Here's a link to Gigapan, a fun site I newly surfed to this evening. It's not the home page, but I love this view, since it shows what I didn't get to see when I trekked up Pen-y-Fan in South Wales in a fog on April Fool's Day, 1989.
Try the Search bar! Virtual trips for one and all!
Wednesday, 5 April, 1989
Holford to Taunton to Salisbury to London
Day Twenty
This morning at breakfast there was smoked haddock, the first time I’ve had any on this trip. It was a nice change from bacon.
The weather didn’t look too cheerful as I headed down the little road to Crowcombe and thence to Taunton. Still, we put the Beethoven sonata tape in the player and make the best of it.
In case you’re wondering, I was not going there again because Somerset's county town is such a tourist magnet. I had absolutely no cash in my purse and had to hit the NatWest to cash some Traveller’s Cheques. And I wanted to buy some Somerset cider.
Worse finding a place to park today than Sunday, not surprisingly. Finally got a slot in a half-hour zone a couple-three blocks from downtown. Hustled and managed to accomplish both goals in the nick of time. Last thing I want is a ticket.
The cider’s in a plastic jug. No temptation to take it home to America that way, though I really would’ve preferred the stoneware container.
It was after noon when I'd completed my errands and left there, so I had to skip going back to Bristol to try to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge by day. Would’ve been no improvement over last night, anyway-- cloudy again. Instead I went south on the A358 to pick up the A303 east at Ilminster, to make it as expeditiously as possible to Salisbury.
Of course I managed to get lost on the way, or I thought I was, which comes to the same thing. Backtracked thinking I’d missed the turn for the A36, wasting all sorts of time and petrol in the process, only to discover I’d been ok all along. It’s a good thing this car comes with unlimited mileage.
When I got to Salisbury I drove around till I found a place I could park for a couple hours free on Mill Road by the Queen Elizabeth Gardens. That gave me a better view of the cathedral than a close-in position would’ve, though it isn’t the angle so often painted by Constable, I think.
I walked along the water there as close as I could come, but they haven’t thought to provide a bridge whereby you can reach the cathedral from that angle. So I had to walk all the way around to the High Street after all.
First thing apparent on this fine foggy day is that the West Front is being restored. More scaffolding (do I hear a March somewhere?). You can’t have everything, though.
The interior was different from what I expected and a little disappointing as well. It seems odd to say so, but all my reading and photograph-taking had led me to believe it would be a lot more-- well, cleaner. And instead I found it neither austere, nor rich, but merely cluttered-- and mostly with tourists. A great many French ones, many of them there in student groups. But that seems to be the case in most English cathedrals I’m visiting this trip.
The dark gray Purbeck shafts of the nave and triforium are very smooth and nice, but damn, don’t they subdivide the vertical space! One horizontal band on top of the other.
The really odd thing is the Trinity Chapel, at the east end. The Purbeck shafts there are unbelievably tall and slender. They look hardly able to take the weight of the vaults, light-looking as those are.
Got a good look at the inverted arch in the eastern transept, to figure out to where the mouldings go . . . Actually, they just die into an unengaged column on each side. Not the most polished or professional solution one could imagine. I wonder at what stage those were put in.
They’re installing a new organ in the northwest transept. The case wasn’t entirely built and I could admire the big diapason ranks.
The Trinity chapel is dedicated to Prisoners of Conscience. I can’t help thinking, it’s not enough to be sincere; you can be sincerely wrong. But still, Amnesty International is right-- you can’t go jailing people just because they’re Communists or whatever. That seemed to be the case of the South American student who is their prisoner of the month.
Yes, the title does sound rather hokey, doesn’t it? At least, some of the French students really thought so. Gave them a good laugh. And me a blow to my romantic conception that all European students are such socially-aware people.
It’s not only the west front that’s being renovated, it’s the tower and roof as well. You can’t go anywhere in that church without encountering a display illustrating the need for urgent repairs. But it is imperative something be done, so I threw in a pound in addition to my admission ‘donation.’
