The Theodolite and the Damage Done - Downham Market

About 18 months ago, not long after I moved up here, my parents alerted me to a piece in the Telegraph (yes, I know...) about the local town of Downham market. I never erad it, but from what I gathered, the tone was "Jewel of the Fens Ruined by Council Vandals".
In practice, of course, it is nothing of the sort - Downham Market was, and remains in places, a solid East Anglian market town, with a scattering of decent buildings, and some fairly pleasant houses. It has, however, been ruined by something, and the council is one of the culprits.

( The Downham Market Problem )

(no subject)

I am reading at the moment, amongst other things, a book called "An Eton Portrait" by Bernard Fergusson, which dates from 1938.

I love this book. I know I shouldn't, that in Tony's perfect society, the idea of wanting to get caught up in Toffsville 1938 is repulsive and bad, but don't care.

The book is a guide to life at Eton College as it was lived between the wars, top hats, Spottiswoode's on the High Street, and all. What makes it so entertaining, as well as the black and white photographs of boyhood privilege waiting nervously for life to begin, is the sheer verve with which it is written. Unfashionable though it may be now, the man who wrote this book clearly loved his time at Eton, and honestly believed that most of the boys who went through the system did. That belief, and the desire to impress it upon any reader, shines out in every page.

I love secret societies, and worlds of arcane ritual. Thus I am fascinated by public schools, and particularly by Eton, probably because it is the only one I have been inside. The peculiar argot of that place and that time, the labyrinthine corridors and equally labyrinthine rules - all of that captivates me, and carries me away from the pasty-faced youths hurling obscenities at each other outside.

I first came across an Eton Portrait when I was at University, and was browsing for books on the subject in the University Library. I took it out from the library as an undergraduate - the only time it had been borrowed since the 1970's, as I ecall - and later on, when I used to use the library even though I was no longer a student there, I picked it up to read ... and one of my old Cleveland County library tickets (you remember - the cardboard pockets with one corner cut off that librarians learnt to flick through at rocket speed) fell out of it, which I had clearly been using as a bookmark three years earlier.

My current copy I bought in the Waterside Antiques Centre, a wonderful Aladdin's cave of a building down by the river here, and though it cost £20, which is more than I would usually pay for a book, it is a delight to have my own copy at last...