Blenheim Palace - home of naked, manly wrestling

I feel guilty being glad that the remixredux deadline has been put back to 15 May because I'm sure the people who've done their fics are a bit pissed off, but it leaves me more time to arse around procrastinate finish mine.

Yesterday we visited a completely crazed piece of Baroque architecture, Blenheim Palace. The bus driver on the way from Oxford was a trainee and wouldn't let us on until the lurking shape behind him said it was time. The bus was due to leave at 12.20 and we were let on at 12.19 and 30 seconds, then the bus sat there for another 10 minutes, inexplicably. It took us, along with the train ride from Reading, about 1.5 hours to travel about 35 miles. But it was worth it because Vanbrugh was obviously a bit mad and had a winning way with brooding edifices, insanely complicated finials and the hey!let's add another wing! sort of enthusiasm that only people with the wealth of pharoes, literally, could afford. And the man who built Blenheim, in comparision to the majority of England, who were basically serfs and lived off turnips, could afford enormous, tasteless, solid marble fireplaces, gold leafing creeping over walls, ceiling and furniture, crystal by the chandelier load, enough men to dig an entire lake and to landscape 2,100 acre of grounds, and miles of carved stonework.

Much as I resent giving my plebian pounds to the upper crust (and nothing makes you feel quite so lowly and plebby as visiting the homes of the aristocracy), especially ones as annoying as the Spencer-Churchills, I don't begrude my £11 if it goes towards fixing the rotting window frames. The house is something that deserves looking after and, rich as they are, no one's quite rich enough to be able to afford the year in, year out upkeep of that place. It's enormous.

But even better, in the Italian Garden was a eye-popping monument to ( naked manly wrestling )