Oh England

My Lionheart,
I'm in your garden, fading fast in your arms.
The soldiers soften, the war is over.
The air raid shelters are blooming clover.
Flapping umbrellas fill the lanes--
My London Bridge in rain again.

Peter Pan steals the kids in Kensington Park.
You read me Shakespeare on the rolling Thames--
That old river poet that never, ever ends.
Our thumping hearts hold the ravens in,
And keep the tower from tumbling.

Dropped from my black Spitfire to my funeral barge.
Give me one kiss in apple-blossom.
Give me one wish, and I'd be wassailing
In the orchard, my English rose,
Or with my shepherd, who'll bring me home.

Oh! England, my Lionheart,
I don't want to go.

You may gather from the above lyrical extract that I'm feeling a bit melancholy. This is brought on by a day in court and reflecting on the Bradford & Bingley building and what mutual societies once meant to us. Same as the origins of insurance I guess.

Anyhoo, today has been a court day and dealing with 'service users' is rarely an uplifting experience. Seeing the B&B building at lunchtime I thought that a black and white picture (Pano) would suit its architecture. It's also pertinent that to get a significant amount of the building in I had to both make it a pano and find a place that avoided all the mature trees; which are only now starting to fulfil their original mitigation remit, having been planted as part of the planning consents at the time the B&B was built.

It's somewhat ironic that not only will the building go but also the trees if, as is rumoured, Sainsbury's get permission to redevelop the site.

Not an original thought by any means but I do wonder what our forefathers would make of what we do with the freedoms they earned us.

Pass the Daily Mail please...................