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!
We always say that Christmas as we celebrate it these days is a Victorian invention... well here it is! The first ever Christmas card - designed by J.C.Horsley RA in 1843, commissioned, published and posted by Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), Victorian extraordinaire...