They have one fund-raising idea which wasn’t exactly the most atmosphere-preserving activity but still is an interesting concept. They’re releading the roof and to raise money they’ve divided several sheets of the lead into boxes maybe 1-1/8" high x 4" long. For £2 you can use an electric engraving tool and inscribe your name, origin, the date, and anything else you like, within good taste and reason, and it’ll go up on the roof.
I decided what the heck, why not. But of course I have to be Creative. So towards the upper middle of sheet #39 (you can ask them when on a roof tour and they’ll show it to you), I have
Blogwen X--
Kansas City, USA
5 April, 1989
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
All done in a very shaky version of my Celtic lettering-- shaky due to not having eaten since breakfast (it was after 4:00 by now) and just plain nerves. Still, it was enough to excite the natives. And who knows what it’ll inspire.
I actually wasn’t feeling very Gloria in Excelsis but the attribution is appropriate, regardless of how I feel. And besides, it’s a good motto for a roof.
Obligatory visit to the cathedral shop for a postcard or two, then I strolled around the cloister. Peeked into the chapterhouse but didn’t go in-- couldn’t afford the time and didn’t care to pay the extra money.
Out the west door to admire as much of the facade as was visible behind the scaffolding. It started to rain so I skipped making a full circuit of the building.
Left the cathedral grounds and walked up the High Street in search of a phonecard box. Found one, and tried calling Royal Festival Hall about where to park for the concert this evening. But got no answer. They must close at 4:30.
Tried to locate a bakery or whatever in the immediate vicinity so I could buy something to pretend to be dinner, but with no success. So tonight we’ll live on Berlioz. No problem.
Got petrol at an off-brand station just out of town. I asked and they didn’t take traveller’s cheques, not even in pounds sterling. Very strange. Visa was all right, luckily.
Got on the A338 north (at about 5:00) to pick up the A303 past Andover and then to get the M3 near Popham. The motorway goes past Basingstoke. My dialects book says that down here it’d be taboo to say, "Basingstoke is a fine and purdy town." But I had no opportunity to take an exit and find out why that’s not the sort of thing one should say. I had other things on my mind. Making it to London in time, for one thing. And the weather, for another.
Jolly entertaining stuff, that was. It started snowing before I left Wiltshire and in Hampshire it was coming down pretty hard-- and sticking. Not on the road, though. Little chance of that with the volume of traffic. The highway code says you’re not supposed to put on your fog lamps unless there’s actually a fog. I don’t care, I turned them on anyway. Everybody, and that obviously includes me, was trucking along at 80 mph just as if nothing was unusual about the conditions and I did not want to be rearended by some half-blinded speed merchant.
Passing trucks was the most fun. You go sightless with the spray. I suppose the greatest potential hazard is coming up on people ahead who’re going more slowly than you’d thought. It was all very entertaining.
Still, I made good time and was in Richmond, around fourteen miles from the center of London, at 6:30. The rain and snow had stopped by now but I was in city traffic, of course. But inbound was moving decently, at least. Should’ve been no problem to make it to the RFH in time and with time to spare for dinner, maybe, too.
Should’ve been. But I hadn’t planned on my old nemesis, the badly-labelled road, catching up with me again. I was trying to get on the eastbound South Circular Road and thence onto the A23 into Lambeth. A very simple route. I saw a sign saying "South Circular Road, righthand lane." So I got over, and damned if there weren’t two right-turn-only lanes, with three possible turnoffs between them, all with local street names and none owning up to be the South Circular.
I gambled and yes, folks, I chose the wrong one.
Having subsequently consulted the map, I can tell that instead of turning hard right onto Clifford Avenue and thence onto West Upper Richmond Road (aka the S.C.R.), I stayed on Lower Richmond Road (a soft right), drove east along the Thames for awhile, got onto Church Road, and then in an attempt to get back to where I’d been and start over, turned left onto Castlenau. Which took me over the Hammersmith Bridge. A very prettily-painted Victorian iron affair, but where the heck was Hammersmith? I’d never heard of that part of London before.
Traffic was pretty heavy, so I had no option but to keep going till I reached a street whose name was familiar. Best course, I decided, was to follow the signs pointing towards the City center. I could find my way from there.
