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IN the pink, palm-strewn, high-life suburbs of Los Angeles, tourists may buy
a map that shows what stars live where. And I think Gloucestershire county
council should do the same over here.
I was driving through the Cotswolds last week, and in every valley there was
another imposing set of gateposts, another key-code entry device and, away
off in the distance, the multi-chimneyed roof of yet another agreeable manor
house. A house that had been built before pleblon and scrapie forced the
sheep farmers out and let the rock stars in.
I had no map, but I just knew that there, in Lower Dean, in the middle of
that copse, lived the drummer from Amen Corner. And who's this coming
towards us in his battered old Land Rover? Why, it's the lead singer from
Sly and the Family Stone. Rock'n'rollers never die. They just buy a tweed
suit and move to the Cotswolds.
Later in the day, I was half way up a hill with a 12-bore in one hand and a
cup of bullshot in the other, and it wasn't hard to grasp the appeal. A
steady rain crackled on my waxed jacket, smoke from some burning leaves
curled up the valley from John Entwistle's bonfire, and then there was the
light; that grey Tupperware diffusion that's such a hallmark of England, in
November, at three in the afternoon.
You can keep the orange glow of Calcutta and the blue of the Côte d'Azur.
I'd even take that English half-light over the shimmering whiteness of
Arizona or the Technicolor turquoise and scarlet of St Kitts.
Those rock'n'rollers have sent laser beams into the night sky over Rio.
They've floated pigs over Berlin. But being English, they can never shake
from their souls the leaf mulch and the dankness and the horror of shooting
a white pheasant by mistake.

Clarkson then goes on to test the Lexus 4X4.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm