And Now For Something Entirely Different

Cholmondeley Castle.

Generally pronounced ‘Chumley’.

Website here.

I am considering putting an offer in, once they finish the work on the roof.

The castle itself is a private residence, titles and the lingering fiscal effects of robber baronry abounding, but the grounds are open to we peasants. Most splendid they are indeed, even in Oct of the Ober, when everything, including the milk, is turning.

By popular demand I divested myself of my clothing, borrowed a sword and shield, and posed for a while in the lake folly. The people seemed to appreciate it.

There’s a tea-room, with coffee, and a modicum of cake. The teasted toecakes are classic.

I doubt that Fitzwilliam Darcy Esquire would care to emerge from this lake, at this time of the seasons. He’d be covered in duck wee and duck weed. Splendid viewing platform though. Very Hammer House of Horror indeed.

The castle enjoys a view of three lakes and one cricket pitch with pavilion.

The gates, though, would not withstand a serious uprising.

My co-conspirator and I drove through these (through, that is, the gap in the middle, Mad Max we’re not – although, after all of this time on the canals, road speeds still terrify Hutson Minor’s hind-brain). With a certain amount of Blue Badge chicanery we were generously directed through a “NO ENTRY” sign and a further set of electric gates, to a car park near the castle (and tea-room) itself. We scattered the pedestrians appropriately.

I ride and I drive and I care not a damn, for if I should chance to run over a cad I can pay for the damage even if ever so bad.

A most splendid day out, seeing how the other one percent live. 🙂

They have their own weather arrangements too, it would seem, since the day was perfick, being bright and sunshinery, with some breeze and just sufficient warmth for a peasant with a core ergling of some ninety-eight point five Fahrengezundheitings.

Now, back to the canals… and the view from the bow.

We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are (still) looking up at the bars.

Today’s frun and follicks revolve around whether or not to employ Mr Trolley and my finest matt black “mass strangler” gloves in a walkabout to empty Cassettes 1 & 2.

Perhaps, given the weather, I shall wait until red light on Cassette 3.

If only my great-great-great-great-Nth-to-the-fiftieth-grandfather had been more violent, less principled, and had sucked up successfully to some king, eh?

Hutson Towers is a lot easier to promounce than Chumcholmeleychimchimeree Castle…

Perhaps in some other dimension of the multiverse.

One where my electrons spin in the same direction as do those of most of the rest of my species.

Chin-chin, chaps.

Ian H., &etc.