Hello and goodbye, November!

The minaret/bell tower of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, by night

It’s a whole month since my last posting. Two days after that, I went to Spain for a week. I try to go at least once a year – to keep the language skills ticking over, and also to catch up with the recent research that those prolific Spaniards publish, and which can be so hard to find or find out about over here; sometimes you can’t even track them down outside the particular region of Spain where the book or periodical was published. This time I was mainly in Córdoba – so wonderful to spend a whole week there – with a lightning visit to Granada tacked on the end, to see the current exhibition at the Alhambra on Washington Irving, the American writer who first popularised the monument and its charms for the Anglophone world, through the publication of his Tales from the Alhambra in 1832. This year marks the 150th anniversary of his death.

The primary reason for the visit was to attend the conference, “‘And diverse are their hues’: Color [it was an American-organised affair] in Islamic art and culture”. This was organised by the Qatar-based campus of the Virginia Commonwealth University, and as such was an extremely lavish affair, with receptions, three-course dinners and lunches laid on free of charge for the attendees – of which I think there were about 400!! It was completely dry, not just as a result of the Qatar Foundation’s sponsorship, but apparently also because American universities will not pay to provide alcohol at their events, especially if students are present. The Spaniards were utterly bemused by this, and the only table with a bottle of wine on it at the dinner after the opening reception was that of the Mayor of Córdoba and dignitaries of Córdoba University. Many conference attendees were seen slipping away to the bar before (and during!) dinner…

I did not have much luck with flights on this trip. Since it is not possible to fly direct from London to either Córdoba or Granada (except, it seems, on very specific and unhelpful days for Granada), I had to fly to Madrid and make carefully calibrated onward travel arrangements. These did not allow for much leeway if there were delays. Which there were, both ways. I had booked a train (the marvellous AVE) from Madrid to Córdoba, but the flight from London was delayed by two hours, because the passenger manifest did not match up with the number of people physically on the plane. There were two extra people, and the flight crew kept checking and rechecking everyone’s boarding passes, and occasionally calling out particular names and asking those passengers to make themselves known. Both the names of the extra people on the plane were called out various times, but they did not identify themselves. Eventually one of them was found during one of the passport/boarding card checks, and they asked him if he knew the other person whose name they had been calling out. He denied it. After another round of checks, this other person was found to be sitting next to him. They had checked in, but somehow got onto the plane without having their boarding cards checked. Finally, the plane started to taxi to the runway, then it stopped for a while, and then it turned back to the stand! Some transport officials got on and took these guys off the flight. The captain explained it all afterwards, and said he was uneasy about the situation and did not want to take off with them on board – in case it was deliberately dodgy and not just a case of stupidity, I suppose. I spent most of the flight worrying that I wouldn’t make it to Atocha station in time to catch my train, and in the end we landed half an hour before the train was due to leave – it normally takes 45 minutes to get there on the Metro! I ran out of the airport and straight to the front of the taxi queue, and the wonderful taxi driver zipped through the Madrid roads (it was a Monday lunchtime so not too busy, fortunately) so that I arrived in Atocha just as they were boarding my train!

So against all the odds, I made it to Córdoba – in time to attend the conference’s opening ceremony – and I had a fantastically productive week. I felt so intellectually engaged! I took with me a bunch of photocopied articles, an article I have in progress, a chapter and an article of Glaire’s which she had asked me to read and comment on… and I got through them all, in fact I didn’t want to read anything else! I took the new Carlos Ruiz Zafón book with me (The Angel’s Game) and I didn’t start reading it until a couple of nights before I was due to leave. Another reason for the trip was to see the newly-opened museum and visitor centre at Madinat al-Zahra – which is absolutely state-of-the-art and fantastic, such a treat to have all that material on display properly for the first time! – and also to start to ease my brain back into the subject of my PhD thesis, already more than seven years old, since I want to think about finally publishing it next year. One of the best things about the trip was meeting the archaeologist of the Great Mosque of Córdoba, whose articles I had read but whom I had never met, and going around and even underneath the mosque with him!


