In Dorset, people love animals. There are dogs everywhere - and very happy dogs they are! All this space, this fresh air, those beaches on which to run and dig! 
Cats seem to love it too - I am not too sure about reptiles, though... 
We saw this in Wimborne Minster... Perhaps it's taking the love for your animal just that step too far. Poor things! 

Names of places around Dorset are insane. Some are poetic, some are downright rude or grotesque - Scratchy Bottom, anyone? Actually, there are quite a lot of bottoms: Burnt Bottom, Happy Bottom, even an Aunt Mary's Bottom... Also, we have Shitterton and Shaggs (apparently there is a royal connection here, to prince Harry of all people) stop sniggering at the back!... 

For more wonderful names and facts about Dorset, you can acquire a great little book: The Little Book of Dorset, by David Hilliam (I have linked the Amazon page here, I don't think there is any website for it). 
I have bought mine at a lovely independent bookshop in Wimborne Minster, Gullivers.

I personally love Gussage All Saints, as it inevitably reminds me of the beautifully named newt-loving P.G Wodehouse character Gussie Fink-Nottle (in the Jeeves and Wooster series). Wodehouse is my default reading at the moment: serious book / Wodehouse/ serious book / Wodehouse - not that I don't take Mr Wodehouse's writing seriously! Reading his books just make me happy, so I pick it up whenever I need a little... pick-me-up! 

Dorset's most famous writer Thomas Hardy famously changed all the place names and created his very own semi-fictional county of WESSEX with them. 

The poet John Betjeman actually wrote a poem using the evocative names of Dorset villages:

Rime Intrinsica, Fontmell Magna, Sturminster Newton and Melbury Bubb,
Whist upon whist upon whist upon whist drive, in Institute, Legion and Social Club.
Horny hands that hold the aces which this morning held the plough 
While Tranter Reuben, T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells and Edith Sitwell lie in Mellstock Churchyard now.

Lord's Day bells from Bingham's Melcombe, Iwerne Minster, Shroton, Plush,
Down the grass between the beeches, mellow in the evening hush.
Gloved the hands that hold the hymn-book, which this morning milked the cow 

While Tranter Reuben, Mary Borden, Brian Howard and Harold Acton lie in Mellstock Churchyard now.

Light's abode, celestial Salem! Lamps of evening, smelling strong,
Gleaming on the pitch-pine, waiting, almost empty even- song{:}
From the aisles each window smiles on grave and grass and yew-tree bough 

While Tranter Reuben, Gordon Selfridge, Edna Best and Thomas Hardy lie in Mellstock Churchyard now.

{Note: The names in the last lines of these stanzas are put in not out of malice or satire but merely for} their euphony.}

On our way back from Dorset last weekend, we noticed a village called Barton Stacey (OK, this is in Hampshire, not in Dorset, but we were on our way back from our holidays in Dorset, and it's still pretty rural, so there's a link!) and my partner said: 
"Wow, that would be a cool name for a private detective, Barton Stacey!" 
It would, indeed. 
"Yes," I replied, "It could be the name of a character in a detective book set in the countryside. Like, Rural Noir" - rolling of the "Rs" - as opposed to the decidedly more urban genres of the Film Noir and Noir novel... And we started laughing and imagining what such a book would be about. Would the detective be wearing wellies? 

We could find some cool titles... 
"Hayfever - a Barton Stacey mystery" or "Barton Stacey and the mystery of the flying cow"... 
I don't know, I am not sure I could myself write a detective novel, although I have read quite a lot of them... And I do not know enough about crime, policing, etc. Also, this would have to be a spoof, and I am not witty enough to start dabbling in comic/comedic writing. 
But wouldn't it  be fun to try and create a series of it... Who knows, maybe one day?

By the way, the Rural Noir genre actually seems to exist: SEE HERE

I guess you could call Faulkner's work Rural Noir. 
Nick Cave had a good go as well with his And The Ass Saw the Angel... It is more Rural Gothic though...

I came back to the overcrowded South-East on Saturday night, and I already have the impression I have never left. But it has been an astonishingly inspiring two weeks.  It's a bit grim after two weeks of this:

Perfect peace and quiet, very few people and complete darkness at night.
We have discovered some absolutely wonderful new places full of beauty, mystery and power... Secret chapels in the woods, altars and offerings, iron age forts, stone circles, imposing country mansions, squabbling gentry families, inspired writers... and even a white deer - which apparently is stuff of legend... I have photographic proof! 

I hope to post more pictures and thoughts here this week before embarking on my week-long creative writing course next week - I hope to be able to chronicle the course with yet more thoughts and pictures, this is what this blog is about.

Thankfully for our sanity, we have a whole schedule of exhibitions, gigs, vintage markets and theatre plays to keep us busy. London is not far away and even though I am becoming more and more obsessed with Dorset and the mysteries of the landscape and life there, my love for the capital remains unchanged and it can still deliver its regular dose of culture. On the horizon: Pre-Raphaelites, Cecil Beaton, Hollywood costumes, Amanda Palmer, Fields of the Nephilim... to name but a few!

This week is free from freelance work, so I will be splitting my time between blogging about Dorset, writing at least 1,000 words a day of The Book of Thoth and preparing a presentation for the course.