WELCOME HOME ?

Re-entry into the `real world` is a sobering experience.   After another wonderful week on north Cornwall`s coast path, there has already been a bewildering selection of `issues` crossing my consciousness, none of which I was aware of whilst savouring the great escape in the far west.   Too many to name them all and anyway they all have the common denominator of seeming important to the `real world` when in reality they are but examples of the frantic insecurities of modern day Britain.

So I`ll just mention one - the naming of a street in Manchester after former United manager `Sir` Alex Ferguson.   Now hereabouts in deepest Kent there seems over the years to have been a fairly sensible approach to naming streets.   They tend to follow themes - close by there is a Birds Estate (Swallow Road, Plover Road and other chirpy names); a Poets estate (Thackeray, Keats, Auden, etc.) roads named after counties (Essex, Hereford, Somerset) and, of course, let`s not forget the trees - Maple, Laburnum, Sycamore and others of a woody disposition.

There were even rumours around here that a new `development` close to a nearby golf course would pick up that theme and have roads with names such as The Bogies, Bunker Crescent, Birdie Walk and yet another housing development on the site of a former mental hospital might, but for some hefty intervention by a concerned parish council, have gloried in street names such as The Nutters, Bonkers Avenue or even Loopy Mews.  Just don`t get me started on diseases of the body - The Shingles anyone?

So it`s with some mild amusement I see that, in keeping with the aforementioned insecurities of modern day Britain, a street in Manchester has been named after one of the most abrasive, charmless, intolerant individuals imaginable.   Mind you, it could have been even more appropriate if the street in question was on an estate which had such matching qualities as its very own theme - he could have found himself among The Tossers, Pillock Drive or The Rantings...and not been out of place.

I think I would prefer to have stayed in Cornwall.