Jenni in London

A Week in Germany: Saturday (Again)

2012-02-01T22:54:00.000Z

28. 01. 2012

We woke up to snow this morning. Overnight snow had left a light covering, and the snowfall continued into mid-morning. Not much accumulation, but enough to look very pretty like icing decorating trees and buildings.

Munich's Opera House

An easy tourist schedule for the day, as promised to my doctors, was made possible by Munich’s excellent public transportation network.

First stop was Johanna Daimer’s Felt Shop, a tiny half size space filled with felt in all colours and all possible thicknesses. Megan and I discovered the shop when we were here, back in the day when felt was not a booming area of handcraft and good wool felt was hard to come by. It was Christmas Market, and every woman in Munich was lining up to push their way into the narrow shop to procure whatever local hausfrauen needed for their Christmas decorations. Not that I need any felt at the moment, but I wanted to make a tribute return visit. And their little packets of felt cutouts are very charming.

We followed the felt pilgrimage with "the best Wienerschnitzel in Munich" according to a 2010 article in The Guardian. And it was indeed superb, made with white veal, so principles had to be tossed out the same window used for French foie gras meals, but it really beats the pork or pink veal versions. The price has increased slightly to 24 euros.

Another thing I love about Germany is that you can eat meals when you are hungry. No waiting until 12:30 or 7:00 p.m. for lunch and dinner as you must in London in their effort to be continental. The worst is having to wait until 10 p.m. for dinner in Spain! My scheduling for the morning took less time than expected, so we turned up at the restaurant shortly after 11:00, and there were people already eating. Since we had eaten little breakfast, we were ready for lunch, and by the time we left at 12:30, the restaurant was heaving.

The next thing to love about Munich is Bus Line 100, called the Museum Line, that does a loop around the major museums on the north side of the city. When we were looking at what Munich had to offer, Bob had seen a brochure for Villa Stuck, an Art Nouveau house museum, and said that was his first choice for an outing. From the restaurant we easily found the bus which dropped us right in front of the Villa, in an outer residential neighbourhood of the city. The ride took us through beautiful snow covered park lands along the banks of the River Isar. (I forgot my camera, but Bob was able to take a few photos.)

The monument is the Friedensengel, or Angel of Peace, unveiled in 1899
to commemorate the 25 years of peace after the Franco-German Wars of the 1870s.

The Villa Stuck was fantastic in every sense of the word. Over-decorated, over-gilded, over-dramatic, and utterly beautiful. Franz Stuck — he became Franz Ritter von Stuck when he was knighted — was a leading artist of the German Jugendstil wing of the Art Nouveau movement, and his house with its Gold Medal winning (Chicago 1893; Paris 1900) furniture and decoration is his masterpiece. He was also a professor of art, who counted Paul Klee as one of his students, and he is said to have described the Villa as “frighteningly wonderful.” Sadly I have no interior photos, and I can't find any links that include photos, so I admit to brazenly lifting images from Google here.

Bob took this one of the exterior

Music Salon

The Museum also has additional gallery space that hosts exhibitions of work from the period around 1900. The current exhibit features French artist Jules Chéret who is known as the father of the modern poster for his work advertising cabarets and musical performances. He was also a painter, illustrator, designer, and decorator. A previously unknown artist to us, but his poster work is clearly the foundation for work by artists whose names are very familiar. The link to the exhibit includes a slide show of some of the work on display, although the text is in German.

After a wander through the museum, it was time to rest my leg again, and Bus 100 took us across the city to the Railroad Station where our hotel is nearby. On the way we passed the many other museums we will have to save for a next visit.

And tomorrow we fly back to London.

A Week in Germany: Friday

2012-02-01T09:48:00.000Z

27. 01. 2012

Today has sped by. I slept. I read. I knit. I sent e-mails. I read e-mails.

I watched 5 minutes of TV, but the only English language channels are BBC World (boring); CNBC (more boring); and Bloomberg (totally boring).

