Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Lacking an Amenity.

I was just watching a YouTube video about spooky Japanese rituals, and one of them began: Go to the nearest crossroads.

And so I wondered where my nearest crossroads was and mentally ran through all the road junctions in and around the village. There are fourteen of them, and they’re all either T junctions or 3-way junctions. The nearest true crossroads is two miles away.

And that struck me as odd. A village without a crossroads? Where did they site the gibbet so as to confuse the ghosts of the hanging people?

(This tendency to become preoccupied with spooky things at bed time goes back to childhood. I slept with the light on until I was twelve. These days I rely on strong ale and whisky to be more efficacious than salt, garlic, crucifixes or light bulbs.)

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