Thwarted by Henry III

Mirinda had her second Swedish lesson today and, because of that, I was up early to wake her. While I’m quite used to being her alarm clock, I generally tend to snooze through whatever is on the BBC World Service. This morning, however, I didn’t and was fortunate enough to catch this little gem of a story.

It seems that the City of London wants to build a big old market at Dagenham. It wants to move the Billingsgate, Smithfield and Spitalfield markets to combine the fish, meat and veg into one. I assume that the City of London wants to use the three locations for building things or renting them out or, maybe, to build more car parks.

The thing is, there’s a market at Romford that isn’t best pleased with the scheme. A complaint has been lodged regarding the plan. It cites a 775 year old market law, created by Henry 3, which has never been repealed and now, thwarts the City of London.

Henry, in his wisdom, said that markets should not be closer to each other than the distance a sheep could walk in a day. That distance is generally accepted as six and two thirds miles. The Romford market is about four miles from the proposed Dagenham site.

It made me wonder how different things would have been had the UK monarchy made a similar law regarding big supermarkets on the outskirts of towns. How much better and more flourishing, the high streets of Britain would now be had the Law of 1247 applied.

Anyway, you can read more about the story here.

That was about how exciting things got around here today. With Mirinda spending the day in Stockholm, my Saturday’s have now become somewhat leisurely. I watch the kind of TV that I like more than Mirinda, I walk the dogs and throw a tennis ball for Emma, I don’t eat much so the washing up is at a minimum. I have a bludge day, basically.

In fact, the most exciting thing to happen today concerned tennis balls. Firstly, there was Emma wondering what to do with this giant tennis ball.

She wound up ignoring it for a much more appropriate sized one.

Then, I managed to throw the more appropriate sized one onto the small roof over the front verandah. I did dislodge it from the gutter within which it had stuck itself, only for it to sit on the actual roof, waiting for a blast of wind to send it back into the garden.

All in all, almost a catastrophe. This time, thwarted by the wind.