Allie and I went to Hatfield House at the weekend, and bumped into the rather enthusiastic Marquis of Salisbury (in the library, with the candlestick), you know, as you do.
Calling it Hatfield House is a bit of a misnomer. It's a palace.
It used to be a palace, it looks, feels and smells like a palace.
Hell, it probably even tastes like one.
I thought it was very nice. There was a wedding going on in the grounds, and elsewhere about 300 schoolkids and their flailing parents were engaging in what looked like country dancing.
That was entertaining, if only for the spectacle of a 6 foot man attempting to swing his two and a half foot child partner down a tunnel made from the upraised and rather low arms of other 2 foot tall dancers, without lifting her off the ground and/or broadsiding the lot of them with a ballistic six year old.
It hit me just what a crazy world this is, at this moment in history. Most past cultures and civilisations have either feared and revered or steamrollered (figuratively speaking) the relics of bygone ages, whereas we're keeping things alive, well....okay, keeping things, and building and changing and letting our towns cities and countries grow up around them.
I was standing in the library with the Marquis chattting amiably in the background to one of the probably-cloned and almost ornamental old ladies that were dotted around the corridors as guides, or...uh, exhibits, and I was looking out of the window at the gardens.
Beautiful gardens they are. Manicured, or whatever the gardening term is, interesting (shaped hedges and bushes are all very well, but this place was growing igloos) and extensive (although I thought the Wilderness Garden was a bit tongue in cheek). The window itself was lead-lattice, the room I was standing in was enormous, packed with ancient, leather-bound books, with balconies with more books and black steel spiral staircases to get to them. A huge ebony statue of George the Ffth dominated the room from above the fireplace.
And in the middle distance, above the trees, I could see the two tower blocks that constitute the legacy of Hatfield's brief 1960s housing mania, and behind them, the bizarre hooping grey steel frame of the large out-of-town shopping centre, the Galleria.
Just made me feel a bit wierd, that's all.
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