Dragon's Eye View Of George

I don't believe in dragons but after my cross-country trip to find a representation of St. George, I emphatically believe in celebrating my Englishness and my fortune to be living in such a beautiful country.

I have been to Ardeley, a tiny village in Hertfordshire, which has a war memorial featuring St George in the form of a roadside shrine. He is dressed as a medieval knight and is holding a shield. The sculpture by FC Eden is based on one in Florence by Donatello.

I have never visited the place before. As I turned off the A10 it was pretty single-track roads through the rolling countryside, punctuated by sleepy villages with quaint names like Nasty, all the way.

No wonder people get homesick. :)

Home Thoughts, from Abroad

O, TO be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge-
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning