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After wading through one hundred and fifty three blogpostings, you’re probably already well into the habit of forgiving me the occasional repetition. It’s not always that easy to be entirely original every time I put finger to keyboard; and, to be brutally honest, I'm not usually inclined to look back through them all to make sure that the pearls of wisdom that are about to burst forth upon an unsuspecting world haven’t already graced the blogosphere.

That’s by way of being an apology if, at some point over the last couple of years, I have waxed lyrical about Wells Cathedral...

Revisiting Wells (in deepest Somerset) is one of the 60/60 items I drew up last December. (Yes, I know that taking a photograph at 1300 every day was also on the list. I’ll update you about that another time.) When Sue and I stayed in Wells overnight on the way down to Lyme Regis recently, I realised exactly why I had included it on my list of ‘60 things to do while you’re 60’.

Although it’s very small, Wells is undoubtedly a city and it’s dominated by its cathedral to much the same extent as Durham is, but not in the same way. Because of its position and architecture, Durham’s cathedral presents a powerful, dominating, almost ‘macho’ image to its surroundings, almost all of which seem to ‘cower’ below it. Wells Cathedral, on the other hand, dominates by seeming to be by far the largest and most beautiful ship floating in the Somerset countryside, with the tight, cramped and winding streets fluttering around it, protecting and admiring it.

I’ve loved Wells - the city and more especially its cathedral - for decades but had not visited it for many years. Seeing it again reminded me of how wrong I had been to neglect it. Its setting is perfect and the West Front, emblazoned with elaborate carving and statuary, is unique in England.

Also unique are perhaps its best-known feature: the ‘scissor arches’ which support the weight of the tower from inside the building; see above. In the 14th century, the glorious central tower was found to be leaning dangerously to the west and an unknown mediaeval architect came up with this most ingenious solution to help the four interior tower arches take the strain. Indeed, they are also known as ‘strainer arches’. As far as I know, there’s nothing like them in any other ancient building in Europe. They’re worth going to Wells to see.

So my first visit in many years to the beautiful city and cathedral of Wells didn’t let me down. Even the parish church is dedicated to St Cuthbert!

On the evening of our visit, though, Sue and I began to dream up experiences in our lives that had been ‘disappointing’; we started a list of things - any things - that had turned out to be let-downs; to be not what they’d been cracked up to be; not what we had been led to believe, if you catch my drift.

I have the list in front of me and it includes...

*Cornwall
*being 18
*gooseberries
*Charles Dickens
*The Rolling Stones
*1977
*French food
*Oscar Wilde
*Sex
*Liverpool
*Wagner
*seaside rock

and many more. I’m sure you could add a lot more, too - even privately...

THE NEXT AGM
The date and venue are set, then. About 1100 on Tuesday 4 August at The Sage. Don’t worry if you can’t make it; Nightshift/Truckshunter loyalty can only be stretched so far. I’ll take a book with me just in case.

The book will probably be The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Have you read it? If you have, I’d be interested to know what you made of it.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com