Gatepost

Today's the day ........................ for a travesty

trav·es·ty (travistē) n. A false, absurd, or distorted representation of something.

You see quite a lot of this sort of thing around here.

This is a beautiful piece of limestone pavement. For anyone who doesn't know - limestone pavements are usually created when an advancing glacier scrapes away what lies above a horizontally-bedded limestone leaving behind a flat, bare surface. Limestone is slightly soluble in water and so rainwater dissolves the rock away particularly along joints and cracks. This has the effect of leaving rectangular slabs called clints isolated by deep fissures called grikes.

It was the fashion in Victorian times to remove this pavement and use it in gardens - in rockeries, on top of walls - or as in this case to up-end it and use it as a gatepost. This fabulous natural phenomenon, that had taken millions of years to come into being and provided the perfect habitat for many rare plants was relentlessly stripped off to satisfy some selfish whim of mankind.

I can hardly bear to walk past it - it makes my blood boil ..................