Everyone else had the same idea, it seemed. By the time I made it onto Cromwell Road it was nearly 7:00 and there definitely was time to check the map. Then more inching along, and here I was on Brompton Road, opposite Harrod’s. Well, nice not to be lost anymore, but gracious, is London traffic always this heavy this time of evening?
I learned later there’d been a Tube strike today and so the number of cars on the street was greatly augmented. Then, too, with the snowy weather things were moving behindish, anyway. Just as well I didn’t know this when I was in the middle of it. I might have lost my nerve.
As it was I figured it was just normal London traffic and here I was in the middle of it. I might as well let the adrenalin pump away and bang along with everyone else. The experience could only be described as surreal. I got to Hyde Park Corner and it seemed like six lanes of cheerfully mindless chaos.
Did I say ‘lanes"? I was being funny. Everyone was going vaguely clockwise but that seemed to be the only coherent principle in effect. It was like being in a Mixmaster-- cars, lorries, big red busses, all scrambling in and out and miraculously, all avoiding collision. I’m usually Miss Cautious but I was weaving and darting with the rest of them. You don’t think about the implications, you just go.
But due to some scaffolding covering the street sign (affixed to the side of a building), I missed getting off onto Grosvenor Place. Back the rest of the way around, then somehow I ended up on the South Carriage Drive in Hyde Park. Off that onto Knightsbridge, then back to the Mixmaster again.
Well. Once I found Grosvenor Place I was fine for locating Westminster Bridge. And for getting to the carpark (turned out it was listed and located on the concert series brochure, which I had with me) for the Royal Festival Hall.
But by now it was 7:25. I was rather the worse for wear, and took up a further five minutes or more doing a crooked job of parking (more scrapes on the car, no doubt), changing into more presentable shoes (I was wearing a skirt already), and getting my ticket from the carpark attendant. I still had to find the Hall entrance (a real puzzle), locate the box office, and pick up my concert ticket there.
There they told me that as it was 7:35 the concert had started but that upstairs I could probably slip inside the door for the first bit.
Not really. The orchestra was just finishing "God Save the Queen" but the legalistic usher still wouldn’t let me in. Should have. There was applause going.
So I had to stay outside in the foyer for the entire first part of my Romeo and Juliet. Missed the soprano and tenor solos and all the rest of it. Berlioz Society friends Phyllis Johnson* and Renate Klein* told me at intermission that they hadn’t done a good job at all and I hadn’t missed anything by just barely getting it over the PA system. But I would’ve preferred finding that out for myself.
Got my seat for the Fete onward. It was the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by David Atherton. I am unable to give a proper review of the performance, especially because from the way Phyllis* and Renate* were going on afterwards, it was a complete flop. "Wipe this out of your mind. It wasn’t Berlioz!"
All I can say for sure is that yes, the strings sounded awfully metallic (it’s a rather dry hall, which may have something to do with it). And the baritone (Friar Lawrence), David Wilson-Johnson, had no voice to speak of, and was shouting his way through the part quite tunelessly. It made my throat hurt to hear him straining at it.
I was reminded, however, of what a jolly good operatic-type piece that formal reconciliation chorus is. It quite carries one along.
The more familiar bits probably made me feel grace towards the orchestra just because they’re by Berlioz and because they were being played at all. The others can afford to be critical-- they’ve gotten used to hearing these pieces played. But I suppose the Scene d’Amour did lack something. It wasn’t quite the rush it should’ve been. The oboe soloist was good, though.
Turned out the Queen Mother was there, in the Royal Box. She bowed to the audience at the concert’s end. It hadn’t occurred to me to even be curious about who was over there-- I was there for Hector and him alone.
There are some pretty silly things about that building but the boxes are some of the silliest. They look like little Formica-clad cabinet drawers grown gigantic and pulled out from their case. The Royal Box is basically flush but is fronted with this ridiculous vinyl-looking protective padding stuff with zigzags worked into it. Simply awful.
