Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Tom Scott, who I am sure needs no introduction, has recently started a series simply called "England", in which each episode focuses on one of England's 39 counties and something interesting he found there. So far over the first six episodes we have a wide array of cohesively Tom Scott aligned topics from Lincoln University's School of Forensics to a mission to fit all of County Rutland into a single camera shot. It espouses a rare sincere affection for the country unclouded by the common delusions of histrionic patriotism nor political insecurities. I am enjoying it a lot: to see "England" as projected through the pin-hole lens of an individual, and one with the necessary skills to craft a high quality presentation for it. Such an endeavour is hardly new. Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys has a rather similar format, just as the diverse hands of Bryson, Constable, Chesterton and the Kinks all created similar works in their chosen medium of mastery, and that is just to name a few from the top of my head.
Tom Scott's series has been the impetus for me to start work on a in-some-ways similar project I've been slowly forming in my mind for several years, and this post is really just a convoluted written contract to provide myself with a little guilt-driven encouragement. For each of England's counties I wish to write a "chapter", covering what I believe to be the principal and foundational points of each land which should allows the reader to build up a cohesive tapestry of the landscape of "England" in their own imagination. I don't really wish to just compile a history, nor a geographical description, nor even a compendium of obscurities (although the latter is very tempting); but rather a "narrative of narratives" as it were: taking the key moments, along with the required context of the important things, people and places in order to personify each region, and hopefully endear you to them in the same manner they endeared themselves to me.
I have several pages of notes on it now, along with a pretty dense map marked with the important places and accompanying annotations. For some counties I feel confident in my understanding of them: but then for just as many more I do not whatsoever. The Midlands, the West Country and much of the South has been the focus so far: these are the places I know well and have travelled pretty extensively, whereas for East Anglia and the North I have very disjointed understandings which I fear are fed more by the second-hand opinions of others than by any personal or intimate experience. Indeed I have technically been to every county in England, but several I would be embarrassed to claim I have really "visited" (namely Durham, Cheshire & Northamptonshire), and for many more I have incomplete travels. I drew up a chart of my levels of confidence:
Green: Happy to write up now.
I'll and try and get the first few greens out over the coming months, but the counties in red will unfortunately probably take years due to the need for me to actually spend time there: I suppose I could instead make draft versions instead and rewrite them once the requisite pilgrimages have been undertaken. Either way this post is now just rambling so I'll wrap up this section here.
A miscellaneous grievance I have is the slow destruction of my countries traditional units. The English "county" has been battered to a pulp over the last century or so, so that many of our own countrymen have confused understandings of it all. I covered the basics here, but sufficed to say I will only be using the counties as they were from 1066 up until the "Great Meddling Act" of 1972. It brings me great pleasure that Tom Scott also takes this stance, going so far to divide Yorkshire into her three traditional Ridings, much to the chagrin of the deluded and incessant South-Yorkshire-truthers. Interestingly some real progress was recently made on this front with the Reform Party campaigning in the London Borough of Havering on the stance that she should be returned to proud Essex from the clutches of "Greater London": with their win last week the loyal subjects of Romford and end-of-the-tube-line Upminster will hopefully soon be reunited with their East Saxon cousins over the M25. But although silly sounding, such movements persuade me that a project like mine would be worthwhile. People want to be tied in which the great narrative of history, and while it obviously doesn't really matter where the line in the sand was originally drawn, the 1000 years of civilisation which was built on her pastures makes them more than just administrative conveniences.
Each of our counties has a unique character, drawn from a dense history and compiled collective "mysteries": the product of a million dreams. I think places hold immense symbolic value to us all, moreso than literal symbols. The fact that you can go and stand in the spot where some defining moment took place makes it "real" in a way that makes me hate that we British ever cursed the dominions to live on virgin lands, estranged from the truth which only the world can persuade you of. I want others to understand where they are on a better footing, or rather to describe my own understanding of them. Or maybe it'll just be a quirky tourist guide, that'd be fine too.
