Make your vote for good taste count

Courtesy of the community-spirited Nattydreadi:

The Spice Girls have announced that they will play one date on their upcoming farewell tour in a city chosen by their fans. To assist them in this please click on the link below, select Your Spice City and add your vote for Baghdad.

http://www.thespicegirls.com/en/index.html

Vote early, vote often.

Local Heraldry

Having read this entry on JFS' LJ, I was prompted to discover the heraldry of my own home. The results are peculiarly prosaic, without any of the great stories mentioned by JFS but then, I live in the middle of a forest, and that carries it's own kind of magic neh?


Azure six Martlets three two and one and a Chief indented Or. On a Wreath of the Colours a Sprig of Oak proper fructed with two Acorns Or within a Saxon Crown also Or.

This is the coat of arms of West Sussex, ever since I was a young boy I have known that the birds shown were called "martlets" and that they had no legs or feet, only tufts of feathers. Only recently have I discovered that there are six of them to represent the six Rapes (districts) of Sussex: Arundel, Bramber, Chichester, Hastings, Lewes and Pevensey. The jagged division of the blue and gold background was added in 1974 (previously it was straight) and represents the five districts which were absorbed by West Sussex from East Sussex and Surrey: Burgess Hill, Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Dorking and Horley. In later years Dorking and Horley reverted to Surrey but the coat of arms has not been adjusted. The crown and acorns is also a reflection of the enlargement of West Sussex and has been taken from the Surrey coat of arms. For all the modern changes though, blue and red shields with six golden martlets were already shown representing Sussex in 1611, and West Sussex was apparently one of the first counties to be granted a coat of arms in its own right. So they may not be terribly imaginitive, but they are at least old.


Argent, on across azure between four acorns leaved and slipped proper, nine martlets volant or.

Most of this is pure supposition but I believe that the nine martlets represent the original nine districts of the new town (one of the first new towns to be built in the country): Furnace Green, Gossops Green, Ifield, Langley Green, Northgate, Pound Hill, Three Bridges, Southgate and West Green. While the acorns represent the town's position surrounded on all sides by forest. Given the town's name (means "Field of Crows" in middle English) I am surprised that they choose to use the martlets rather than crows (the emblem of the Development Board for Crawley New Town had both martlets and crows) but hey you can't have everything.

So not as picturesque as others maybe but then that's a bit like the county itself. We don't really have any dramatic scenery as such, we're less stunning and more comfortable ... if you see what I mean?