Spring Break

By ‘C’:

“Bonfire!” was the rallying call of the session scheduled for today.

– Unless volunteers have a blind date with the rain, of course.  (Which would be seriously abnormal for Green Gym.)  For the task was to help “get rid of some of the brash generated by the past winter’s hedge laying”: perfectly normal behaviour for this time of year in the English countryside.  Below is fond souvenir of the equivalent task in a previous year, at a slightly different spot at the (large) site:

Same job essentially: April 2015

The site is near, indeed in many places overlooks, the most “normal” town in the country.  Where having a great bonfire of brash from a winter’s hedge-laying would not be normal behaviour at all. 

View of then full complement of cooling towers, Didcot, from Earth Trust Wittenham, May 2014

Apparently, Didcot is the most “normal” town in England, in the sense that some of its streets have been found by a group of statisticians to furnish a close match with national-average lifestyle, opinions, and experiences.  Why those findings should be described as “tremendous”, is up for debate.  (As is how long the place might remain a “microcosm of Britain” if descended on by hordes of researchers and policymakers wanting to get a handle on “normal”.)  One suspects Green-Gymmers would not think of themselves as the most “normal” people in the country, on grounds that ‘normal’/’average’ can mean teansy-weansy bit boring.  But then I am not sure any of them do hail from the “magic town”.

The WGG blog itself is taking a bit of a spring break.  Normal service should be resumed next week.