The front pages of all the newspapers were carrying this photo yesterday - Queen takes train to Sandringham shock! The palace insisted it was not a publicity stunt, and there was no follow-on car transporting all her belongings, à la David Cameron and his bike - though the Duke of Edbinburgh had "already travelled ahead" (obviously feeling that First Capital Connect was beneath his dignity...) Hmmm... More than any of this frugal Queen lark, what I want to know is how she managed to get a first class ticket for only £44.40!?----------------------------------------------------------
I've been starting to feel a bit Christmassy in the last couple of days. Glühwein and lebkuchen in to the small hours at Sonja's last night can't have hurt. The book I am reading is also inducing a wintry mood - Barry Unsworth's Morality Play, about a group of medieval mystery players, travelling through the snowy wastes of the north of England in the week before Christmas (it's great by the way). A lot of people are already off work as of now (though K and I are both in until the bitter end on Christmas Eve...) so I've been wishing quite a lot of 'Happy Christmases' over the last few days - though it seemed too early. Too early too for the work Christmas party at the start of last week. But it has suddenly got really cold, and has been snowing on and off all this week. It hasn't settled in London, of course, though it has managed to screw up trains, planes and automobiles - those poor passengers on the Eurostar who got stranded when the trains just failed on entering the warmth of the Channel Tunnel after the freezing temperatures of northern France! Amazing that such things happen in the 21st century!
Last weekend, after a productive day in the library, we went with my parents to St Pancras Old Church - a lovely mainly Norman church, stranded in the wastes behind King's Cross - to hear a concert of Elizabethan Christmas music, performed by a group called Passamezzo, who are music academics as well as performers, and research and bring to life historic music. It was a really lovely evening, performed by candle light, and one of the pieces they played had been reconstructed from a marginal note that one of them had come across in a manuscript in the Bodleian library... Not exactly carol singing, but much more amusing and atmospheric. We do have some carols lined up for next week though, in St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Another amazing privilege of working in the places we do...
We are blitzing the family gatherings at the end of this week - off to K's brother's on Christmas Day where his family is congregating, and then my parents are coming here on Boxing Day... then at 08.57 on the 27th, we're off! I can't wait! But we're - finally - not doing Christmas presents this year. It always strikes me as a colossal waste of time, money and effort, battling Christmas shopping crowds to spend money you don't have on presents that people don't want, and which just go to the charity shop in the New Year. I am all for buying goats for African villages, paying to train a school teacher in Indonesia, and other such gifts - which spend money where it really counts. Problem is, K hasn't yet told his family this is what we're doing!!
My sister is getting on well in North Uist. She found some temporary work at the Hebridean Smokehouse, preparing the huge number of Christmas orders they have unexpectedly been inundated with. It's such a small and close-knit community that everyone knows everyone else, so you get these jobs by word of mouth. She texted me the other day: "How's this for an island postal service? Postie has a package for [her friend] Will, but can't be arsed to go all the way to his house, so comes to the Smokehouse as he knows his neighbour works there, who then passes it to me so that I can give it to Will when I see him tomorrow!" Brilliant!
Last weekend, after a productive day in the library, we went with my parents to St Pancras Old Church - a lovely mainly Norman church, stranded in the wastes behind King's Cross - to hear a concert of Elizabethan Christmas music, performed by a group called Passamezzo, who are music academics as well as performers, and research and bring to life historic music. It was a really lovely evening, performed by candle light, and one of the pieces they played had been reconstructed from a marginal note that one of them had come across in a manuscript in the Bodleian library... Not exactly carol singing, but much more amusing and atmospheric. We do have some carols lined up for next week though, in St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Another amazing privilege of working in the places we do...
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There is something about this time of year - midwinter - that brings out a primeval human urge for the ghostly and supernatural. We love the spooky short stories by M. R. James (1862-1936), that he used to write and recite to a select gathering of students and colleagues in King's College Cambridge, and last Christmas we went to a fantastic little story-telling production of some of these stories performed by Robert Lloyd Parry at the Barons Court Theatre - a tiny place in the basement of a pub, that reminded me of the theatrical venues we used to attend as students. Alas, he is doing no London performances this year, but we think we have found a satisfactory alternative, which we're off to tomorrow night - a play called Darker Shores at the Hampstead Theatre. It's about strange goings-on and bumps in the night in a house by the sea (a very M. R. Jamesian subject) but since we're about to go off to a house by the sea (we have our cottage in St Ives booked again - I'm counting down the days...) I hope it doesn't freak me out too much!We are blitzing the family gatherings at the end of this week - off to K's brother's on Christmas Day where his family is congregating, and then my parents are coming here on Boxing Day... then at 08.57 on the 27th, we're off! I can't wait! But we're - finally - not doing Christmas presents this year. It always strikes me as a colossal waste of time, money and effort, battling Christmas shopping crowds to spend money you don't have on presents that people don't want, and which just go to the charity shop in the New Year. I am all for buying goats for African villages, paying to train a school teacher in Indonesia, and other such gifts - which spend money where it really counts. Problem is, K hasn't yet told his family this is what we're doing!!
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My sister is getting on well in North Uist. She found some temporary work at the Hebridean Smokehouse, preparing the huge number of Christmas orders they have unexpectedly been inundated with. It's such a small and close-knit community that everyone knows everyone else, so you get these jobs by word of mouth. She texted me the other day: "How's this for an island postal service? Postie has a package for [her friend] Will, but can't be arsed to go all the way to his house, so comes to the Smokehouse as he knows his neighbour works there, who then passes it to me so that I can give it to Will when I see him tomorrow!" Brilliant!
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