However the Abu Dhabi Channel had camel racing—LIVE camel racing according to the screen caption.

Bob brought me breakfast and lunch and snack food before he left this morning. I can recommend “Kinder Schoko-Bons … für die Extra-Portion Milch.” I’m sure even non-German readers can parse that one out, and recognize the advice I’m sure all good mothers appreciate.

The swelling is going down on the foot which looked so plump and smooth, like a baby foot, or more likely, a foot pumped up with Botox. The purple discolouration is not quite as purple now. Perhaps some holiday activity can resume tomorrow.

That's not my leg, but Duke Henry the Lion, sovereign ruler of Lower Saxony and Bavaria, and the founder of Munich in 1158 as a market city to help him gain control of the Southern German salt road from Bishop Otto I of Freising. Frederick Barbarossa settled the dispute by assigning the route to Henry, but some of the revenue to Otto. (All cribbed from the City Museum's exhibition guide.)

Here is Henry in full splendour.

A Week in Germany: Thursday

2012-02-01T09:09:00.001Z

26. 01. 2012

The trip has taken a unfortunate turn in the excellent city of Munich which I have visited several times before and have in mind a list of places for a bit of shopping. However, more on that later because the day began bright and sunny.

I love the tabletop Christmas tree

Breakfast in a marquis café in the Viktuallen Market with homemade Apple Cake with Whipped Cream. Then Bob went off to a meeting while I went to the Radspieler a design and textile shop Megan and I discovered when we were here in 2005 for the Christmas Market. In business since 1841, and someday I will go back and buy meters and meters of furnishing fabric and dirndl fabric. But it is the kind of shop that has so many beautiful things, I am hard pressed to decide what I can’t live without, then decide I can’t decide, and leave with the smallest item in hand. So a money saver in the end.

Met up with Bob at the nearby Assam Church which is so gold encrusted that it is headache inducing.

Followed by an excellent lunch of Potato Soup and Liverwurst with raw onions and pickles, accompanied by the winter brewed “starkbier” or strong beer because in the winter a nourishing beer was needed as an antidote to the cold.

Bob had a free afternoon so we headed to the Munich City Museum to learn more about the city from a special permanent exhibit done a few years ago to celebrate the city’s 800th anniversary. An excellent little booklet in English was on hand to explain the history and the artefacts on display. I find Germany so confusing since it was divided into autonomous states well into the 19th century, everywhere you travel, the guidebooks are discussing new sets of princes and kings, electors and dukes. There are paintings of endless royals who were patrons of the highest arts, but there is no way to fit them into a coherent framework.

The section on poster art of the early 20th century was most interesting. We knew our favourite poster artist E. McKnight Kauffer had studied in Germany before coming to London in 1914 when war was declared, and here we could see the work that influenced him.

We had reached maximum absorption capability when we discovered the museum also housed a huge and fascinating collection on the history of puppets, really marionettes, and amusement parks.

The beast . . .

. . . and the beauty

The city history exhibit pulls no punches in the difficult mid-20th century history stating clearly that Munich is responsible for Hitler’s rise to power, but the exhibition itself seemed a bit disjointed unlike the displays in earlier galleries. As we were leaving the museum, we realized the Nazi era display had been given a special exhibition space with a separate entrance, but we were just too tired to face any more information.

When we arrived back at the hotel, I discovered I was perhaps tired because the lower leg, foot, and ankle attached to the knee I had injured last Sunday, and which seemed to be healing, was very swollen and had turned a not very healthy colour of bright purple. So we learned the location of the nearest hospital from the hotel and took a cab to investigate the German health system.

The hospital seemed to be some sort of huge university complex. The emergency room I went to, as directed by the very helpful cab driver, had only one other patient in the three hours I was there. I was attended by a cast of movie star handsome doctor, medical student (who had spent a year doing research in Boston), and radiologist, and that was just the men. Between their English and my occasional brain flashes of high school German returning in puffs of memory, we were able to convey our information back and forth.

