Getting Christmassy...

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!?

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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...

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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!

Where's Obama today?

Turns out he's just arrived in Baghdad!! He's really packing it in on this round-the-world trip! There's a headline in K's Economist (April 4th-10th, p. 59) that says, "If atmospherics were all that mattered, the American president would be well on the way to curing the world's ills". It was good to have him in London, and I loved the fact that he gave the Queen an iPod!! There are some amusing track suggestions for her here. Michelle seemed to go down a storm at the inner London secondary school she visited - we heard some very eloquent teenage girls talking on the radio about how her visit had inspired them. (Talking of radio, did you catch K on Today??) I did not go on any protests, and to be quite honest, I really did not see the point of them. "Jobs, Justice and Climate"? Plus the usual add-ons that you get at protests like that. I tried it over Iraq - it didn't work. Its absolutely shocking, though, about that guy who died of a heart attack, on his way home - especially since it seems like the heart attack was set off by police assault.

Call me shallow, but I was frankly more interested in watching the footage of the Obamas meeting the Sarkozys at Strasbourg - Nicolas looked like a cartoon character next to Barack!! And what was Sarkozy doing with Obama's tie?? There was some fascination with the "sartorial battle" between Carla and Michelle ("two fashion titans"!), which is always amusing to read - though I am not sure I approve that you can now post comments at the end of stories on the Guardian website. I find myself reading them almost against my will, in a sort of morbid fascination, though very rarely do you get anything actually worth paying attention to - and how is it that people have time to participate in this kind of online conversation, sometimes several times??

Anyway, book update. I have finished Chapter 2, and sent that off to my readers, but I am having some difficulty getting going with writing Chapter 3. I have decided it's PMT - well, I've got to have something to blame. It also feels like a holiday - all the schools have broken up, and many of my colleagues have taken the week off, so there is a holiday air which is rather effecting. I also feel it's ok to have a little break between chapters - but there's just no time for that, I keep having to tell myself.

I spent this morning in the Baroque exhibition - classic work-avoidance activity. Now, I really do not like baroque as an artistic style - but I liked this exhibition. It is really well laid out, with a simple but effective design - like the section about secular spaces (ie. the palace) being laid out like an enfilade of rooms in a baroque palace, culminating in the king's bedchamber - as you would if you were a courtier visiting. It feels quite empty - though there is not a shortage of objects, though some of them are BIG, but they get a chance to breathe, and so do you - I always find if you're in an original baroque space it is just too overwrought and overwhelming that you just can't appreciate its individual elements, whereas you can here.

The one let-down was that nowhere does it actually tell you what baroque is, or how it develops, or why it spreads as widely as it did - why did it appeal so much? They imply it was through the patronage of the Catholic church and the absolute monarchs of the 17th century - though it doesn't ever really say what they were trying to use this style to express, apart from wealth, and power, which is self-evident. It was also slightly disappointing that - though much is made of this being the "first global style" (because it is the first style to travel out of Europe, though I am not sure this is necessarily something to be proud of, since it's imposed on colonies by European imperialists) this was only represented in a rather tokenistic way, with very few objects (though one of them was, admittedly, again, very large) and just there as "examples", rather than objects in themselves, if you see what I mean.

The theatre section was great - they had found this 17th-century castle theatre in the Czech Republic, which has retained its original stage set and furnishings, and it is obviously still used, since there was a short film of performances underway, and the guys under the stage turning pulleys to change the set. Fascinating. Opera was invented at this time, and much was made about the "total work of art", so that a baroque setting was multi-sensory, and included musical as well as visual stimulation. I really liked the use of music in the spaces, though at certain points these clashed with each other, but I think this experience would have been rather lost on you had you been going round with the audio guide (and you know how I feel about those...)

Anyway I think it has opened this week because of Easter - being, perhaps, the most Baroque of church rituals. And nowhere is it more Baroque than Semana Santa in Seville - of which there were some more film clips. In all my years of visiting Spain, I have never witnessed this, and is something I would really love to do sometime - though I am not sure I could get past been terrified by the penitents in their pointed KKK-inspiring hoods... Some seasonal photos I have enjoyed from the Guardian website (is it obvious which newspaper I read?):

Barbie and Ken go to Mass!

Roses, a Palace, Pancakes, a Cathedral

I’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do. Don’t worry, I won’t give you a blow by blow account of the last two weeks, which have been somewhat manic, while I try to ‘clear the decks’ (i.e. most of my workload for the next three months) to free up my time to start writing my book … on Monday!!! No, just the highlights – and the highest (?) of these was that a week ago today we celebrated our 13th anniversary! K sent me flowers at work – beautiful, proper, long-stemmed red roses, 13 of them of course, that were just perfectly in bloom, and they smelt gorgeous too! It’s so rare to find roses that actually have a scent! The lady at reception called me during my lunch break, and I couldn’t understand what she was telling me, it was so unexpected – I thought a visitor had turned up for me out of the blue! But no… I felt rather embarrassed but also extremely chuffed as I walked through the Museum to my office – of course I bumped into someone almost immediately, who I don’t really know but who of course stopped and asked me if it was my birthday. Once in the office I had to show them off to the ladies, and word apparently got around because later in the afternoon, people were coming in from other offices to look at them!! This is how perfect they were:


I had to guard them carefully on the tube on the way to the restaurant where we were meeting – a seemingly endless almost-circuit of the Circle Line. It was a bit busy, but when I eventually got a seat and sat down, the bouquet was nearly as tall as me!! When the lady next to me got up a few stops later, she tripped on it and they fell over – when I picked them up, she said, “Oh what beautiful roses!” and a nearby gentleman said, “They were!” It was funny, but also one of those slightly uncomfortable moments where you make brief contact with your fellow passengers – everyone laughs, then immediately go back to being complete strangers…

We ate at the Bleeding Heart Tavern, where there has been a pub since 1746, which is now one of a group of French restaurants, all at slightly different levels of formality, housed in the tiny Bleeding Heart Yard, near to Farringdon station, in the ancient heart of the City of London. It had been recommended to us by friends aeons ago, and we only just got round to going. It was a lovely meal and really reasonably priced – and to top it all off, they brought us a chocolate cake with ‘Happy Anniversary’ written on the plate around it, on the house! It was the roses that did it… I think we're going to keep going back, trying a different eating establishment each time (working our way up to the grand restaurant)

A post-prandial drink (as my father used to say…) in the nearby Mitre, another historic 18th-century pub, and a late night walk along High Holborn to pick up the bus home… A lovely celebration!

(The roses are still going strong after a week – sitting here on my desk, behind my computer, looking increasingly dark and velvety as they mature. I sniff them when I need a moment of pause.)

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We continued the festivities on Sunday by going to Windsor for the day. Again, somewhere we had always intended to visit, but had never been. Amazingly (for us), we left promptly and were in Windsor by 10.30, and wandering around the palace by 11. The Queen was in residence, as the flag was flying from the top of the keep.


It was wonderfully quiet, partly because it was early and cold (that promised sunshine never materialised, but shone on Saturday instead, when we were in the library!), and also because we were visiting at the end of the Half Term week, so I guess the children were suitably exhausted and the parents preparing to go back to work. South Kensington was utterly packed last week, as it always is at Half Term, but it seemed busier than usual – museums are free, and in this economic climate they’re going to be an attractive option for families looking for entertainment on a budget. But apart from quite a lot of tourists, there were not many other people at Windsor, which made it more relaxing. A contrast, as well, from when we visited Buckingham Palace last summer – not out of choice, I might add, it was K’s mother’s birthday treat … though, in the end, it was quite interesting, but utterly besieged by what can only be described (and this is not intended in a disparaging way) as working class people. I thought it was utterly tasteless (I note I am using “utterly” a lot in this post) – the Queen deigns to throw open her doors to her poorest subjects for a few months in the summer, and charges them thirty pounds each for the privilege. Talk about redistribution of wealth.

Anyway Windsor was sort of similar to Buckingham Palace, in that everything is actually very modern, ‘medievalised’ in the late 19th century. I suppose it’s not surprising, as it’s a lived-in palace, so you can’t expect it to be historic as such, but it is somehow a little disappointing to discover, nevertheless – perhaps because we are fortunate enough to live our daily lives surrounded by history. The ‘Drawings Gallery’ was mostly filled with photographs of and paraphernalia associated with Prince Charles – not really sure why, unless it was supposed to inspire us all with pride at the life and works of our future monarch… Actually, pretty much the best thing about visiting the palace was seeing Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, an absolutely fantastic, fully-furnished model of an aristocratic London house, in miniature (it’s on a scale of 12:1). Made in 1924, the house was designed by Lutyens, and the garden by Gertrude Jekyll! We decided that the best job in the world would be ‘Curator of the Queen’s Dolls’ House’!