We literally climbed down a rickety ladder through a hole in the floor near the cathedral, while tourists peered down on us through the grate – after we had parted, I was sitting on a bench furiously writing up the notes from our conversation, when a group of Spanish tourists came over to me and asked me what was down there! This was the site of an archaeological excavation they had done several years ago, at the junction between the original eastern façade of the old mosque, and the extension which was constructed all along it by al-Mansur, regent of the Umayyad caliphs at the turn of the 10th/11th centuries, and subject of my doctoral research. This excavation goes all the way down to the 8th-century street! This originally ran alongside the length of the eastern façade (as the street today runs along the side of the mosque), but had to be filled in up to a height of about 4 m, in order to level the land before laying the foundations for al-Mansur’s enormous mosque extension. It was just fantastic to see, and what a privilege. All the finds from this excavation have been surveyed and drawn, but inexplicably, the archaeologist told me that there is no local interest to publish it, and while it is all currently held in the Cathedral archive, it cannot be consulted there, because it is not published!! When we parted, he asked me if I thought there was any chance of having this important material published in England – so at some point I might try to follow up on this…

On the way back from Spain – having got efficiently and uneventfully to Granada on the bus – I had a flight from Granada to Madrid, with a gap of two hours to get to my onward flight to London, but though I was at the airport in plenty of time, my flight was, of course, late. There was no explanation for this, nor any actual acknowledgement that it was in fact late, so no apology either. The flight landed 40 minutes late, but then it took another 40 minutes for the baggage to come out on the carousel – again, there was no explanation or apology, and the staff at the Iberia desk very unhelpfully just told us to wait. By the time I saw my suitcase, I was very anxious about catching my onward flight, since I had to change terminals – from the swanky new Richard Rogers terminals, to the old terminal building (which I knew so well from the year I lived in Madrid), which now operates as Terminal 1. I tried to run for a taxi again, but was told that I could not take a taxi between terminals and had no choice but to get the shuttle bus. Of course I had just missed one, had to wait 10 minutes for the next one to arrive, and then of course it went to every other terminal before Terminal 1. By the time I had run the length of the concourse to the EasyJet check-in desks, they had closed the flight, and would not make an exception for me. This has to be the first time I have ever known an EasyJet flight to take off on time.

Ridiculously, two flights left simultaneously for Gatwick and Luton, and unbelievably these were the last flights to London from any of the Barajas terminals. I had no choice but to change my ticket to a flight the next morning, but the EasyJet office could do nothing until the flight had actually taken off, so I just had to wait, doing nothing in the airport, watching my flight leave. It was extremely frustrating. Airport information were able to find me a relatively cheap place to stay near the airport, since the first flight the next morning was due to take off at 7.30, and I didn’t want to miss it! Unfortunately, the hotel did not serve food, and though they ordered me a pizza, it never arrived! Feeling very annoyed and sorry for myself, I had a fitful night’s sleep, but caught my flight uneventfully the next morning, and went straight into work. The trip was extremely rewarding and productive, but I have decided that travelling by plane is too stressful and I am happy not to have to do it for a while!

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The week I went to Córdoba, my sister went to visit her friend Will in North Uist, to get away from it all for her birthday, having just left her extremely frustrating and stressful job. By the time I got back from Spain, she had decided to move there! This was not an out-of-the-blue decision – it’s something she had been meaning to do for a while, and in fact she had a job interview in Glasgow on the way to Uist… But while she was up there, she heard of a flat available and decided to just go for it. I basically got back from Spain in time for her leaving party! I’m really proud of and happy for her, but I miss her loads too.