Fortunately they found nothing to be wrong in the way of blood clots, thrombosis, arterial damage, and whatever else they looked for in the sonogram and blood tests and EKG. Eventually they wrapped my leg in a compression bandage and told me to keep my foot elevated and not to walk around for a day to see if the swelling would go down.

So now I am to look forward to a day in a hotel room. Thankfully this hotel offers free internet, and The Pickwick Papers on my Kindle will last through the next few months, and I am way behind on the cushion cover that I am knitting for the Olympic athlete donation scheme.

A Week in Germany: Wednesday

2012-01-31T15:44:00.000Z

25. 01. 2012

Here I am back on the train again. This time the destination is Munich. We are pulling out of the Nürnberg station as I type. Next stop Munich in an hour. Bob is on another train somewhere out there. The travel agency used by the bank did his tickets; then I purchased mine on the same trains. Except for this ticket. I could not find his train on the Deutschebahn schedule. When I queried him, he queried them, and they said the time and number of his train had been “changed” by DB since his tickets were booked. Sounded fishy to me. And sure enough while we were standing on the platform, we discovered there were in fact two trains to Munich leaving four minutes apart. I think I got the better train since I arrive 20 minutes before he does.

Last night was spent in Frankfurt, leaving me with most of a day on my own here. With no particular plans I headed towards the Goethe House Museum. The street map indicated a winding greenway connecting the New Opera House and the Old Opera House that would lead me eventually to the city centre. The walk was kept interesting by some public sculpture.

Where there is a Goethe, there is always a Schiller

These ladies looked uncomfortable without their bathwater

Not a clue what it means, but very eye catching

Frankfurt's Old Opera was destroyed in a bombing raid. A New Opera was built in the early 1950s, and the Old Opera was left as a ruin until the 1960s when plans were made to raze what was left for an office development. The citizens rallied, raised funds, and an exact replica of the beloved Old Opera opened in 1981.

The Goethe House Museum proved to be a wonderful treat that kept me occupied for hours. Four floors of beautifully appointed rooms, filled with interesting objects and art. Visitors are allowed to walk around on their own at their own pace, so no annoying tours and very few ropes to get in the way.
The exhibit about Goethe and his family is very well done, and in English along with German.

The house was originally a medieval half-timbered structure, but Papa Johann
used some of his inheritance to update to a modern style

Goethe was born in the house in 1749 and looks to have had an ideal childhood immersed in the social and cultural life of the city. His paternal grandfather had made a fortune by marrying a widow with a brewery. Papa Johann lived off his parents' money in this fantastically beautiful house and occupied his time buying paintings from local artists and collecting books. He had the good sense to marry a daughter from one of the town’s leading families, thus acquiring social standing to add to the lustre of inherited wealth.

The back entrance used to enter the house

The lovely puppet theatre little Johann received when he was 4 years old is on display and between dreaming up plays for his puppets and reading his father’s science book collection, his career path was established early. Papa Johann however wanted his son to become a working lawyer, but whenever he was sent off to study the law, he preferred the company of writers, painters, and philosophers, so father-son relations became strained.

An astronomical clock built by a local craftsman

According to the guidebook, the bear falls
over when the clock needs rewinding.

Papa's Library that held his collection of 2,000 books.

The all important puppet theatre

Along with the house, the Museum also has a collection of paintings of the period. Not exceptional art, but interesting as a background to the artistic developments of the time with Sense and Sensibility and Sturm und Drang all the rage among aesthetes resisting the pull of Classicism. The paintings aren’t all mediocre as there are three Casper David Friedrich’s, including a small moonlight with swans that is mesmerizing.

The general wisdom is that Frankfurt is not very interesting for exploring, but I have had a good time without making much of an effort to investigate what's on offer. I just found a website Frankfurt on Foot that has a great walking tour of the city and a great blog filled with ideas for visitors and expats that I will turn to next time I am in Frankfurt.

