Thursday and Friday brought one of the reasons why we came to England: to meet up with some of the programmers formerly employed by Starlink. We had the meeting in sunny Hunstanton.
English people are strange, I have to say. Hunstanton really isn’t all that much. Its sole redeeming feature seems to be… uh… well, there’s a sandy beach that appears when the tide goes out. I have to admit that it was indeed sunny. There was a pub that was quite nice. The tourist shops were full of tat, 95% of which wasn’t even related to Hunstanton or England or really any place in the world. Yet Hunstanton seems to be some kind of minor scale tourist destination where families go in the summer. I can’t understand it.
I also have to say that although the English are otherwise relatively modern (they drive cars and listen to radio and drink tea), there are a few things that really point to the reason why the sun sets on the Empire these days. One of those is taps. Taps in sinks, not taps in bars (for which the English are to be commended). England doesn’t seem to have discovered the mixing tap yet. On nearly every sink I’ve seen you have a hot water tap and a cold water tap with separate spigots, whereas in every sink I’ve seen in North America and Australia you get one spigot for both temperatures. In England if you want warm water you’re stuffed, you can either get hypothermia or scald your hands. I’m 95% certain that countries broke away from England because they realized that England’s tap technology was lagging behind and they didn’t want to have their hospitals overflowing with scalded hands.
Friday, after the meeting was over at 2pm, we hit Sandringham and Castle Rising Castle (older than Canada!). Sandringham is a tad on the ugly side, suffering from expansion-itis, although its interior is quite nice. Liz wasn’t in so us plebes were allowed through (for the low low price of £7.50). The gardens are well done and look natural in that manicured-let’s-plant-these-trees-relatively-randomly kind of way. Castle Rising Castle was impressive and imposing. It’s not the largest castle out there but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the best proper castle I’ve been to. To be fair it’s the only proper castle I’ve been to that I can remember (Craigdarroch Castle doesn’t really count, although I suppose Hatley Castle probably does).
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