Holidays in North Uist next year, if she’s still there, which hopefully she will be!! I have been listening a lot to the CDs we bought on Harris in the summer – Julie Fowlis and Kathleen MacInnes – which really transport me back to the gorgeous landscape and intense feeling of wellbeing and relaxation we experienced on holiday up there. Which, now that I have to commute on the tube again, is no bad thing.

She wants the space to write, and to make ends meet through freelance editing work, which is busy finishing her training in. For her birthday present, I had reconditioned my old iBook for her, so she had a laptop. It’s about 8 years old, so doesn’t have a lot of memory, and won’t even mount the external hard drive I bought for her for back ups, so it’s practically useless, but hopefully it will tide her over until she can afford something more up-to-date. The space bar on the old keyboard had got stuck – it had lost its bounce basically – and I did not know where to get this fixed. I took it into an Apple retailer and repair shop on High Street Kensington, who told me I would have to have the whole keyboard replaced, which I was not prepared to do; and then a friend told me about a little hole-in-the-wall place by Goodge Street station, who fixed it without fuss, and also upgraded the operating system. Long live boffins and computer geeks, that’s what I say!

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I also got back from Spain in time to attend the next meeting of Lambeth Council’s Planning Committee – you will recall that in September, our Residents’ Association successfully argued for a delay to the Lambeth College redevelopment, on the site next to our block of flats, pending a site visit by all the necessary parties involved in making this decision. Astonishingly, this had never been done, and no-one involved in pushing this decision through the Planning Committee had seemed all that fussed about the opinions or the quality of life of the residents of Brixton Hill Court. The site visit was announced at very short notice, as was the Planning Committee meeting – one might be forgiven, I think, for wondering whether they were trying to push it through without more fuss from our Residents’ Association… However, they found out, and in time to pull some new statements together, and we all trooped down again to Lambeth Town Hall, the night after I got back from Spain.

Again, we’d been warned that the Planning Committee was minded to approve the application, and that our stand was more symbolic than anything. But amazingly, the wonderful Tory councillor who had argued for our cause before did so vociferously again – he has attended the site visit, and said this had made him even more amazed that such a big building could be contemplated on the neighbouring site, since it would really cut off our light and views and privacy. The mood in the room was going against approving the application, though at one point it seemed as if the unpleasant Chair might overrule the other councillors and push it through. It came to a vote, and a voice from one of the members of the public at the other side of the room was heard to say – “Sling it aaaaaaat!” (This guy turned out to be something of a nutter – as we were all leaving afterwards, he pulled K to one side and advised him to buy a recording device, since the councillors were all corrupt and could not be trusted to represent the discussions accurately in their minutes…) In the end, and much to our amazement, the application was basically rejected – or the Lambeth College officials present were informed that the building in its current configuration would not be approved, and they had to drastically rethink it before resubmitting their site redevelopment plan.

I think the phrase is a Pyrrhic victory, though that might be overstating it. Basically, we were of course delighted with this outcome – and with the continued success of our great reps from the Residents’ Association (K being one of them, you’ll remember) – but we also want Lambeth College to have the chance to redevelop its site. The Chancellor commented to Angela as we were gathering in front of the Town Hall afterwards – “You’ll be going home happier than we are”. We went to the pub to celebrate, but we await the next phase in this saga with some trepidation. Let’s hope it’s not worse.

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I have just read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, and it was absolutely fantastic. A Tudor historian friend-of-a-friend is apparently disgusted by how inaccurate it is, but I couldn’t care less. Everyone knows the story (it’s about the rise of Thomas Cromwell, during the era that sees the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, the rise of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cranmer, the break with Rome, the fall of Thomas More), and the point of this book is not to retell it in the format of ‘just another historical novel’. It is so beautifully written, and it made me realise that what the historical fiction genre is lacking is this kind of lyrical writing. Hilary Mantel might be the only person doing this. It’s a literary novel that just happens to be set in the past. But its historical setting is very impressionistic – you don’t read this book to find out how Thomas Cromwell rose to be the most important man in the State after Henry VIII. You read it for its fantastic use of language and the conception of Cromwell’s interior world.

