At Least They Were From A Northern Culture

Many thanks to Catherine for giving the heads-up on this letter. Ew. I’ll never use “heads-up” again. I blame the two days of management speak that I’ve sat through as part of my induction to my new job.

(An Aside. Most David Brent like quote: From the HR manager – “If you speak to engineers, many of them will say how much they love their pumps or equipment and how they want to see them perform perfectly. Well that is how I feel about you guys. I love our company’s best resource – our employees – and I see it as my job to make sure that you work like well tended machinery.”)

Tonight’s letter somehow slipped under my radar. It’s most probably because it focuses on the Princesshay development. In the early days I liked this topic (I even wrote a couple of times myself) because it involved the total destruction of a really ugly bit of town. It was great reading as people tried to attack the knocking down of a big lump of concrete, which at its very best looked like a level off of Tony Hawk’s Skatin’ kidz game.

However, the issue started to bore me and now I rarely make it past the title. Which is a shame, because this bad boy is a beauty, linking wonderfully to one of my favourite early blogs. (Is it not the done thing bigging up you own blogs? Well it’s all relative anyway.)

COUNCIL HAS RUINED CATHEDRAL GREEN

Exeter City Council has ruined Cathedral Green. Stand in the southern corner, by South Street, and you will see one of the most famous views in England desecrated by the new Princesshay development.

Princesshay now hovers over the ancient Cathedral Close - the most ancient section in the northern corner - like a hawk hovering over a bowling green.

Our heritage has been destroyed.

Francis Huddy

Exeter


Now I was all ready to ridicule the letter and point out that I had trouble picking out Exeter Cathedral from a cathedral round on University Challenge once and I’ve been visiting the city for over 20 years, thus how could it possibly be one of the most famous sights in the whole of Freaking England. However, first I went down to South St. and had a look at the cathedral and was horrified. Look at what they’ve done – Oh! think of the heritage.



"Wait a minute", you might be thinking, "That reminds me of something. God dammit, what is it?".

The rarely-seen Giant Redtailed Hawk visiting a recreational sports area frequented by older people, perchance?



I thought so.