my lifetime or for years after, but more because I love views of landscape and having birds around other than the magpies, gulls and pigeons that are all we get in Surbiton apart from the occasional parakeet. (I've saw a single swift on a couple of occasions, and distant swallow once or twice.)

But then I think about the stuff I've been able to do this week by virtue of living in London (on the outer edge but with fast, frequent and free trains to the centre).

Here are the highlights.

Monday evening: a conversation between six writers, historians, journalists and other experts on Berlin, the Wall and the division of Germany. Memorable readings from two autobiographical pieces about the East, comments out of long experience by Misha Glenny with a passionate appeal to make the EU work for the sake of the peace and security of Eastern Europe including the Balkans which should eventually be brought in, and a quite different account, quiet and thoughtful, by David Chipperfield the architect on his restoration -- or reconstitution -- of the Neues Museum, with slides.

Tuesday morning in the British Library, looking at stuff I've had on a list for a year or two. Lovely place to work and the system seems to work beautifully. Because I'd got something wrong in my ordering one item hadn’t been delivered so I'll be back today to get it -- they’re faxing it from Boston Spa, their depository outside Leeds (a talk by the LCC Chief Inspector of Schools in 1948 about the London School Plan.)

Tuesday evening: Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the ENO (English National Opera) -- the production got a bit silly but the singing and music were ravishing. I first discovered this opera (1908 0r 1911 as I remember -- that terrific exuberant, inventive, iconoclastic first phase of Modernism) in a tv series on 20th century music, Leaving Home, by Simon Rattle and his Birmingham Philharmonic on Channel 4. I taped it and later bought the DVDs and have replayed them several times. When does C4 do anything like that now?

Yesterday evening: the South Bank again for another conversations: Robert Service and Tristran Hunt on their biographies of Trotsky and Engels. This calls for a separate post. It was as terrific as all those ‘conversations’ on the South Bank are. I've been to loads and never a dud one.

What, in the country, I ask myself, would I be doing at the times when in London I have experiences like these? going for walks? enjoyable once in a while but when the weather’s dull they can be really boring. Gardening? I used to do that and a large part is mindless drudgery.

Could see myself rapidly declining into Marx’s (and Hazlitt’s) state of rural idiocy: fitter and healthier but bored and stupid. So here I stay for the next little while.