I’m always reading peep’s posts on twitter saying that (quite wrongly) Basingstoke is a dump etc and whenever I read this I always think of the old Japanese folk tale about The House of 1,000 mirrors. Let’s face it - life is only a mirror of yourself, so from now on I’m going to send this story to anyone who mentions anything derogatory about Basingstoke.
Once upon a time there was a happy little dog in Basingstoke (or was it a far away village) and he heard about an unusual house of a thousand mirrors on a hill just outside his village. One day he decided to visit this house so off he went up the hill to have a look. He was so excited to go somewhere he had never been before and as he approached the house, his ears were uplifted and his tail was madly wagging and on walking through the door he was confronted with a thousand happy doggy faces all with their tails wagging as madly as his. He smiled at all the other little dogs and was so happy when they all smiled back at him. What a great place this is he thought and went off back down the hill saying to himself "I really must go back to that friendly house as often as I can."
Now there was another, not so happy, little dog in the village who also heard about this house, so one day he set off up the hill to have a look. He walked into the house with a glum face and was greeted by a thousand glum faces. With this he lowered his ears and snarled at the thousand glum faces and a thousand little dogs snarled back at him. I don’t like this place he thought to himself and turned round and walked back down the hill saying to himself, "what an awful place that was, I won’t go there again!”
So next time you go anywhere just give this a thought and remember, what you give out you will receive back - sometimes as much as a thousand times.