This sentence is deservedly being used a lot in all the blurb about the book:

“Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning”, says Thomas More, “and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him...”

I am also very happy to say that Wolf Hall has finally dispelled the bitter taste left in my mouth by the Shardlake novels of C J Sansom. I read the third of these while on holiday in Harris, and really wish I hadn’t. They’re badly written, overlong, and just plain boring. I have given him three out of four tries, but now I definitively give up on them. I cannot see why they are so highly regarded.

As the Economist review (Oct 10th-16th) put it, Ms Mantel eschews “cod Tudor dialogue … going for direct modern English. Her best novel yet”.

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Waterwheels and the Mosque of Nur al-Din, Hama, Syria © MRO

Exactly a year ago I was in Syria, looking after our Masterpieces of World Ceramics exhibition (amazing to see the same objects now permanently fixed in the timeline of world ceramics in our fantastic new Ceramics Galleries). During the two days off I had from Eid al-Adha – the three or four day holiday that occurs at the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj), which all my Syrian acquaintances likened to the Christmas break in the West – I hired a driver, and went on a wonderfully memorable trip to Krak des Chevaliers, the stunning Crusader castle in the fertile north of Syria. I wrote a bit about this trip in this posting. I stayed overnight in Hama, a small town on the Orontes river that is well-known for its waterwheels. We arrived there just as it was getting dark, and stayed in a lovely atmospheric hotel just outside the main part of the city, whose name I now cannot recall – though there was a very cute ginger kitten who climbed up my arm, I seem to remember!

My driver dropped me off in the town centre and then went off to stay with friends or family for the night, and I had a really atmospheric wander along the banks of the Orontes. I took this photo of the waterwheels and the 12th-century mosque of Nur al-Din from the bridge which crosses from one side of the river to the next, before diving into the network of medieval streets that meander around the back of the mosque. In my mind, I will always see Hama at night. It will be a surprise if I ever go back during the daytime!

This is our calendar picture for this month. We have been very organised this year, and have just ordered and even received our new calendar for 2010, so we can actually start writing in the nice things we have booked over the next few months – such as a long weekend in Paris for our 14th anniversary in February! So these happy reminiscences of high points of the last year will continue into 2010… Which is scarily imminent – I can’t wait for our two-week break at Christmas and New Year (we are heading for our cottage in St Ives again this year, and I just cannot wait) but there is still so much to do in the next month… Eeek!

Spring Cleaning!

Hard to believe, as housework is probably the Thing I Hate Above All Else, but gently over the course of the last week we've been having a clear-out and a clean-up - K has gone through all the clothes in his wardrobe and binned or charity shopped about half, and I actually hoovered the flat (well, Dysoned, to be strictly accurate) on Saturday morning. It is one of the few activities in life where you see immediate results - not that this makes me want to do it any more often, but it is rather satisfying when you do. I picked up a fridge magnet somewhere a few years ago, which says - "Dull women have immaculate houses". I immediately connected with this concept, and the magnet is still going strong, stuck to the boiler! Anyway the weather has certainly been springy, so it is obviously something in the air - but it still hasn't made me want to clean the oven...

We've been relaxing over this May Day bank holiday weekend - K has a week off work now, spending some of the time off in lieu that he has accrued on the Henry VIII project. I decided to relax too, though the last week's work has not been exactly rigorous, and I have not got very far at all with Chapter 4 - quite a lot of urgent last-minute sorting of papers and "I had just better read this one last article..." Anyway I have to pull my finger out and really get into it this week, since it is now MAY and I suddenly only have a month of research leave left, which is somewhat terrifying, considering how much there still is to do - and who knows how much reworking to accommodate my readers' comments...

