Felt Right

WALKED to Greenwich yesterday to buy yellow felt from a Hobbycraft store, the idea being to cut it into strips when a wadi (seasonal dry riverbed) is needed for desert terrain.

According to Google Maps, the distance from my home to the shop is 6.7 miles, which made for quite a walk there and back, especially as I managed to get semi-lost on the way.

But I am glad I did walk it, rather than using public transport, not least because after passing through the Greenwich under-Thames foot tunnel (not recommended for claustrophobes), I came upon a branch of Oxfam that I am fairly sure I have not visited before.

It proved to contain quite a treasure trove of secondhand books, but I stopped looking after buying two as my backpack was already fairly heavy.

One book is DH Lawrence's account of various travels in Italy, which was on my long-list of tomes to get.

The other was an impulse buy, The Men Of The North - The Britons Of Southern Scotland, by historian and archaeologist Tim Clarkson.

While many members of the general British public will have heard of the Picts, and most will know at least something of the Vikings, few will realise that the Scoti, after whom north Britain was renamed, came from Ireland.

Fewer still, I imagine, will be aware that Strathclyde was home to people who spoke a form of Old Welsh, and so were more closely related to the Celts of Wales than to the other peoples of north Britain.

Clarkson's book is about the Celtic kingdom of Strathclyde, and other northern political entities of the Ancient Britons.

I am expecting these to make a great pair of entertaining reads