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Longdendale - The Haunted Valley

I live in the Longdendale Valley, near Glossop in Derbyshire, UK. I'm just up the road from Hadfield, more recently better known as Royston Vasey with the weird shenanigans of the League of Gentlemen.

I'm on the edge of the Peak District, England's oldest National Park and an area of outstanding natural beauty with a great richness of flora and fauna. My favourite example of local wildlife is the Mountain Hare, which mostly lives in more Northern reaches where its habit of turning snowy white in the Winter is an invaluable survival aid. Sadly, our hills are covered in snow for only a few days each year, meaning that most of the time the poor old Mountain Hare is very conspicuous in its Winter coat. We also have a healthy population of birds of prey...

Some things I like to do

For relaxation I like to go gliding over the moors and would highly recommend the silent flight of an engineless aircraft to any potential aviators out there.

I play the classical guitar whenever I can find the time, being particularly fond of Spanish and Latin American guitar music (Villa Lobos, Albeniz, Granados, Brouwer and many more).

I'll read anything that comes to hand but my preferences are for SciFi, Fantasy, Humour and modern classics. After reading the excellent article in The Post about language and literature, I've decided to have another crack at Finnegans Wake¹, James Joyce's inspired (but virtually unreadable) novel creating something wholly new from the English language.

Just in case you were wondering....

Why Metal Chicken? Well, maybe you remember the Clangers?
They were knitted puppets who spoke in whistles and lived on soup fed to them by a friendly dragon. When life got difficult they called on an eccentric neighbour for help. She lived on a nest of scrap iron and would always give away something useful from the rubbish heap along with a slice of worldly wisdom. At age five I aspired to be that metal chicken and now I have my chance.

I'm a member of the The H2G2 Astronomy Society, a good place to go for those with an interest in watching the skies. Throughout 2003 we're attempting a Messier Marathon. That means we're spending clear nights trying to spot all 110 faint fuzzy patches catalogued by comet-hunter Charles Messier as objects that look like they might be comets but aren't.

That's quite enough about me. Get back out there and start writing your own entries! Do leave me a message before you go though.

Who's On H2G2?

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¹ Hmmm. Been a long, long time since I wrote that and I've still not got past the second page. Having finally read through the Silmarillion after 20 years of trying maybe this will be the year for Joyce.