Anyway, we're relaxing today. We have been very fortunate to be invited round to friends' houses every day this long weekend, so we have eaten some very fine meals, and had some very fine conversation, and a very nice time all round! Lunch on Saturday with Kirstin in Pilgrims' Cloisters, the always unexpectedly gorgeous oasis of Victorian residential architecture which is the only remotely old thing still standing in a sea of tower-block estates in Camberwell... Yesterday in Guildford, with Alison and Steve, meeting Nate for the first time (though I can't believe he is already 8 months' old!) and being introduced to the world of Rainbow Magic books which Ellie and her 4-year-old friends absolutely love! There are nearly 80 of these books, and there's a fairy for everything you could possibly conceive of in life - from Alice the Tennis Fairy, to Tasha the Tap Dance fairy (this was the first one I read to Ellie, so will always hold a special place in my heart!) I was amazed - something about these books utterly mesmerised little Ellie... Whoever came up with this idea is clearly raking it in!!

Today we had lunch with Cornelius in Kennington (I do like it when we can travel to and from friends' places just on the bus), followed by a film at the Ritzy. We often go and see films with Cornelius, and it's really nice as a way to see things you would not otherwise think to go to. We suggested State of Play, he suggested Let the Right One In - which I have to say I knew very little about but had gathered that it involved vampires and was, according to the poster, a "chilling fairytale", which was enough to put me off wanting to see it, and avoiding reading any reviews. Normally I only watch 'horror' movies (though it defies that categorisation) under extreme protest, though Salem's Lot, to which this film nods in at least one memorable scene, was once a favourite film, but most recently, the closest I have been to vampires is watching the last few series of Angel, the friendly vampire-with-a-soul who crusades against evil, which is all rather outlandish and amusing TV, in a Joss Whedon kind of way. But when Cornelius suggested this film, I looked up Peter Bradshaw's review, whose critical opinion I utterly trust, which made me think it could be interesting - not quite Rainbow Magic, but certainly another way of taking my mind off my work...! In the end, we flipped a coin (when was the last time I did that?!) and Let the Right One In was the winner.

And I loved it! It's an achingly beautiful film - set in snowy urban Sweden, with a quiet but beautiful soundtrack, not much dialogue, and quite minimalist when it comes. I liked the fact that the subtitles were quite minimalist as well - there was a lot more Swedish on screen, in newspaper cuttings, and notes between the young protagonists, than was translated, and I thought that was a sympathetic way of respecting the lack of spoken word. I won't tell you the story - read the review, if you want to know, it won't give too much away. If you're worried like I was about the horror movie aspect, don't be - it is gruesome in parts, but won't wake you up with nightmares (I hope!!) But it's hauntingly memorable, and as other reviews have said, it's a "major addition to the vampire genre", and "infinitely superior to Twilight" - which I have not seen, and quite frankly don't wish to after this! Though my heart sank to read just now that a "wholly unnecessary" American remake is in pre-production... Why do they do this?? Is it that taxing to read subtitles? We'd gone to an afternoon showing, and it was odd to re-emerge into daylight - everything seemed slightly disturbed, not quite normal. Cornelius seemed quite shaken, so I think we'll be going to see State of Play next time!

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It being May, though, it must be time to share the picture from our home-made calendar! This does not cease to bring joy by the way - it was an excellent thing to do!

Iglesia de San Antonio, Aranjuez © KR

This is another photo from our trip to Spain last May - nearly a year ago, which is unbelievable... K joined me in Madrid halfway through my month's trip, and the next day I made him go to a palace, which was hardly a fun holiday activity for him, considering he works in one - and one that has the best preserved set of royal rooms in the Baroque style in Europe, apparently, so dragging him to Aranjuez, a day-trip outside the capital, which was the Spanish monarchy's summer palace, remodelled in the 18th century to be fashionably Baroque, was, in retrospect, a bit cruel. But he seemed to love it - he went into photography mode, and took a few thousand images that day I think! No pictures allowed inside the palace, though, which was annoying since my reason for wanting to go there was to see the 'Moorish' smoking room that had been added to the royal apartments by Isabel II in 1850, commissioned from Rafael Contreras, the man who was working for her as restorer at the Alhambra palace, and was built and decorated entirely in the Alhambra style. It was pretty fantastic and worth putting up with the Baroque enfilade of rooms, and the truly monstrous chinoiserie porcelain room. We also had some very fine strawberries and cream, which is the thing to do at Aranjuez apparently.