I arrived in Munich a few minutes ahead of schedule, but Bob’s train took a different route and arrived 45 minutes later. Fortunately our hotel is right next to the train station, and we were able to have an excellent bite to eat and some local beer in the buzzing bar. I'm so glad to be back in Munich, one of my favourite cities.

A Week in Germany: Tuesday

2012-01-31T11:27:00.004Z

24. 01. 2012

If Monday is Men’s Night Out in Cologne, then Tuesday morning is inexplicably when middle-aged women put on Halloween costumes, wander around the city in large groups, and light votives in the Cathedral. Ah, it turns out Cologne has Carnival, and this is the beginning of the celebration, which explains the dissonance of witches lighting votive candles.

Cologne is a very Catholic city. Germany may be the home of the Reformation, but the Counter-Reformation also took hold, and the opposing forces have always held a fragile balance. A few years ago we went to a talk by a historian who had just written a book on how churches maintained a balance within cities and towns when both sides wanted the nice old local church or cathedral in the Post-Reformation era. Church sharing was not uncommon.

Cologne was a very powerful Catholic city during the Middle Ages, and a great place to visit very old churches today. When we were here several years ago I found a book, with English text, that included a walking trail of a dozen Romanesque churches. It was a spectacular way to spend a day. I am not a big fan of gold embellished, over-ornamented Baroque churches, and in Germany, most old churches have been Baroqu-ed to remain fashionable with the Counter-Reformation crowd. Thankfully, Cologne’s oldest churches seem to have resisted that trend.

Last time I was here I spent all day on the Romanesque churches, and had little time left over for Cologne's Cathedral. So this time I began my day with the Cathedral. A tour in English begins at 10:30 every weekday morning, and because this is not a busy season, I was the only punter on hand. The guide said, since we were both there, he may as well give me a private tour. I’m so glad he did because there are so many small treasures in the building, I might not have recognised their significance.

Most cathedrals are built in sections over extended periods of time, but Cologne took 632 years and two months according to the official guidebook. There was a 300 year break between the 16th and the 19th centuries when the north tower, the nave and the transepts were left unfinished. During Napoleon's occupation of the city, grain and forage was stored in the structure. In 1815, Cologne became part of Prussia and repairs and building works began again. The last stone was laid in 1880.

The first important thing about the Dom is how much light filters in because the curtain walls are nearly all glass, and I was lucky to be visiting on a sunny day.

My guide said there is evidence that the master mason of Amiens Cathedral in France is responsible for the design, and his remit was to make the Dom taller and brighter than Amiens.

There is still some medieval glass with the superb colours achieved by glassmakers whose secrets have been lost. This glass was removed and stored before the bombing raid that shattered windows and vaults. There are some brighter than bright 19th century windows donated by King Ludwig I of Bavaria that knock your socks off as the sun streams through reds and yellows, but the most interesting window is as contemporary as you can get, a window designed by Gerhard Richter for the south transept. Small squares of beautiful colours with a pattern designed digitally. In a new technique, the squares were bonded to a sheet of plain glass, so it is high-tech artistic double glazing.

And because it was a sunny day, I could just capture the wonderful colours of light reflected on the stone work from the window.

Reliquaries were the secret to success for medieval foundations. Cologne latched on to one of the most sought after: the Three Kings, yes The Magi themselves. Constantine’s mother was a very busy archaeological detective. I knew that she had found The True Cross, but I didn’t know that she went on to find the Magi. They were first sent to Milan, but when Barbarossa captured Milan, with aid from the bishopric of Cologne, the relics were translated—which is the proper term I learned in the class on reliquaries I joined last autumn—to Cologne. The city became an important stop on the pilgrimage route to Compostela to pick up a blessing from the Three Kings who were housed in a three coffin size reliquary of beaten silver coated with a fine layer of gold in the earlier Romanesque cathedral.