I was staying at Phyllis Johnson’s*, so I drove both of us over to Welbeck Street (She paid the £1.50 parking). She’s not such a hot direction-giver and we ended up on Victoria Street and who knows where when I meant to have us on Whitehall. She kept telling me to follow this or that taxi, but how could I tell if it would be heading where I wanted to go?
We did eventually make it to her neighborhood and drove around some more trying to find a meter at which to park (if you’re not at a meter you get ticketed). Thankfully, it’s free till 8:00 in the morning.
Phyllis* very kindly fed me a late supper of scrambled eggs and toast. We sat in the living room till well after midnight while she told me stories of sitting in on Colin Davis rehearsals in the '60s. Phyllis* is an American but she’s been in London since 1963 or so, ever since she got stranded here on her way to take some job in the Near East and the job was cancelled due to political unrest.
She’s got shelves full of scores. I looked at some before turning in, since they’re in the little spare room where I was sleeping on a foldaway bed.
As if I hadn't enough to keep me busy, I've become a Gordon Ramsay junkie. I don't have cable TV, but I managed to catch every episode of Hell's Kitchen Season 4 on Hulu.com. And when I get time, I watch episodes of Kitchen Nightmares (UK version, of course) on YouTube.
For the uninitiated, Gordon Ramsay is a world-class, Scottish-born, f-bomb-dropping chef with twelve Michelin stars and millions of dollars per year in revenue from his various restaurants worldwide. On Kitchen Nightmares, he spends a week at some tanking restaurant somewhere and, at little or no cost to the establishment (as I understand it), works with might, main, and brain to pull them out of the soup.
Time and again, the featured restaurant is going down because the owners/head chefs have some fixed idea of what their eatery should be like, but it bears no relation to what they can actually cook and serve, what ingredients are affordable and available, or what the potential customers actually like and want. And Chef Ramsay's fix generally is, "Find out what you can do and do it attractively and well. Let your customers know what you have now that you have your act together. Stop trying to attract the type of customers who aren't out there. Stop trying to be too clever-- keep it simple and uncomplicated. And while you're at it, clean out your f*cking [sorry, wouldn't be GR without the f-word at least once] deep-freeze and kitchen!!"
But O! the nightmare! It never fails: The owners/chefs seldom listen to Ramsay. Often they sabotage what he's trying to do. They want to go on doing exactly what's got them in the mess in the first place. But O, Chef Gordon, save us! Pull our chestnuts out of the fire!!
Last Sunday, I couldn't help but think of Gordon Ramsay and Kitchen Nightmares. I was being interviewed for an Interim Pastor position at a church over in an adjacent county. And practically the first thing I heard from the interviewing committee was how wonderful it used to be with them back in the 1980s, when their youth group was bursting the church at the seams. Practically the first question I got was how good was I at relating to youth.
But do they have any teenagers among the church membership right now? Apparently very few. Are there gangs and gangs of unchurched teenagers in the church's catchment area right now? Apparently they have no idea.
Is it a good thing to be a church with a lot of families with well-involved teenaged kids? Oh, certainly, yes. But is that where this church is now? No. Are families with teenagers the type of people who are living in that area, spiritually starving for the good news of Jesus Christ? What if they're not?
But they want to hire an interim pastor who can come in for a year and miraculously revive their image of themselves as the church with all the kids. Never mind the unchurched people of whatever age who are actually there in the neighborhood and need to be ministered to. Never mind that the talents and gifts of the people of the church might go better to serve a totally different demographic. We have our image of what we want to be, and you'd better buy into it, Pastor, whether it's realistic or not!!!
I told them, yes, I'm pretty good at working with kids--if I'm allowed to be an adult and a mentor and not a superannuated ersatz-teenager buddy. But maybe, I suggested, what if the Holy Spirit just might be leading them to other fields of ministry that better fit who they are now . . . ???
I felt like Gordon Ramsay telling the owner of a pub in Lancashire to knock it off with the exotic Asian stuff out of mixes and try serving up good fresh honest pub grub for a change.
