Everything that wasn’t invented by god was invented by an engineer, said Prince Philip in a speech about the future of the world. In which case, my question for the prince is which engineer invented god?
Actually there was a bit of god in our day as well. We visited Winchester cathedral and said hi to Jane, among other burials, and had a good old wander around the streets.
I also made the acquaintance of two chaps I’d previously never heard of. Firstly, the angler and author, Francis Francis (there’s more about him in my Flickr account) and, secondly, Captain George Bennet Gosling (1872-1906).
Captain George was a bit of an explorer. He roamed around Africa, finding specimens of previously undiscovered mammals and having his name added to their Latin equivalents. Like the African water rat or Colomys goslingi or Gosling’s rock bunting (Emberiza tahapisi goslingi). The poor chap died of blackwater fever at Lake Chad while on the Boyd Alexander expedition of 1904-06.
We forced mum to climb the stairs up to Saint Swithin’s, one of the cutest churches in the land and she bought some seriously over-priced postcards at a book shop. In fact, they were so over-priced that the woman behind the counter queried the price then asked mum if she was sure she wanted them at the very inflated price.
We walked through the now closed Christmas market…
…then spent lots of money at the cathedral shop where mum bought some proper priced postcards. We also had lunch.
Now, we always used to have a trencher in the cathedral cafe but it would appear they no longer make them. For those unfamiliar with this delicious meal, it’s basically a hot meal on a bread roll.
They date back to the medieval period, when slices of stale bread would be used as plates. Meals would be served on them, as well as candles, depending on the level of staleness…and hunger.
We saw something similar in Budapest where big round loaves have their insides pulled out and replaced with goulash.
Anyway, Mirinda asked the woman taking our lunch order if they’d stopped making them but the woman was too interested in taking orders rather than answering queries, so we can only go by the fact that they’re no longer advertised.
Regardless of the trencher dilemma, we had a lovely lunch, followed by an increasingly wet walk back to Max for the drive back to the house.
While we didn’t get that wet, Freya is still trying to work out how to use the doggy door and remains the wettest inhabitant of the house.
Thank you for your article/blog. Just for the record, Captain George Bennet Gosling died in 1906 in the then Belgian Congo, (as indicated in the corresponding photograph), and was consequently buried in the town of Niangara. Gosling was a member of the Boyd Alexander expedition which was also known as the Alexander-Gosling Expedition. Boyd was also accompanied by his younger brother Claude, who was the first to die in 1904 before the actual survey of Lake Chad took place. On his second expedition in 1909 Boyd was killed and buried next to his brother at Maifoni, northern Nigeria. In answer to your question (following Prince Philip’s statement), which engineer invented God, then I suggest that it must have been a Royal Engineer!