Anyway we had some time to kill before taking the train back to Madrid, and had a wander around the very small town, which was all remodelled at the same time as the palace. K got particularly carried away taking photos of this church and a barrack block next to it. I am used to having to wait for him to take his photos and catch me up, but usually there are nice things to look at, so it doesn't matter, but I had had my fill of Baroque for one day, and I think it was starting to rain. Anyway I had to phone him to see where he was! But now he has seen the Baroque exhibition, and like me, was frustrated about the lack of a definition of what the Baroque style actually is, according to K, this church is typical Baroque because it's bendy. So there you go.

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Today is the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher coming to power as the first female prime minister. I'm not celebrating, and I always think it's slightly debatable how much of a woman she was, but it is still remarkable, when you look around at our international politicians and see how few of them are women. When we had the G20 summit in town a few weeks ago, there was all this coverage about the meal that Jamie Oliver was cooking for the presidential spouses, and which talented British women were going to be invited, and who was going to sit next to who... And I just thought, hey, does Angela Merkel's husband come to that dinner? Turns out he stayed behind in Berlin!! Why? Because it's too humiliating for him to be one man among all those women at the patronising spousal dinner?? One coup for women I am happy to celebrate in the news this week is the appointment of our first ever female Poet Laureate - not that I am sure this is an institution I entirely support, though it sounds like Carol Ann Duffy has a strong sense of the good that poetry can bring to peoples' lives and of the good she can do in this role. So good luck to her. And I also appreciate the way that the discussion this week has not been all about her sexuality - which it certainly would have been in Thatcher's day.

Radio Silence

Well, howdy! It's been a while. Sorry for the radio silence - I have been wrangling with Chapter 3, and have been avoiding email, and pretty much anything that is not in some way influenced by the art of Islamic Spain. Apart from Henry VIII - though he was influenced, but this is not the time or place for that discussion. All the big Henry VIII launches have been happening in the last few weeks - the opening on Wednesday evening at the British Library, of their exhibition Man and Monarch, was on the actual 500th anniversary of Henry officially assuming the throne - marked by K and his fellow Tudor historians all wryly commiserating each other on the death of Henry VII... I'll have to defer talking about that exhibition until I've been back to look at it properly.

The previous week was the party to launch all K's work at Hampton Court - details here. It all looks fantastic - they have re-presented the Tudor palaces, including hanging the 'Haunted Gallery' (a long corridor which is used as a paintings gallery, hung with fabulous portraits from the Royal Collection) with rich fabrics, as it would have been in the Tudor period, and bringing together in Henry's council chamber (never before open to the public!) a small exhibition of contemporary portraits of Henry's wives (the first time that's ever been done!) and daughters, together with an object of significance from their lives - and much much more ... The conceit is that the palace is 'dressed' for the wedding of Henry and Katherine Parr ("survived"), which was held at Hampton Court in 1543, and you are the courtiers in attendance: there are staged events throughout the day, when you can meet help the bride and groom prepare for the wedding, or be the first to congratulate them after the ceremony... They have hired three actors to rotate playing Henry every day for a year, and I must say it really brings everything to life, when you're just wandering around the palace and then everything stops to make way for the King ... You get caught up in the scenario and really believe it's him!