I can't take the Kitchen Nightmares analogy too far: There's one fixed item on any church's menu that can not and must not change, whether the public thinks they want it or not: Jesus Christ crucified for our sins and risen for our life. But how the church lives out that good news in 2008 may not be just as it was in 1985!
I wouldn't be surprised if they don't hire me. They also want their new IP to generate a lot of new programs, and I told them that programs have to follow needs, and be run by the members. And they're hoping their new Interim Pastor will move into the manse. No, not feasible. Not for a one-year contract. Alas! that's another dream of theirs I've destroyed.
But I can't rule them out myself. This dream-on attitude is endemic with most struggling mainline churches. It'd be the same anywhere else!
If I were to be taken on at this church, I'd have it easier than Gordon Ramsay in one way-- I'd have a year to redd up the place, where he only has a week. But it'd be a lot harder, too-- I can't overawe anybody with the ecclesiastical equivalent of twelve Michelin stars . . . and unlike Chef Ramsay, I am not permitted to cuss.
I'm home from my outpatient surgery. Got discharged around 2:30. I've got to see my doctor for follow-up in two weeks, after the lab work comes in, but in his judgment everything looks all right.
Praise God and hooray!
I'm told I'm supposed to rest and do no work the next two days. I established that "work" means going out in the garden and pulling weeds. I didn't ask if it also meant sitting in front of my computer working on church-related matters. Or blogging.
If it does, too bad. I've gotten that "work" done and now I can do my relaxing with a clear conscience.
I'm due at the local med center at 9:30 tomorrow morning [later today], to check in for outpatient surgery for the health problem I noticed in June.
I feel fine. I'm not even worrying. That will resume when I'm waiting for the results of the biopsy thereafter.
Routine procedure dictates that I must ingest nothing by mouth after this past midnight. Not a lozenge, not a stick of gum, not a swig of toothpaste water (ick). The rule is so strict, I'm surprised they don't tell you you can't swallow your own spit.
I know what it's for. They don't want to run the slightest risk that you'll have a bad reaction with the anesthesia while you're under and throw up and choke. So I'm observing the strictures-- meaning that as soon as midnight struck, I was immediately sensible of a raging thirst, even though I'd had a couple glasses of water within the half hour!
Funny, what your mind will do to you.
I've finished the draft of my sermon for Sunday, so I can lie around Friday and Saturday, if need be. It's about two-thirds the length of my usual productions, and if anything, it needs cut down even more. The church I'm supplying this Sunday has Sunday School scheduled exactly an hour after the beginning of worship, and this is a Communion Sunday. With all three Lectionary readings. And a children's sermon, and a choir anthem. And they'll probably want at least ten minutes to get from the sanctuary to the classrooms. That leaves me fifty minutes if I'm lucky to get through everything.
Dickens of a way to do things, but it's the way it is.
Besides, the official Sunday School beginning time may be one of those merely monitory things, to keep people from showing up to class at half-past the hour.
On the other hand, the lady who called me from the Med Center said I was to be at the Outpatient Surgery door at 9:30 AM. Period, the end.
Look what I just made! (Click on the image to see it bigger, since I haven't figured out yet how to do that)
That's a word cloud based on Sunday's pickle post. Made it on Wordle.net, a fun site I picked up from Chris Roseborough's blog. Don't click on the Wordle link if you don't have some time to play!
Funny, what a creature I can be of happenstance.
In this case, in regard to what I plant in each year's backyard garden, and what I do with the produce that comes from it.
This year, in May, I happened to visit a certain local garden center on a certain day, and they happened to have pickling cucumber plants for sale. So I got a four-pack of those, and a four-pack of regular cukes.
I planted them, and now in the fullness of time, I have-- cucumbers. A good many cucumbers. Too many to eat fresh, too many to give away.
So I resolved to make-- pickles.
But I was lost in a cookbook maze of crocks and brining and pickling salt and who knows what all. And that was before I could get to the vinegar and spices end of the process.
But there were all those pickling cucumbers! Nothing daunted, I hied myself to the local Agway to buy me some of this magical pickling salt. Maybe they could sell me a crock as well! And it so happened that there I discovered the pickle amateur's salvation, in the form of powdered pickling mix proffered by the estimable Mrs. Wages!
