England - why bits of it are sometimes not shit.

I had a 'meeting' in a coastal (estuaral? Is that a word?) town yesterday morning. This 'meeting' will remain a mystery as I don't know who reads this - and got a mild shock last night to find my Dad reads this. Hi Dad! - plus mysteries are fun.

Suffice to say that this 'meeting' was a pile of wank.


Anyway, on the hour or so's drive out to this meeting I drove through a wonderful bit of English countryside - a straight mile or so of road lined with rolling green hills and hundred year old trees (mainly Chestnuts starting to bloom). There's a certain green that's unique to an English summer, that dappled effect as a large tree shifts in a light breeze, the almost shimmering brightness as a wall of leaves moves in the bright sun. It's all so astonishingly beautiful.

I've visited/stayed/lived in other places around the world and every place has it's own green. I guess it's a combination of the species of trees, the amount of water and the quality of the sunlight. France has a slightly greyer green, Germany and the alps region is a lot darker, South America is just more colourful which overshadows the green, in Australia the grass and undergrowth is a different colour entirely etc etc etc....

I'm not entirely sure why I'm sharing this on here (apart from it's my damn blog and I can do what I want on it) but for a small moment I felt like this was the place I wanted to be. It was a moment that no camera or video could ever quite capture. Obviously I'm biased because this was where I was born, but for the maybe 20 days a years when we get a proper sunny day there's nothing better than being in a secluded part of the countryside and just, well, *watching* it. It's moments like that that make me feel I couldn't live anywhere else. Then I come home via the chavs, the traffic, the hideous over-pricing of everything, the apathy, the ridiculous celebrity wankfest that our media has become, the students and the almost complete lack of social cohesion - and I feel that maybe fleeing the place would be a blessed release.

That sounds depressing/depressed but it's not. Now excuse me, I'm going to go dream of trees......