I could go on and on - but you'll just have to go along and see for yourself! It is certainly enough to fill a fun day out, which has been one of the main purposes. Hampton Court is just that little bit too far away (though it is really easy to get to - when the trains are running!) for people to automatically think of going there, but amazingly, they had 16,000 visitors over the Easter bank holiday weekend!! We were some of them - K had to go in anyway, so we arranged to go with friends on Easter Sunday. The range of projects that K was involved in for this was so wide that I really had not that much idea what he was working on, as it was too much to talk about after he'd been hard at it at work all day, so that was the first time I really got the chance to find out, and to see it all in action, and people enjoying themselves. Visitors are encouraged to dress for court, by putting on these fine velvet(een) robes - here's K and our friend Az pretending to be Holbein's Ambassadors!


Not that K can relax now it's all open - he's been involved in a whirl of media coverage, including his spot on Today a few weeks back, and the Time Team special on Tudor palaces on Easter Monday! There's also a documentary going around on the History channel, but no-one we know has Sky, so we have to wait for the DVD to watch that!! And this week he has had to give two study day papers, so ended up working through the night on Monday to get the first one written...

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As a result, we're desperately planning to 'get away from it all' and have a holiday this year, so we're planning a retreat to the Outer Hebrides (literally) for mid-July - the earliest 'window' in both our schedules... But we did make sure to take Easter Monday off, and had an absolutely wonderful day out at Bexhill. I wanted to go to the seaside and see some nice architecture, so we decided on Bexhill because of the De La Warr Pavilion, built in 1935, the UK's first public building to be constructed in the Modernist style.


You just can't take a bad photo of it. There was also something truly amazing about the contrasting colours - of the sea and the sky and the pavilion, and the lawn out front which seemed impossibly green. This picture doesn't do it justice.

We got up reasonably early (considering how tired we were!) and managed to get a 9.30 train, and somehow I'd been organised enough to prepare a thermos of coffee and some hot cross buns for breakfast on the train. We read our books and dozed for the two-hour journey (already sounding good, eh?) Beautiful weather had been forecast for the Easter weekend, which had so far failed to materialise, but the clouds burned off and the sun came out as we sat on a perfectly-located bench overlooking the sea, with an easy view backwards to the pavilion, eating what I am reliably informed were the best fish-and-chips on the South Coast (from Louis's Fish Bar on Sea Road - go there)


We literally spent every last penny we had on this feast and it was worth every one of them!!

Quite a number of boats came out as well - it turned into a gorgeously beautiful day.


The thing was, we had absolutely no mental energy left, so it was the perfect day out, because it was all just so beautiful to look at and soak up, and we pretty much just wandered and sat and gazed all day, without having anything at all to say.

This picture sums up my mental state that day!

We sat on the shingle and K found it endlessly rewarding to throw stones at the sea. He took this picture while lying on the beach!


The added bonus was that while I had known pretty much what to expect from the Pavilion, I was totally unprepared for the gorgeous Victorian Orientalist sea-front cottages - we're seriously considering moving there!


Here are some gratuitous gorgeous views of Bexhill and the Pavilion (it's an exhibition venue, but we had absolutely no difficulty in avoiding looking at any of the art - tea on the terrace was much more the order of the day).

View from the terrace

Up the stairwell © KR

Down the stairwell © KR
I love the colours - though they seem to be slightly flattened here

A meditative view out to sea...

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So it turns out I have an inflamed ulnar. This is compressing the nerves which run down the left side of my body and giving me numbness and tingling sensations in my arm and leg - and making it not so easy to type for long stretches. At least it is that and not some other more worrying cause of numbness and tingling down one side ... it induced some anxiety for several days until I decided to be grown-up and go and see the doctor yesterday. I have to take ibuprofen for two weeks to help the swelling go down and hopefully the symptoms will subside. It is probably caused by how I tuck my arm under my head while sleeping, aggravated by the intensive typing I'm doing while I write my book, and by cycling - apparently this condition is quite common in cyclists, and is also known as "handlebar palsy"!!! What is it with me and oddly-named nervous inflammations?? I had plantar fasciitis in my heel last year!!

