Puddingstone

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Hertfordshire Puddingstone - pebbles of flint in a fine matrix.

When I was knee-high to a tabby cat, my parents had the most wonderful atlas.  It was huge!  It was a good 50 cm high by 30 cm or more across and quite thick. That's not just me looking back at it through the eyes of a child, although I  remember having looked at it when I was about 7 or 8 years old.  I'd never seen anything like it!  I know it was that size because we lugged it around various RAF stations until (a) it was falling to bits and (b) it was given to me when I left home.  I eventually binned it when it had totally disintegrated. 

I really do wish that I'd kept some of the pages but the actual atlas was fairly much obsolete by then, and that was before - for example - the break up of the USSR!  That's another thing - when we were growing up, countries felt eternal and absolute.  Who knew just how ephemeral they are and how quickly local and world events can split them apart?

After the atlas proper, though, there were other equally interesting pages.   I remember a page about precious stones, with (of course!) pictures of a diamond, a ruby, an emerald and a sapphire and another page about semi-precious stones.  I also remember seeing another page with a sentence or two about Hertfordshire puddingstone and a good photo to illustrate it (If you are interested, by the way, the 'plums' in the pudding are flint and the 'pudding' they are in is a finer matrix of sand and silica cement).  

To me it's also a trip down memory lane.  I don't know why, but the name is one of those things that stuck with me from my childhood.  Perhaps it just sounded incongruous?  Anyway, it would make a great crossword clue.

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