"Go West, young man."

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To the north of me lurks Wycombe!

To the east there’s awful Slough:

A little south lies Maidenhead,

It’s the West, that calls me now.

And so it is, that most of my ‘Days Out’ take me off upstream to appealing places like Marlow, Henley, Dorchester, Thame and Wallingford.

I used to live in, and quite liked, Maidenhead, but forty years ago it was a town of character, now missing. I have never felt attracted to Wycombe and my feelings for Slough are not un-similar to those of John Betjeman -

“Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough.

It isn’t fit for humans now,

There isn’t grass to graze a cow.

Swarm over, Death !"

I read every day about ‘The Western World’,

about ‘Western Culture’ and ‘Western Values’.

So, where is the west, and is there a dividing line circling the globe?

East on one side, west on t’other.

Well, there are pages and pages on Wikipedia, but I like to think back to my

schooldays when, on opening my old school atlas, the east was on the right hand page and the west was on the left.

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My old Atlas.

There was a fold down the middle and it was always annoying to not be able to read names of places ‘on the fold’.

In those days I assumed anything to the left of the Greenwich Meridian was in the West.

It is also fascinating to notice how, in literature and song, that the West is portrayed as place of peace, a place of rest and a place of kindness and good.

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Of course, there are far too many references to this ubiquitous place ‘west’ to mention here.

I have often wondered which countries Australians consider in the west? For example, to us the USA is firmly in the west, but surely to them it is east across the Pacific.

And where to them is the ‘Far East’?

To me, there is only one west. A place of many wonderful holidays as a child. This is our very own ’West Country’. Here in England, usually meaning the counties of Devon and Cornwall.

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My old book of West Country songs.

Then, over at the extreme left of my atlas page,

is what us lads referred to as the ‘Wild West’,

with cowboys and covered wagons.

One of our favourites singers from those early days being Tex Ritter.

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Yes, I still have the LP.

One of my favourite tales comes from the pen of J.R.R. Tolkien.

His ‘Men of the West’,

his Elves going off to the west,

the ‘West’ - the realms and peoples opposed to Sauron (evil)

and favouring virtue and the Dunedin (good).

The West it is then.

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"A little grey home in the West."

Oh! And by the way, 'I am Spartacus'.

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