Do YOU live near a mighty river? It can be a mixed blessing, can't it. Nice, very picturesque and peaceful when it's behaving itself, but at other times a raging torrent that's threatening to burst into your home and destroy all your lovely, plush, fashionably-grey carpets the next.
Am I right? Or am I right?!
Local man Dennis Sherman has certainly been painting some lurid pictures of London's River Thames at local parties and family-gatherings, although scepticism is growing about his stories' accuracy, it has to be said, and some people are even starting to whisper that Sherman may never even have seen London for himself [Source: Onion News].
True or false? I wonder.... ! But now it's definitely over to you, Dear Reader, if you've ever been to London, could you just take a few minutes to jot down some of your experiences of the local rivers of the capital - postcards only!!
Uncle Dennis's 'historical map' of the Phlegathon branch of today's
Bakerloo Line, which some of his relatives are calling "a cheap fake"
Fact or myth, it's raging rivers that are on the minds of my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me as we make our first ever daily walk in our new surroundings: Liphook, Hampshire, the small town we moved to on January 3rd, making ourselves proud residents of this, our new county, for almost 2 weeks now, which seems incredible.
flashback to January 2nd - us at the Holiday Inn, Gloucester,
on our 130-mile trip south east to our new home in Liphook
After 2 weeks, we're starting to feel more at home here now in Liphook, but conscious that we're in very different terrain from our old 'haunts' back in Malvern, Worcestershire, which was very much 'hill country' - there aren't any really spectacular hills in this part of Hampshire, but we do live near at least one "raging river", the so-called "mighty" River Wey, as we see when we go out for our first daily walk, in nearby Radford Park.
we go for a morning walk through nearby Radford Park, along the waters of the
"mighty" River Wey, and discover a tree planted for Queen Elizabeth's
Golden Jubilee in 2002 (see bottom right)
Tonight Alice is in the south and west of Britain.
Near Ilfracombe on the coast of North Devon, archaeologist have been working to dig up a surprisingly opulent farmhouse, where the 17th century owners must have had lots of money in their pockets, building a house with really thick walls, to protect them from the coastal soutwest winds that blow off the Atlantic in these parts - brrrrr!!!!
However, it's not so much the remains of the farmhouse itself that's attracted attention but some of the objects found there, including a Spanish coin from the reign of Philip IV, and an unusual bead commonly used to buy African slaves from their owners in West Africa for transportation to the new British colonies in America and the Caribbean. 
Oh dear, so part of the so-called "dark side" of British naval and empire history, and something to give you pause for thought next time you're on holiday in the south-west, tucking into a Devon cream tea.
flashback to autumn 2019: Lois and I look around Ilfracombe: the harbour,
and Damien Hirst's famous 2012 'Verity' statue, symbolising "truth and justice"
The 17th century was when Britain was really flexing its muscles as the "new colonial and naval empire on the block".
Later on, it was ships from the big ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool that were carrying on the bulk of Britain's slave trade, but in the early years, like in the 17th century, it was little ports like Ilfracombe in the south-west of England, that were best placed to work the trade, making lots of local families in the area very wealthy in the process.
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it.
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed = zzzzzzz!!!!!
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