GEORGE AND SAM - FEEL THE POWER

 

I assume your Facebook feed is much like mine, dredging up all kinds of nonsense about psych rock, tree surgeons, orthopedic shoes, organic food hampers, and so on, but just once in a while it brings something vaguely interesting such as this from ‘Remembering George 1943-2001,’ as in George Harrison.  

It’s an aerial photograph of what was his country house, Friar Park in Henley on Thames, and it comeswith a caption/quotation from George, ‘My Garden you can stroll around it in ten minutes if you’re power walking.  Which is what I do these days.  If you saunter it could take half an hour.  If you swagger maybe 45 minutes.’

 

I’m not sure that a swagger is slower than a saunter but here’s an image byPaul Sandby titled A Man Swaggering, one of twelve London Cries drawn from life and published in 1760.  It certainly looks like it might take him a while to get anywhere, even around a garden.

This is Friar Park as seen on Google maps.  

 

As far as I know there are 36 acres of garden at the house, and I’m not sure where those 36 acres begin and end, but it looks like a lot of ground to walk around, even power walk around in ten minutes, though a lot may depend on what you mean by ‘around.’ 

I was reminded of a Samuel Pepys diary entry, Saturday 18 May 1667 ‘Up, and all the morning at the office, and then to dinner, and after dinner to the office to dictate some letters, and then with my wife to Sir W. Turners's  to visit The., (Theophila Turner) but she being abroad we back again home, and then I to the office, finished my letters, and then to walk an hour in the garden talking with my wife, whose growth in musique do begin to please me mightily, and by and by home.’

That sounds like a full day with a lot of back and forth, but fortunately the Pepyses lived in a house in the Navy Office buildings on Seething Lane, so they lived above (or even in) the shop.  Below is the best historic image I’ve found of the Navy Office. It looks as though you’d have to do quite a lot of back and forth to occupy a whole hour.

Today there is the Seething Lane Garden, commemorating Pepys, which you can walk around in about five minutes.

 

This is George Harrison in his garden, not swaggering nor power walking, but on his feet, having his picture taken and not looking especially comfortable about it.