#114753 - 10/30/03 03:18 PM
What'a funny?
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 1692
Loc: UK
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My grandson pointed to a ditch and stone wall arrangement in the grounds of a local ‘stately home’ and said: what’s that? I told him that it was a ha-ha. That meant a lot more explanation was needed! If you don’t know of it, it is a ditch that slopes down from pastureland and has the opposite side formed from a vertical stone wall with its top level with the lawn on the garden side. The depth of the ditch and wall varies depending on what animals you aim to keep out of the garden. The object of the ha-ha was to keep farm animals out of formal gardens without spoiling the view across the grounds.
I am left wondering, is the UK is the only place that used the ha-ha (doesn’t form a good plural!), and if it’s used elsewhere does it have the same name? It’s a pretty simple idea, so I would guess it’s common enough.
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#114754 - 10/30/03 03:51 PM
Re: What'a funny?
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Dear dxb: I've never heard of or seen a ha-ha in US. I think that grazing animals are seldom adjacent to large expensive estates. And an electric fence on property of animal owners would be most common solution.
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#114755 - 10/30/03 04:18 PM
Re: What'a funny?
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 08/27/02
Posts: 2154
Loc: British Columbia, Canada
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Haven't heard of a ha-ha here but I've always loved the combination of idea and name. Our closest equivalent would be a cattle gate. It is a ditch about a meter deep crossing a road in place of a standard gate. There are round pipes set in the top perpendicular to the road about 4 inches apart so that cars can rattle across without stopping to open and close a standard gate but the cows are afraid to stepp on it and won't cross and escape.
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#114757 - 10/31/03 09:35 AM
just wanna yart the night away
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addict
Registered: 04/24/02
Posts: 475
Loc: manchester uk
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http://snurl.com/2sk1 for a brief discussion, the site keeps on dropping out when I try to do searches so no more from me today.
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#114760 - 10/31/03 01:15 PM
Misspent youth?
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old hand
Registered: 03/16/00
Posts: 1004
Loc: London, UK
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When I was younger I read a couple of books, by an Englishman abroad (?), who later moved to England and continued writing these works - scathingly satirical and mind-sharpeningly funny. His name: Tom Sharpe. Perhaps most famous these days for Wilt, Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue.
His first two books, however, Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure were set in South Africa/modern Namibia/modern Zimbabwe, and I recall (I think it was in the first book?) that the Donford Yates-reading 'English' expats there had hahas. At least, there was a moment in the book when someone fell into the haha, which had been dug so deep and wide it was a hazard to life and limb - for everybody.
The peerless Terry PRatchett, of course, has the Patrician sitting on his lawn, casually sending the leader of the Assassin's Guild into a haha designed by Berghold Stuttley (Bloody Stupid) Johnson, that was so large it was no longer a haha, but a hoho. So there are hahas on Discworld.
Any South Africans here to confirm fictional sightings of hahas in the Rainbow Nation?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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#114761 - 11/02/03 04:42 AM
Re: What's funny?
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 1692
Loc: UK
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Thanks for digging that up, Jackie. I was going to provide a link but, really, that site says everything.
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#114762 - 11/02/03 11:20 AM
Re: What's funny?
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 11578
Loc: Louisville, Kentucky
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