The reliquary is still in place behind the high altar, but surrounded by a strong metal grille screen. On this day there were repairs underway in the choir, so that area was completely closed off. My guide told me that the last time the reliquary was opened, in the late 19th century, the remains of three people were found wrapped in cloth that was determined to be from Palmyra in Syria and dated to the 1st century. The pilgrimage income was the also the pot of gold used to begin construction of the new style Gothic Cathedral to replace the old Cathedral on the site.

In this 19th century mosaic floor by the pottery firm Villeroy & Boch, Hildebold, who was Archbishop from 787 to 818 is holding a model of the old cathedral.

Other important treasures include the 14th century altarpiece of St.Clare.

The Adoration of the Christ Child by the Three Kings painted in the 1440s by Stephan Lochner for the city's Rathaus Chapel. The attribution is known because Albrecht Dürer made a note in his diary when he visited Cologne and saw the altarpiece. Cologne's oldest patron saints are depicted on the wings, Ursula on the left and Gereon to the right.

And the remarkable Gero Crucifix, named for the bishop who held office from 969 to 976, and commissioned this sculpture for the earlier church. The Christ figure is six and a half feet tall, and probably was displayed in the centre of the chancel arch of the nave. The marble base and gilded sun are Baroque embellishments. A singular crucifix, and one with a dead Christ, were the equivalent of contemporary "shock art" in the 10th century, and had a profound influence on subsequent religious sculpture. It is a very compelling work with it's stretched and strained muscles and slumping belly of a man suffering a tortuous death.

Cologne's Krippen is also still in place in the entrance hall, and I read local custom is to leave them on display until Candlemas, February 2, the celebration of Jesus being presented to the Temple elders. So now I know the deadline for putting away my last Christmas decorations next week.

Cologne's Krippen is large and local and funny.

A Cologne setting

With a lazy farmer waiting to rent out his empty stable

In a Roman city

Where an elephant takes the Magi

To Cologne Cathedral

To be met by public servants in reflective gear

Cologne was settled by the Romans in the 1st century and became an important capital city of the Empire with its vital bridge across the Rhine. There are Roman remains everywhere dotting the city.

Random stones outside the Roman Museum

The North Portal to the Roman City

Since I still had a few hours left in Cologne, I decided to pay homage to the traditional patron saints of the city by dropping in at their churches.

A lovely modern window in the porch at St. Ursula's

My favourite is Ursula, a 4th century Romano-British princess who set off across the English Channel with 11,000 Virgin handmaidens for her arranged marriage to a pagan prince of Brittany. A storm at sea made her decide to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome to see the Pope, who then joined her, and they all set off for Cologne which was under attack by the Huns. Ursula was martyred and her 11,000 Virgins were beheaded according to a 5th century inscription. I stopped off at St. Ursula’s church, the site of the massacre according to the inscription, but it was the early afternoon closure time, so I could just peek into the sanctuary. The last time I was in Cologne I saw the church’s special treasure room with the relics of the 11,000 housed in golden Baroque splendour. It is overwhelming, but not in a good way. My favourite depiction of the Ursula legend is Hans Memling's painted shrine in Bruges.

This is the Gothic apse end of St. Gereon's, not the Roman Dome.

Then I popped over to nearby St. Gereon's, the other traditional patron saint depicted on Lochner's altarpiece. Gereon does not have much of a story. He was said to be a soldier of the Theban Legion, ordered to Gaul to put down a revolt in Burgundy. The legion had been converted to Christianity in Egypt and were martyred in Switzerland en masse by the emperor for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods before a battle. An interesting strategy if the idea is to win the battle. Somehow Gereon and his attachment made it to Cologne and were beheaded there c.304. Gereon may not be very interesting, but his church makes up for that with a domed nave built on Roman walls under the direction of Constantine's mother, the busy Helen, to commemorate the Cologne soldiers martyred shortly before her son converted the empire.