I am also under doctor's orders to relax this weekend! Which fortunately coincides with that slight fallow period between finishing one chapter and beginning the planning process of the next - which will also be the last!! (apart from the Introduction) Chapter 4 is about the 19th-century rediscovery of Spain's Islamic past and the revival of 'Moorish' (if you must, though I don't like to) styles in art and architecture... So I plan to do some gentle reading about that today, to get me in the mood - and then my sister is coming over tonight (hurrah!) and we're going to see In the Loop at the Ritzy - the first film we've been to see since Frost/Nixon (oh dear!) ... And tomorrow we're going to plan our holiday, over brunch. Doctor's orders.

April Fool

Lordy, this has been a busy March! Somehow I find it slightly inconceivable that I have actually managed to draft the first two chapters of my book – though Chapter 2 is still a little rough, and a little long (though 3000 words less too-long than it was this morning), and I have given a work-in-progress seminar on it all, yesterday. Phew. I feel exhausted! And sadly there’s no let-up – Chapter 3 needs to be drafted! I am aiming to have something down on paper for all four chapters by the end of April. A chapter every two weeks. Am I mad?

So, time to post the calendar image for the month.

Descent from the Cross, Catalonia 12th-13th century, MNAC, Barcelona © KR

This is one of groups of monumental wooden sculpture from medieval Cataluña, among the fantastic collections of Spanish Romanesque art in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona – taken last May, when K joined me for two weeks in Spain, after I had taken my group of Museum Patrons on their guided tour of ‘Islamic Spain’, and was staying on for the rest of the month to do research, museum and site visits for my book. We always try and fit in a visit to Barcelona, to visit Sarah and Julius, and their children Leila and Isaac – this was our last visit to their lovely (tiny!) old apartment just steps from the sea at Barceloneta. They were just in the process of sorting out a mortgage when we were there (they beat us to it!!) and have since moved to a larger place, just a few streets down, which is even easier to stay in than the last one, by all accounts – must go and find out some time soon!

We’d been to MNAC before, but K didn’t seem to remember (it was a fair few years previously, and I had been back on my own a number of times since then), and he just went crazy for the Romanesque. I phoned him at one point from Gothic Spain (and got stern looks from the wardens) and he was still halfway through the Romanesque period! That stuff is just absolutely fantastic though – we both really love it. There is something so – human – about its artistic naivety. The architecture is pretty fab too. Anyway we chose this photo for the calendar this month, because of its Easter-related theme, of the death of Christ.

And, in case you’re wondering, K has been doing very well at the not-drinking-alcohol-for-Lent. He has been taking Sundays off – this has obviously helped. I think last year he spoke to actual Christians about it, and apparently Sundays are not counted in the number of days for which Lent lasts – they’re a religious feast day, ergo you don’t have to give up what you gave up. He has been known occasionally to rather over-compensate – when Nick was here a few weekends back (so wonderful to see him! Was it really three years since the last time…?), K awoke on Monday morning with something of a headache. A whiskey too far, I fear.

And one last by the way – Stieg Larsson is excellent. Still a little way to go, but it has definitely been the thing to switch the brain off from The Book last thing at night. Highly recommended.

Another thing that has kept me sane the last couple of weeks - watching back issues of Brothers and Sisters. Gaaaad, I love that programme! I am not sure exactly why it is so good - on the surface the characters seem quite stereotyped and the idea of it doesn't sound that interesting: a big ensemble cast (12 main characters!), a loving but explosively expressive family and their escapades through daily life, all revolving around the personality and the absence of the husband/father, who (brilliantly) died right at the beginning of the first episode. But the writing and the acting is just fantastic! Welsh actor Matthew Rhys is so watchable as as Kevin Walker.

Another last 'by the way'. K has just informed me that he might be interviewed on the Today programme on Saturday morning, talking about Henry VIII! Be sure to listen!!