27th - Cerne Abbas Giant

When our son was about 7 years old we went for a family holiday to Dorset. The whole family went, three generations, and we all stayed in chalets by the seaside.

One day some of us went by car to visit the Cerne Abbas Giant.  This is a huge 55-metre erect male figure carved into the chalk of a green hillside, dating between 700 and 1100 AD, whose origins and purpose—from fertility symbol to pagan survival—remain a mystery

My brother and I parked our cars in the car park at the foot of the hill and we all trekked our way upwards to see the figure up close. When we returned to our cars they had both been broken into. In addition to the damage, our sons holiday money had been stolen, and my sister-in-law’s handbag had vanished. After reporting the loss to the police and making our cars as safe as possible we returned to the family and resumed our seaside holiday.

Several weeks went by before one weekend during the regular phone catch-up, my mother told us in a worried voice that my brother and sister-in-law had received a threatening and indecent message through the post.  They had assumed this was from the thief who must have got their address from my sister-in-law’s address book which was one of the missing items in her handbag. They were scared that the message was a cryptic and twisted precursor to a whole regime of horrible future events and had promptly contacted the police, who reacted by sending someone from the CID round to question them more closely.

But it wasn’t a twisted blackmailer or psychopath or anything of that nature. The reaction from my family when I told them that it was us wot did it was extraordinary.  I was treated to a very icy few weeks from my family, whilst at the same time my wife and I had to supress the gales of laughter which strained to bust from us each time we thought about it.

The truth was that at the end of our seaside holiday, and as a small gesture of love and friendship to my brother and his family we sent them a postcard, which we did not sign, sporting a picture of the Cerne Giant and a short humorous message from us. Of course, we had overlooked the fact that postcards of the giant were the only indecent photographs that could be sent through the Post Office. The giant sports a notably vertical erection, some 11 metres long (nearly the length of its head), along with testicles.

Our postcard of a naked and tumescent male, unsigned and ambiguous read “See you again soon, the Cerne Giant”.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1 of 24 - Introduction to "From Camborne to Doha by Accident"

Image
Introduction This blog has been stitched together from memory and charts a course through my boyhood in North Cornwall, linen rounds in West Cornwall, Doha site visits and Holman’s in Camborne. After fifty years of work—including thirty-four as a construction safety professional—I retired.   The first construction company I worked for sent me to the Brooklands Weybridge campus to begin learning the formalities of health and safety. I already knew some of the practical side, thanks to my Holman apprenticeship in 1972. Over the decades, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with hundreds of excellent people—and a small handful of halfwits—and together I believe we’ve made the world safer. I’ve worked on castles, prisons, palaces, power stations, and countless schools, hospitals, offices, warehouses, and supermarkets. I’ve worked on laboratories, depositories, and dry docks. I’ve worked in four Middle Eastern countries, in the Philippines, in the Caribbean on Saint Kitts and N...
Read more

23 of 24 - Al Marmoom

We called it the Oasis. A few miles out from Dubai, past the glass and the graft. The road was good—quiet enough to talk, smooth enough to think. We’d head out with a flask and a sandwich, no rush, just a trip away from the city.   Al Marmoom never disappointed. There was always something to see. Fish made nests in the lake sand—accurately fluted, like decorative dishes. Beetles chased the car, combative and absurd. Like Don Quixote. Flamingos moved off in a honking crowd when we got too close. Dragonflies often swarmed the car—sometimes a dozen, sometimes a hundred. A raptor took a pigeon for its lunch, then rested in the reeds. Deer slept beneath low bushes enjoying the shade. Tall African birds leaned around the scrub to watch us go past.   We never visited without a natural treat. Sometimes it was sound. Sometimes movement. Sometimes stillness. It wasn’t a spectacle. It was a system. And we were allowed to witness it. We took a few photogr...
Read more

21 of 24 - Construction safety in Qatar

  The Flowering Bush Qatar is a desert country. In Doha, the city blooms—palms and bougainvillea tended by an army of gardeners, irrigation lines humming beneath the pavements. But out in the suburbs and beyond, bushes are rare and trees even rarer. The land reverts to dust and rock, broken only by pylons and the occasional discarded tyre. One day as I was driving between sites I spotted a large bush flowering beside the road. Delicate white blossoms were scattered like confetti across the sand. It was such a lovely sight—unexpected, magical. I pulled off the road and drove across the gravel to get a closer look. I wound down the window and leaned out, peering at the flowers, admiring their grace against the grit. Then I sensed movement—an energetic commotion from inside the bush. A moment later, an Indian gentleman emerged, adjusting his trousers with brisk efficiency. He had, presumably, been relieving himself in the privacy of this rare and handy bush. And now, from his ...
Read more