…how many interesting – and by interesting I mean really interesting – things we have been near to in our lives without even realising it? We walk past rare ming vases behind closed doors and we trudge over Roman coins beneath pavements – we do this all the time, but there is no way of knowing about it. It’s tragic.
(Courtesy of phatcontroller's photostream)
Take the London Stone, for instance. I never finished Peter Ackroyd’s ‘London: The Biography’ but I did get through the first two chapters, and I still talk about the largely forgotten legend attached to this small hunk of rock. In times past, it came to be seen as the heart of the city, and a conqueror was not really a conqueror until he touched it with his sword. These days it’s embedded discreetly into the wall of the Bank of China on Cannon Street. How many people walk past it on the way home from a day’s banking – heads down, barking into mobiles – not for a moment suspecting that, there and then, they could quickly conquer London?
Interesting Things I Am Near is a new website that you can search by postcode (or GPS) and tells you about interesting things you are near, linking you to blogs and other places on the internet that know of such things. So far that’s mainly the wonderful Nothing to See Here, The London Review of Breakfasts, A Good Place for a Cup of Tea and a Think and eggbaconchipsandbeans, although I think they may also have included a database of megaliths and more will be added…