On the way between the two churches, in the heart of Cologne's financial district, I passed a small Holocaust monument by the side of the pavement. I haven't been able to find any information about the piece.

My personal interpretation runs along the lines of a religious figure, a nun,
turning her back on the evidence of anti-semitic genocide

And turning her Christian principles into a piece of old leather

to be tossed on a pile of shoes, which have become an evocative
symbol used in so many memorials to the Holocaust.

The day was winding down, but I still had time for one more stop before I needed to catch the train back to Frankfurt. St. Andreas is a fantastic treasure house of the late Romanesque. In the crypt a Roman sarcophagus holds the remains of the scholar priest Albertus Magnus who died in 1280.

Scientist, Philosopher, Theologian

Watched over by a medieval scribe

The crypt also has a Stations of the Cross sculpted in stone is low relief that I find beautiful.

The sanctuary is said to be perfectly proportioned

with superb stiff-leafed Romanesque carving around the capitals and cornice

and wall paintings in the nave chapels.

Finally, there is the golden Shrine of the Holy Maccabees, from the early 16th century, that commemorates the remains of the Jewish mother who watched her seven sons martyred for refusing to eat pork, a tale told with variations in detail, in the Talmud and in the Christian Apocrypha's 2nd and 4th Books of the Maccabees.

A Week In Germany: Monday

2012-01-30T19:11:00.001Z

23. 01. 2012

A day totally without interest.

Up early in response to Bob’s wake up calls, the ringing phone and the wall hung jumbo screen TV springing to life at the same time. He is now on his meeting packed business trip. Surfed the internet to run out the 19 euros we paid for 24 hours of internet access so we didn’t miss Sunday with the grandchildren. Worth every cent.

This morning’s news is mostly of the What Will We Do With the Problem Called Newt variety. Bob tells me he is surging in Florida now. Not very surprising as he is a good old Southern boy who would have great appeal for Floridians who vote Republican. In other words not the grandmothers from New York.

A giant breakfast to hold me through the day. Had a nice chat with the friendly Texan who fries up the eggs at the breakfast buffet. He came to Germany in the mid-1980s as a GI, and never wanted to leave. We agreed on the joys of ex-patriation. He said his problem is remembering to speak English when he visits Texas. At least I don’t have that problem. I just have to modify idiomatic usage, like the time I insulted Megan by saying a day was very dull, meaning the weather was grey and looked to remain colourless all day. Of course she thought I was whinging about her efforts to keep me entertained. And then there is whinging, a great word, far better than whining. I did see twee used by an American writer recently. Maybe it was in a review of Downton Abbey.

And those were the interesting parts of the day. After that I went to the train station in Frankfurt, met Bob, took a train to Düsseldorf, waited in the Düsseldorf station for Bob to return from a meeting, and then we took a train to Cologne where we are spending the night. Frankfurt’s train station has a terrific magazine shop and a nice waiting area to sit. Düsseldorf has an okay magazine shop, but does not have a single chair or bench in the whole station. They do have a Dunkin Donuts however, but Dunkies also has no place to sit, so I had to go to Starbucks with my concealed donut. I went with a traditional glazed because most of the varieties on offer were heavily iced, many in garish colours.

I can’t say much about the Cologne train station other than it was very crowded because it was rush hour, so we were in and out. I can say that Cologne’s gigantic wedding cake of a Gothic cathedral knocks your socks off when you step outside because it is right there.

A question could be posed as to who thought it would be a good idea to put a train station, now a very large and busy train station, on the front steps of a Gothic masterpiece?

We had dinner at a Brauerei —a brewery restaurant—recommended by the hotel’s desk clerk. The restaurant was inexplicably filled with groups of men having dinner together. Maybe Monday is Men’s Night Out in Cologne.

And now it is time to end this wholly unremarkable day.

A Week in Germany: Sunday

2012-01-30T18:22:00.001Z

22. 01. 1012

A day of mixed results. . .
Grey and blustery with a bit of rain thrown in . . .

