Postie enters post-post phase.

As indicated in this morning's intrepid mobile post (all me! all the time! and don't forget - all wet), I took the train today. It's not uncommon for companies headquartered in London to have ops subdivisions in the rings of smaller cities that crest concentrically away from the capital. This ring thing is for real, by the way - check out the M25, aka the Ring Road. So at various points in time I find myself trudging to one of the outpost rail stations on the edge of Central London, to spring from hence into the great wilderness beyond. The rides are invariably pleasant - even if Richard Branson's trains feature less legroom than his planes, you see some amazing things out the window. This afternoon on my return I entered a short tunnel (say 15 seconds at speed) in a torrential downpour, the rivulets of rain obscuring the grayed-over countryside, and emerged in a land of sunshine, peace and tranquility.

The scenery is gorgeous. Though somehow I think the word scenery is cheap, and takes things down a notch.

The vistas are gorgeous.

The landscape is gorgeous.

The rolling hills, emerald fields, bejeweled rivers, houses of old, cows, sheep, goats, mares, stallions, ponies, rocks, airs, clouds and cock-tailed robins are gee- gee- gee- gee- Gorgeous.

Sorry. Can't get it right. It's real pretty. I'll try to take a picture sometime.

Here's the point of this post (long day, was supposed to be a simple straight-forward observe-click-laugh but I'd forgotten that when I'm tired I suffer from the lexical incontinence of drunk investment banker). The best part about traveling through England by rail is passing towns the names of which beggar the imagination. Thus begins this online journal's (pretentious? but I hate the word blog) first series, which will continue at any point when I find myself with absolutely nothing to say.

The first town is...Leighton Buzzard!

I haven't really come up with a format for these things yet. My initial thoughts are: a description of the provenance of the extraordinary name, entirely redundant since it will inevitably be cribbed from a wikipedia page that I will already have linked to; and, second, an interesting or noteworthy news item from the town and/or its vicinity. Thusly:

Leighton, well, that's common enough, I knew a Scott Leighton once, there are plenty of them, and Leytons, too, and possibly Laytons, which might allude to a history of name-by-trade, a la Goldsmith or Fabian. The Leightons probably laid tons of stuff for a living. Like Masons (oops, there's another).

Buzzard is the interesting bit, though, and that, that is most likely a corruption of Busar, as in Theobald de Busar, the town's representative, whose name may have been attached to the town the good Dean of Lincoln (I actually don't know whether he was good) to distinguish it from the other Leighton within his good diocese (lots of building going on at this time and in this place, busy busy busy).

As to the rest: ta-da.