No one is sure if the white horse is even a horse. It might be a dog or a sparrow or something. Intriguingly, the ancient … well, whoever it was who marked out the unidentified creature, left one leg floating away from the rest of his body, rather like Penfold’s eyebrows in Danger Mouse.
And just what it is doing there on the side of a hill is also a bit sketchy. Some historians say it was carved in celebration of King Alfred’s victory over the Danes in AD 871:
‘Nice one, Alfred. So, how do you fancy celebrating?’
‘I want a sodding massive white horse carved into a hill.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
Then there’s that giant. No one would dispute that children love giants – they go ape-shit for them. They are, after all, GIANTS. But aside from the anger, the smashing things etc., the point about giants is that they’re supposed to be more visible than ordinary people, not less. So kids won’t find this giant exciting unless they want their heads examined – which, of course, they might do after they fall off those massive stilts of yours. Honestly, I don’t know why you brought them.
No one knows the reason for the giant’s existence, either, although it might have been carved to annoy Oliver Cromwell who was known to have an aversion to giants with clubs.
But the most interesting thing about the Cerne Abbas Giant is the size of his weapon. A euphemism? You betcha. If you like your giants with huge erect penises, this is certainly the giant for you. On the other hand, in these paranoid times, visiting the Cerne Abbas Giant with children – especially those to whom you are not directly related – is fraught with the distinct possibility that the wrong word could land you on the sex offenders register.
WINDMILL HILL CITY FARM
BRISTOL
As the name suggests, Windmill Hill City Farm is a farm in a city. In other words, it’s a farm to be visited by city people who can’t be bothered to go to the countryside to see a proper one. Beyond that, its slogan is ‘A place where people grow’, demonstrating that they have clearly misunderstood the purpose of a farm.
Continuing the questionable phrasing of its own raison d’être, its mission statement includes: ‘To meet the needs of local people regardless of age, race, sex, disability, and social or economic circumstances’, which surprises anyone who had presumed they would operate a strictly racist admittance policy, sexually harass women upon entry, and make ‘spazmo’ gestures at any working-class children in wheelchairs.
Like many a substitute, however, city farms bear little resemblance to the real thing. First, city farms raise a small number of animals that have been given cuddly names and are lovingly looked after by staff. Real farms, by contrast, produce a multitude of faceless animals to be slaughtered in their thousands by industrial killing machines while humans stand about reading the paper and occasionally pressing the button marked ‘faster’.
To someone who works at a city farm, each animal has personality, each cow has an old-fashioned girl’s name and each chicken, duck or goose is a feathered friend. To a real farmer, each animal has a cost and a sale price, and every chicken is a unit comprising 2.7 kievs and half a can of Whiskas.
Another important difference between city farms and real ones is that city farms welcome visitors. This is in stark contrast to real farms, where no one looks forward to sportswear-draped families scaring the livestock or trampling the crops under impractically shod feet. Turn up at a real farm expecting to tickle the animals and enjoy a home-made scone and you will be as welcome as a turd in the thresher.
One argument in favour of city farmers presented by people who work at city farms – or ‘hippies on benefits’ – is that city farms help people from the inner cities – or ‘chavs’ – to better understand the countryside by pretending it exists in the middle of Bristol. Urban dwellers often lack a connection with the food they eat, but once they have visited a city farm they know that every Starburger or bucket of Popcorn Chicken they eat comes from an animal called Daisy or Henrietta who was happy right up until the moment she was dragged out of her field and slaughtered.
As well as allowing you to feed the fluffy animals who won’t be killed in front of a crowd of terrified primary school children as they should be, city farms also allow you to look at the cows and pigs, enjoy a teacake, and even offer the chance to ‘sponsor’ one of the animals. But to anyone from the country, this idea is a confusing one. Unless you are a vegetarian, you already sponsor animals all the time. ‘Raise this attractive, friendly animal,’ you say to the farmer, ‘and when you have killed it and cut it into bits that I can eat I’ll give you some money for it.’ Looked at in this light, the city farm doesn’t offer much of a bargain: ‘Raise this animal and as long as you never cut it up into anything anyone can eat I’ll give you some money for it.’ See?
THE BAKELITE MUSEUM
WILLITON, SOMERSET
If you like your thermoset phenol formaldehyde resin formed from an elimination reaction of phenol with formaldehyde, then you’ll love the Bakelite Museum.
Set deep in the peaceful Somerset countryside and housed within a historic watermill which used to do less Bakelitey things, the Bakelite Museum is dedicated to everything about the first plastics to be made from synthetic compounds, and features everything you have always wanted to know about electrically non-conductive polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride.
The museum boasts one of the largest collections of vintage plastics in Britain, with exhibits from the inter-war period including hundreds of the domestic items that people now in old or middle-age were once glad to see the back of.
A Disneyland for lovers of phenolic resins, those who wish to commemorate their visit can also choose from the range of exclusive Bakelite-themed postcards (not actually printed on Bakelite), while those who have completely lost touch with reality can choose to stay overnight at one of the museum’s range of pod caravans. Which aren’t made of Bakelite, before you ask.
THE BEAUFORT HUNT
WILTSHIRE
A thoroughly awful day out not because of the cruelty to animals, but because of the people you will have to mix with. Some of the worst kind of desperate betweeded social climbers queue up to join the Beaufort Hunt purely because there’s a chance – a tiny, weeny, itsy-bitsy chance that makes winning the National Lottery look like a dead cert – that Prince Charles will come along and kill something fluffy and squeaky. If it were Prince Philip who rocked up, there would definitely be something killed, even if it was one of the hounds that walked ‘a bit foreign’ or looked at him with slitty eyes or something.
You don’t even need to be part of the hunt to be part of it. You can, if you wish, follow it ‘on foot’ in a Range Rover at 90 miles per hour to watch the fox get torn limb from furry limb.
Some townies will tell you that the fox is frightened by the whole thing. Balderdash – anyone who has seen the hunt knows that the fox is smiling all the way through and enjoys the exercise. If it thinks it is getting away it occasionally stops to let the hounds catch up. In return for this sportsfoxlike approach, the hounds rip it to shreds in seconds, just as it would have wanted.
Hunting undoubtedly plays an important part in rural society. It is a place for like-minded aristocrats to meet and get married – especially if they are already like-parented. And it is a great social leveller – whether you are the high-born son of a duke or simply the brother of an earl, you will find huntsmen the most welcoming, gentle people who kill animals for pleasure you could ever hope to meet. And they won’t give two hoots if you went to Eton or Harrow, so long as it is one or the other.
But those country