This evening I shook off the leading strings of happenstance. It was time to pickle! I assembled my forces and got to work. I used all the pickling cukes I had on hand, and part of an ordinary one, for good measure. I sterilized my jars and lids and boiled my water and timed my processing.
And now I have eight pints made with half the Polish Dill mix. Did spears, since even the smaller cukes were too big to put in whole. Could've filled one more jar, but alas! I was out of dome lids. If the bushes keep yielding, I'll have to get more Mason jars!
To be on the safe side, I used Mrs. Rombauer's fifteen-minute timing for the boiling-water processing, instead of Mrs. Wages' five. Knowing me, if I'd stopped at five I would've given myself a stomach ache when it came time to eat the pickles, worrying that they might possibly be off, even if they were perfectly good!
I am reliably informed that dill pickles are best if allowed to sit for six weeks before eating. We shall wait, and see what we have in early September!
We had a long, useful, and thanks to the weather and no air-conditioning, exciting and sweat-drenched presbytery meeting tonight.
Some of the business was sad: We agreed to terms to dismiss one of our congregations to another denomination. The process was earnest, but withal gracious and amicable . . . now we get to see if our denominational headquarters stirs up our synod to challenge the decision. It's happened before, to other presbyteries.
Some of the business was mad: Some very bizarre decisions came out of the latest General Assembly, and we're still considering the best way to respond to it all.
The weather, for awhile, definitely got bad. I dashed downstairs to the ladies' lounge right after the Executive Presbyter's report, thinking I'd never get through the hour and fifteen minutes of business scheduled before break if I didn't. But as I started to come upstairs, I saw my colleagues streaming down.
"We're in a tornado warning," they said. "We're breaking now for refreshments, since they're set up down here."
And that's what we did, until word came in that the storm was tracking just three miles north of us. Grabbing cookies and cheese and crackers as we went, we, like a very discursive and not wholly biddable flock, were herded down to a lower level still, to the activity hall below the fellowship hall.
(A lady from the church was upset that such a thing should happen when they were hosting presbytery; I said, no, it's great: Their building gave us a safe place for us to reconvene, and we were using all their facility.)
And with business and happenings sad, mad, and bad, we had some that was glad.
It was glad news to hear that our presbytery is outstanding and first in the denomination for taking up the official 2007 challenge for every church to support a missionary in some way.
And it was glad because we successfully examined two of our own ministerial candidates, a father and daughter, who'll be taking up pastorates in other presbyteries. And we held examinations for three new colleagues who will be coming in.
I was wondering if I'd have to commit an act of ecclesiastical disobedience for awhile there: It was proposed and adopted that given the amount of business tonight, the examinations would be divided up and which presbyters dealt with which candidates would be determined by what color index card you were randomly handed at registration. There were two of the incoming candidates I'd been looking forward to seeing and perhaps questioning, and I didn't want to lose the fun!
One was a fellow blogger, with whom I've exchanged post comments on this blog and on his. Another was a former colleague from the presbytery of my first call. (I was recalling old times to him during the refreshment time, and he kept saying, "Well, cover me with batter and fry me!" Hilarious!)
In the end, I was where I wanted to be. All three of our candidates (for a bonus, we also had a neophyte coming in from another Pennsylvania presbytery) weathered their examinations well, despite the lights going out a time or two. And in case any of them were wondering, there was no debate while they were out of the room: It was AllinfavorsayayeAYYYYYE!!allopposedsamesignokay,examinationsustained.
We got out sometime after ten, a little excited, somewhat nervy, and very tired. The air was cool, the skies mostly clear. I had a drive of an hour or more to get home; it'll be a longer drive into the future before we see what comes of what we accomplished tonight.
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More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/RevdArchitect/BeaverButlerPresbytery. They're the last ones posted; no captions yet.
Tuesday, 4 April, 1989
Holford (the Quantocks) to Wells to Bristol to Holford
Day Nineteen
This morning, after I’d mailed some cards at the post box in the wall of the shop across the road, I made good on my intentions to explore more of the immediate area.