Newt Gingrich, the new Saviour, or at least this week’s version of a Saviour desperately sought in all the wrong places . . . is all over the news with his resounding victory over the eminently unlikeable Mitt Romney in South Carolina of all places, but maybe not too surprising since the tendency to follow the heart and embrace free love has a recent history in the state.

And through a stupid trip down a single step, I managed to crunch my knee on a very hard marble floor. So far just a bit bruised and swollen, but not conducive to the start of a week traveling through Germany.

The better side of the day’s spectrum was enough to compensate for the gloomy weather, politics, and knee. To begin at the day’s beginning, in Germany you can always eat liverwurst at breakfast, and the yogurt is thick and sour, and heavenly when sweetened with a little honey and some dried fruit. I just read an article in today’s New York Times saying that Americans are finally tiring of the sweet, chalky ooze available in supermarkets as yogurt and sold with specious health claims that are contravened by one look at the ingredients list on the container. Instead they are turning to thick Greek/Turkish-style yogurt creating an employment boom in upstate New York in both dairy farming and yogurt manufacture. Win-Win all around.

Next we grabbed our Frankfurt MuseumTicket, 2-days of free entry into 34 museums in the city. The best bargain pass I have ever seen, especially since the helpful young man in the tourist bureau suggested we buy the 23 euro family pass instead of the two single adult passes that would add up to 30 euros. I rather think they might want to work on their pricing structure if they wish to make an equitable donation to the member museums. The 23 euros didn’t even cover our two admissions to the Städel, Frankfurt’s art museum.

Our hotel was conveniently located near the Main where there is a pleasant walkway that passes through the city along the banks of the river.

The Main as in Frankfurt-am-Main

The Pedestrian Bridge leading to the Museum Quarter
on the South Bank of the river. The Kaiserdom Tower
in the background

And the Städel was our first stop today, and the scene of where my knee hit the marble. The museum has just reopened after a refurb and a rehang of their Old Masters and their Modern Collections. The Contemporary Collection reopens next month. The museum overall does not have a top tier collection, but some of its treasures are top tier, especially in the early Flemish collection that fills the first room. A bit from everyone important: van Eyck, Campin, van der Weyden, Bosch, Memling, van der Goes. A truly astounding room to begin the walk around.

And there is a Vermeer which I have never seen, and appropriately it is The Geographer.

The real reason for this trip to Frankfurt is because the last time I was here, many years ago, I was on a mission to see all the Vermeers, and Frankfurt’s Vermeer was one of the last on the short list of Vermeers. But it was a Monday, and the Städel is closed on Mondays. Ever since, I have been saying, “I have to go back to Frankfurt to see that Vermeer.” And now I have. I hadn’t even remembered that it was The Geographer. There have been so many Vermeer shows in recent years with paintings borrowed from all over, I think my mission has been completed. I will have to check the very thin volume that contains all of Vermeer’s output when I get home.

Next we came upon a surprise treat at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Museum. I have long been a fan of medieval German wood sculpture, notably the work of Veit Stoss and Tilman Riemenschneider. But it turns out there is an even more legendary sculptor, Niclaus Gerhaert who taught the others their craft.

St George slaying the dragon.

The exhibition was amazing with dozens of pieces collected from all over the world. There are only a handful of fully documented attributions to Gerhaert, and some are site specific such as a tomb cover in Strasbourg, but his workshop was highly prolific, so most of the works were ones he at the least had a hand in carving. The Liebieghaus website contains some of the pieces from the exhibition if you click on the photos in their link.

After a full day of art, the sun was setting and the rain was spattering, so we headed back to the hotel for another dinner, and a busy evening with the weekly video chat with the grandchildren. Lavinia is a full day Montessori student, doing the Kindergarten curriculum; Eloise is walking; and poor Christian has been sick with a tummy bug, but he could still smile for the camera.

And finally the Patriots game was televised on ESPN North America, so Bob could see them barely pull out a victory. Another all-nighter for the Super Bowl in a few weeks, I guess.

