As far as human aesthetics are concerned, beauty is bilaterally symmetrical. We choose our partners in life based on the relative wonkiness of their face roughly matching that of our own.

The same cannot be said for telegraph poles. Look at this asymmetric beauty sent in by our Waterlooville correspondent, Geoff Mawdsley (#0389). This forlorn railway pole stands along the old Fareham to Gosport line. Geoff thinks the builders of a small housing estate nearby must have mistaken it for a GPO pole and have consequently left it alone.

In its day this pole carried one of the first long distance telephone circuits from Osborne House on the Isle of Wight all the way to London for the holidaying Queen Victoria. A reasonably short mental journey then gets me to imagining this very pole having carried some of HRH’s sweet nothings back to her beloved Albert at home in the palace.  Or some sterner words if they’d had a regal row perhaps.

Or just maybe when she rang Benjamin Disraeli to tell him of his cupped armpit flatulence comedy sound effect that she and Albert were “not amused!”