After exhausting ourselves traipsing around the State Apartments, we went off in search of lunch, which we found in the marvellous ‘Crooked House of Windsor’


located on officially the shortest street in Britain!


What a Dickensian confluence of circumstances!

We wandered around some more and eventually found our way to the very lovely Horse and Groom pub, right opposite the back door to the castle, where we sat in the window with our drinks, until we noticed the queue forming for Evensong, soon after 5, which we then went and joined. This was half-ploy to get into St George’s Chapel, which is closed on Sundays unless you attend the services – but is also a lovely thing to do, and the kind of thing I never would have experienced unless I knew K. But the Chapel is definitely the element of Windsor that is most worth visiting – and the most authentic too, being a genuine 14th-century monument.

(This is one of K's wide-angle photos)

The main part of the nave was all in darkness, and we were guided into the choir, which was candlelit, as we were there at twilight, and extremely impressive, with its wonderful rib-vaulted ceiling, contemporary with that at Westminster Abbey, and the choirstalls bedecked with the arms and achievements of the Knights of the Order of the Garter, for which this is the chapel. Enamelled copper plates of every knight that has ever been a member of the Order, since its foundation in the 14th century, are attached to the backs of the upper stalls – I was sitting next to John Major’s stall, who is clearly one of the current 24 Knights of the Order. All this really makes it a unique place to sit for an hour and hear beautiful monastic chant, sung that evening by the Lay Clerks (I guess the choristers were still on Half Term too), and to look up and around and be filled with beauty, as the sun gradually faded outside the stained glass windows. The two clerics who read the lessons and prayers were certainly at the top of their profession – imagine being almost the private chaplain to the Queen – and they had perhaps the most sonorous voices I have ever heard. They did a good reading – particularly the first one, which was a reading about Elijah in the wilderness, from the Old Testament, and vividly dramatic. We weren’t allowed to linger long at the end of the service, but this will be a beautiful place to return to. But how wonderful to experience it that way for the first time!

Since the trains back to London only left once an hour, we had missed the 6 o’clock by the time we emerged from the Chapel, so it was back to the Horse and Groom for some puddings (a gorgeous melting chocolate pot for me, spotted dick and custard for K), and then a gentle amble down the hill to the station in time for the 7 o’clock train. A really lovely relaxing day off.

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Tuesday was pancake day – Shrove Tuesday – which would seem to be a peculiarly English thing, according to this pancake-focused blog on the Guardian website which I had some fun browsing that night!

Of course we made pancakes – too many, it turned out, which we finished off last night, which is against the law apparently. Doing a baked dish with stuffed pancakes always sounds like a quick thing to do, but this one wasn’t, although it was delicious when it was eventually ready, at about 10.30! Pancakes rolled around a stuffing of shredded spinach, pine nuts and red onion, stirred up with ricotta, bechamel and parmesan, seasoned with nutmeg, and smothered in tomato sauce and more bechamel. Delish.

K has given up alcohol for Lent (again), which meant he was really grouchy when he came home from work last night!

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Today I visited Salisbury Cathedral on our departmental away day. It was fantastic! All the more so because something clicked with me that should have clicked before. The first thing was the discovery that William Golding lived and taught in Salisbury, footsteps from the Cathedral…

… and the second was that Salisbury Cathedral not only has a spire on top of its central tower, but that this spire, which was added in the early 14th century, is the highest in England, at 123 m (404 ft) tall. According to the Cathedral’s website, it weighs 6,500 tons, and our guide pointed out to us how the tall Purbeck marble columns at the crossing have bent under its weight.


All this gave me a whole new perspective on reading Golding’s The Spire, a remarkable book which I read last year, an historical imagining (one can’t really call it a novel) of the feverish obsession which drives the dean of an unnamed cathedral to believe God has instructed him through visions to build an immense spire, but his obsession causes many casualties – physical and spiritual – along the way. I found it a difficult book to read, because you really find yourself caught up in the protagonist’s fevered mental state – but it’s an amazing work of literature, and one that is all the more meaningful to me now that I have realised that Golding was inspired (ha ha) by the very real monument at the end of his street.

Over and out.