bunn

This is partly because I and Rosie went away with my Mum to stay for a week in Maldon, which is where she was born and lived until she was 18 and wiped the Essex mud off her feet with alacrity, to go off to university.

Although Mum still has cousins in Maldon, and we've seen them occasionally, I'd only actually been to Maldon once, when I was... probably about six? For a family wedding.  I can remember almost nothing about the place from that visit but a vague impression of mud.  This proved to be accurate, as far as it went, although actually Maldon is considerably more pleasant as a place to visit than I was expecting.

First of all, if you ever need to go from Cornwall to Maldon, do not go on a Friday.   The route involves the M5 (holiday traffic going home and on holiday) the M4 (Contraflows as far as the eye can see!) and the M25, which as we all know is specifically designed to be the shape of the character Odegra, meaning “Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds” in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu.   Then after that you get to do the A414 which for a busy multi-carriageway A road is in appalling poor condition, and has so many holes and patches that driving on it at more than 60, which everyone does, feels like it's going to shake you apart.