Wednesday 20 October 2010

17.Village , Town or City

Pangbourne is a two street village as opposed to a town. A village is a place that has a church and a town is a place that has a church, a town hall and a market. There has been a few cases were a place has wanted to be  classified as a town and they simply introduced a  couple of market  stalls on a couple of days a week in order to get town status. Now if they wanted to become a city what would they need?. The answer is simply a cardboard cut out of a cathedral, and university and administration building made out of Lego.
So what is the real difference between a village, a town and a city? Once again the answer is simple and is the same answer to what is the difference between a knoll, a hill and a mountain. A mountain is a large hill, a hill is a smaller mountain and a knoll is a very much smaller hill. “Well what’s  Pangbourne famous for then?” asked the Cabin Boy. “Well” said the Captain ” Pangbourne was the home of Kenneth Grahame ,you know the guy that wrote  the  Wind in the Willows , if you look over by that small road by the weir, that’s where he lived and of course , you’ve got  the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at that posh school, Pangbourne College was opened by Queen Elizabeth in March 2000. It was built to commemorate the lives and sacrifice of all those who died during the Falklands War of 1982, and the courage of those who served with them to protect the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. The Queen revisited the Memorial Chapel in 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Falklands conflict.
“Can you tell us anything else about the war “asked the Cabin Boy?” I can “said the First Mate.”The Argies, known for being a sneaky lot, sneaked up on our marines who were looking after the place and seized it. When this was realised , Maggie Thatcher sent in  a couple of big naval destroyers  and some subs to sort them out. It only took us two or three months to sort them out and the highlight was the sinking of the Bel something by an English submarine. The Argies complained   they were outside the area of field of battle, whatever that was supposed, but I reckon the cruiser was doing a runner myself . O and the Argies gave out a report that they had sunk or severely damaged  our HMS Invincible which of course was  a lot of bollocks since we’d  shot down all their Exocet missiles and they therefore had no weapons to cause this damage in the first place”
Our stroll around Pangbourne took about two minutes which proved its vastness in size and why it should be called the City of Pangbourne-on-Thames .

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