1066 Country

I've just spent the week in Camber Sands. It would have been delightful if the weather had been a little better and the roof a little less sea gully. Unfortunately you can't count on the weather in the UK and sea gulls are remarkably unmoved by reasoned debate. One thing that did annoy me, perhaps unreasonably, was the signage promoting the entire county of East Sussex as "1066 Country."

I could be missing the point, East Sussex, of course, encompasses both Battle and Hastings, which can be famously joined with an "of" to give us the name of the UK's most memorable historical event*. But come on, it's not like the rest of the country wasn't around in 1066 either (or the entire universe for that matter.) And Sussex isn't even a country anyway. I suppose as a slogan it's not quite as snappy as "Decisive Moment in the Norman Conquest County" but it would be considerably less irritating. I don't even know why I even found it irritating in the first place, it's not entirely inaccurate given the aforementioned existence of the universe in 1066, so I can't complain there, the country bit is still wrong of course but it is a commonly used turn of phrase so I'm hard pushed to really complain about that too.

OK, I admit, I do know why I found it irritating, it's because I hate stupid marketing nonsense. Oh all right, it's because I'm a grumpy whatsit.

It's not even as if that's the only odd thing, after all the so called Battle of Hastings wasn't in Hastings anyway, it was, of course, in Battle. So it should be called the Battle of Battle, but that would be weird. And yes, I know the place was named after the battle, not the other way around. So let's just call it the Battle of Senlac Hill and say no more about it.

*The Hastings of Battle