Paula spotted a blue plaque on an otherwise nondescript cottage in Great Haywood.


So I have to ask, why were there no canals in Middle Earth. Or even any commercial traffic on the Anduin? Look, the dwarves didn’t grow a lot of food in their mines, they must have been trading metals and manufactured goods for grain and cabbages, so how was that stuff transported? There seems to be no commerce at all apart from the occasional inn. In the Shire they have technology advanced enough to produce umbrellas, but no shops to sell them in.

We were mostly busy packing up our stuff on the boat yesterday, but took time out between rain showers to take a look walk through Little Haywood (two pubs, no churches, one convent) and Great Haywood (one pub, three churches, no convents). Here are the hanging gardens of Little Haywood.

I always feel sorry for places and animals with Little or Lesser or Common in their names. I mean, imagine a younger waterfowl growing knowing it is a Lesser Spotted Grebe. What a way to give a chick an inferiority complex. What about the social aspirations of the Common Gallinule? However much it tries to acquire airs and graces or goes to elocution school, it will still be common as muck. I bet all the Common Gallinules long for the day when everyone thought they were just moorhens. Or those nuns in the abbey in Little Haywood. Do you think that if they were in Great Haywood instead they might grow up to be priests? Sure, that might take some doctrinal changes from the Roman Catholic Church, but if you are in a place that is already Great, anything is possible.

UPDATE: Paula says that what she was pointing out was not the Tolkien plaque, but the fact that the house has Rock Cottage on the nameplate, but etched in the glass on the door it says Cock Rottage.