Passed several cottages with picturesque names till I got to the church. Went through the lychgate and up to the church itself. Not stunningly memorable,† and I came out and tried the path that ran alongside the churchyard. It gave out into a broad, flat field of no particular interest. So I returned and, once more out of the precincts of the church, continued south till I came to a footpath giving the distance to Alfoxton. This is where I would have stayed if they hadn’t been full.
Before mounting that path I passed a thatched cottage I liked very much. But it was clumsily obscured by a road works machine. Can’t imagine why they use those monstrous great contraptions on little roads like this.
The drive to Alfoxton turned out to be private, so I took the footpath to the left, past what seemed to be an outbuilding for the community dog pound, donated by the Alfoxton family. This led through more deciduous wood, though to my left I could see a valley, dotted with all sizes of sheep, some of which came up to the fence bounding the wood to investigate my passage. There were quite a few little settlements in this dale, some of which were unfortunately composed of trailers. Cheap, convenient-- and ugly.
The wind was still pretty stiff today and I admit that after I got above the trees I rather wondered if I’d not taken all this a bit lightly, going out as I had with only my cameras and my car keys. Well, too late to think of that now.
More sheep grazing in the moor growth by the roadside and in among a clump of solemn, ceremonial-looking pines on the side of the eminence I was mounting. Turns out the ceremonial aspect was intentional. The pines were planted in the '40s in honor of the men and women of the surrounding villages who’d fought and/or died in the Second World War.
I came to what looked like the top but saw that no, the path led to the southwest to a higher stand. I pushed on, wind and all, to that. The weather was determined not to reward me with the view I suppose would’ve been mine had it been clear. But I still could see the saltwater channel to the north.
However, the way the clouds were moving in didn’t look too reassuring. Another drenching like those of Iona I could forego. I made good time back down into the trees, where the wind was not so punishing. Soon I came upon a party ahead of me, two women and a number of children and dogs, all apparently foraging casually for kindling wood. This spread-out and leisurely group occupied the path, which I myself was taking none too hastily, and kept ahead of me till not far above the dog pound, where I passed them.
Took a different way back to the B&B cottage, once I was back to the paved roads. I was happy to see the construction machine was gone from in front of the cottage I’d admired, so I was able to get a shot of it. And I was able to examine the flowers, still mostly nameless to me, that grow along the roadside. There was a stream running alongside and many little paths over and beside it which I had no time now to explore. Maybe someday.
Shortly after noon I took out the car and drove east along the A39 to Wells.
I’m glad I stopped to admire the cathedral's west front on Sunday, as the sun, if it was out at all today, was only making the most coy and fleeting of appearances. Still, I was able to study the cathedral’s interior sculpture sufficiently. Those stiff leaf nave capitals are simply amazing. They’re so wonderful you could eat them. I made sure to look for the story capitals and was lucky enough to come upon a cathedral guide who was describing them for the benefit of whomever cared to listen. They’re in the south transept, west side, as it happens.
And I had the chance to watch the indoor clock, with its jousting knights, strike the hour of 4:00.
Which reminds me, I was there that late because before heading to the cathedral I stopped at a tea shop in the High Street and lunched on a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and treated myself to a cream tea. And made an indulgent pig of myself and made sure I eked out the scones to justify eating every bit of the clotted cream and every bit of the strawberry preserve and felt no remorse about it, either.
Anyway, at the cathedral. I was able to see the fantastic chapterhouse stairs, and not in entirely bad light. The ensemble looks smaller than it does in the photographs but also not as gloomy. It’s all in golden stone and beautifully patina’d and worn by all those clerics-- and tourists. I had to admit that today we would’ve put in an extra storage closet to take up the excess space left after we’d supplied the canons with a regulation-width stair. And I immediately decided to hell with modern spatial efficiency. It’s delightful as it is, from dozens of different angles.
The chapterhouse, off the stair to the right, is the classic circular kind with a column in the middle and the canons’ seats all round the walls, with their prebends named over them. Though I suppose the existing brass plates are recent replacements. They say they give concerts in there, though not just now as the ceiling is being restored.
