The Evesham Whale

Many thanks to everyone who made kind comments about yesterday's dawn blip - I was delighted that you liked it!

By contrast with that colourful sky, today was utterly grey. We had been promised snow overnight, which would have been inconvenient but photogenic, but after a few sleet flurries the weather ran out of enthusiasm and settled for raining instead. Cold rain mind you - but not the pretty stuff.  It was really a day for staying inside with the lights on and the heating turned up, but I had an appointment in Evesham, so I thought I'd at least try to get a blip while I was there.

This rather unusual sculpture in the Workman Gardens by the river Avon commemorates one of the odder events in Evesham's history: the donation to the town of the jaw bones of a bowhead whale. This unfortunate animal was caught off Greenland in 1820, and one of the whalers, who hailed from Evesham, sent the jaw bones home to a friend as a gift. Personally I always find perfume perfectly acceptable in these circumstances, but I'm aware that tastes vary. The friend, who was called Dr Cooper, was sufficiently taken with his present to have the jaw bones set up as an entrance arch to his house, a few hundred yards away from this spot, where they remained for the next 80 years - at which point one of his grandchildren had the brainwave of palming them off onto the Town Council. They were re-erected here, and became quite famous (in Evesham terms, at least).

However a couple of years ago Health & Safety reared its head and declared them to be a hazard (really - what harm could slivers of disintegrating bone dropping from a five metre high arch possibly do to anyone?), and they were taken down and replaced with this replica steel arch and rather splendid wooden carving of a bowhead whale. You may also be able to make out a faint outline cut in the grass to the right of the sculpture, which depicts the typical size and shape of one of these whales.

The actual bones were returned with thanks to the place from whence they came (most lately that is - personally I would have voted for them to be sent back to Greenland, but no-one asked). Dr Cooper's house is now the Evesham Hotel on Cooper's Lane, and is once again home to the bones. The Evesham Hotel has always had a reputation for two things: good food and "British eccentricity", but apparently even that quirkiness doesn't stretch to displaying the things, though you can apply at reception to view them.

CH and I have never been to the Evesham Hotel, our tropic attraction towards good food being considerably outweighed by our fear of "British eccentricity" - I always suspected that if a Guardianista even crossed the threshold, some kind of alarm would go off. However it's now being managed by the lovely chap who organized our wedding reception, so we should possibly try a meal there one day - in which case I will inspect the bones and report back.