The stair goes on up to a corridor leading to the canons’ refectory, still in use these days. In the passage they’ve set up an exhibition of the archaeological history of Wells, including photographs of the bones of bishops they dug up after they’d been buried below the cathedral floor for centuries. This had mostly been done in the last century, by those literal-minded Victorians who couldn’t leave anything to stay put.
Made my pilgrimage to the cathedral shop just before it closed at 5:15. As well as the usual postcards and information booklets I purchased a little devotional book on the Psalms. Something like that might do me good.
Having purchased still more Somerset postcards and a shocking pink highlighter (to mark my actual, as opposed to my proposed, route in my road atlas) at the W. H. Smith’s, I took off northwest along the A371 towards Cheddar.
It was too late in the day to sample any real Cheddar cheese but I could still enjoy the Cheddar Gorge, outside of the town. Leaving aside more spectacular formations that occur in other countries, the Gorge is in itself a spectacular natural feature. You’re tootling along in this nice, innocuous rolling English countryside and then, wham! high rock walls on either side, stretching up to heaven, their fissured sides doing an offbeat undulating dance with the road that goes through between. Not the best weather for seeing the place but at least there weren’t any more tourists around at this time of day. Only locals who can now take it for granted and were probably wondering why they had to get stuck behind the only rubbernecking tourist (me) who was around.
If they do take it for granted they shouldn’t. Somerset is an amazing county.
Crossed the A368 at Barrington and noted the turnoff for Blagdon. That’s where we [our Oxford group of year-abroad students] went to enjoy a cream tea after visiting Bath in March. Picked up the A38 at that crossroads and continued on to Bristol, for the sole purpose of again seeing the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It’s a perfectly wonderful thing, up there over the Avon Gorge.
When I got there I left the car and walked back to the river Avon where I could attempt some pictures, despite the fog.
Then I took the car and tried to get closer, but had a deal of a time finding my way onto the Hotwell Road (that runs by the river) in the first place. I finally did but could find nowhere to stop for quite awhile. Got way north of it, turned around, and finally located a coach stop on the way back. Walked up along the side of the road till the bridge was in sight, now all lit up outlined with white lights in the foggy dusk. The photos are purely experimental, as I doubt my hand-holding was steady enough. And I was trying for some streaky headlight effects at very low shutter speeds.
Maybe I’ll have time to come back tomorrow, and it’ll be nicer.
Meant to catch the M5 at Portishead but instead got on the road to meet it at this side of Weston-super-Mare. One of my wrong turns that came out all right, for a change.
By the time I got the A39 at Bridgwater it was snowing. Not a bad thing in itself but impossible to see the curves without the brights.
As a reward for a long day and not having any stupid accidents on the way, after reaching Holford I took myself to the pub and treated me to a glass of cider. Took it and Uncle Walter to a table in the dining area and drank and read, between listening casually to the conversation filtering over from the bar proper.
One of the men in the group started to sing and another shushed him. Whereupon the singer said, "Dammit, this is a local pub and there’s nobody but us locals here and we can sing if we want to!"
Cannily, Mrs. Ayshford, who was on duty, kept silent about my presence, and several of the jolly company took up some song. Alas, modern culture intervened-- some idiot in the snooker room geared up the juke box-- and Real Music retreated from the field. It was really too bad.
Packed and planned my route for tomorrow before retiring. Tried not to read too late.
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†Neither my memory nor my trip journal tells me whether I entered the church itself. If it was unlocked and I didn't bother, I am a retrospective idiot. Photos available online show that the Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Holford has some wonderful carving in wood and stone, a delightful little organ, and some lovely work in embroidery and stained glass. Did I think if it didn't sport flying buttresses, it wasn't worth seeing?
. . . To creeping middle age.
I've always hated the look of eyeglass keepers. Nothing says Over the Hill like an eyes-going-bad, where-the-hell-did-I-put-that-pair-of-specs, jawline-jowl-enhancing eyeglass string.
I had my conference with my doctor this morning, and I was surprised to find I didn't have anything to be surprised about.