A Week in Germany: Saturday

2012-01-30T17:10:00.001Z

21. 01. 2012

Up early. Off to Heathrow's Terminal 1. Been a long timesince I’ve been to the old Terminals 1 and 2-3. Flights to the States leavefrom the new Terminals 4 and 5. Since Bibs was born 4.5 years ago — Yes it wasjust her half-birthday which Montessori celebrates for children whose birthdaysfall in the summer holiday. Sadly she celebrated the day not in school, buthome with a nasty flu caught from her brother, and then passed on to hermother. The family flu.

Anyway, since Bibs was born 4.5 years ago nearly all ourtravel has been to Boston to welcome or to visit grandchildren. Today we areoff to Germany for a week. When Bob worked at Citibank he travelled in Europe alot for meetings. Often I would meet up with him for a long weekend wherever hewas. That’s how I saw the highpoints of many European capitals during the earlyyears of living in London. He has convinced his new bosses that visitingclients in Germany may be a worthwhile expense even in these straitened times.And bank travel is now in the back of the plane where I always sat, but for oneor two hour flights to Europe, even once cosseted bankers can cope.

Frankfurt is a one hour flight, but a bit bumpy through thecloudy stormy weather system sitting over northern Europe since the planesdon’t have enough time in the air to fly high above the continental weather.Easy trip into the city to our hotel, near the train station, filled with tourgroups from the States and from Japan.

Losing an hour in the London to Europe time differencealways makes it imperative to hit the ground running on arrival or what was thepoint of getting up so early in the first place. So we headed out immediately forlunch and the itinerary chosen by me, always acknowledged as the family tourleader. In the half hour walk to the Domplatz, we passed in the train station asmall group of people demonstrating their wish to bring back “Glass-Steagall,”holding up posters with FDR’s face. In the mall across the street from the train station, we passed a largerdemonstration of people demanding the release of Bradley Manning. A few blocksfurther, and we passed by the “Occupy Frankfurt” encampment under the giantEuro sign at the ECB. America truly belongs to the world.

An excellent lunch at Paulaner am Dom, chosen from a TripAdvisorlist of Frankfurt favourites, a schnitzel for Bob and a bowl of pea soup with a pretzel on the side for me. And alarge stein of the excellent Paulaner dunkel bier from Munich. The restaurantwas once in a medieval hostelry facing the back of the Dom, but a bombing raidwiped out most of the historic heart of Frankfurt in 1944. So everything hasbeen carefully and authentically rebuilt, but the aura of medievalism can neverbe quite recreated.

The red sandstone Dom dedicated to St Bartholomew was built in 1877, ten years after the previous church was destroyed in a fire. This building was reconstructed after the 1944 bomb damage gutted the interior and reduced the building to a shell. Nevertheless it is filled with atreasure load of medieval altarpieces and tomb monuments, because it is the fifth church on the site, and a previous incarnation was the site of the election and coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors, hence the name Kaiserdom.

The tower dominates the old city's skyline

A tomb monument

A jolly Germanic Last Supper

Even better, it may be closer to February thanit is to Christmas, but the lighted Christmas trees still flank the high altarand the stunning Krippen tableau—the crèche scenes beloved in Germany—is stillin place at the back of the nave.

Christmas trees lighting the dark afternoon

The Krippen is so large, one view was not enough to see both the stable
and the Three Kings approaching

Now I don’t feel so bad about the snowmen whoare still settled on our mantel inLondon, nor have I had the heart to remove the Santa hats from our welcomebears. A local toy store is also not in a rush to move past Christmas.

Outside the Dom is a fenced area that is called theArchaeological Garden that is an active dig site, and at the moment mostlycovered with white tents, but around the edges some excavated foundationsare visible.

The 12^th century Nikolaikirche in the Römerplatz,the historic heart of the city, has a simple plaster and red sandstone interiorthat is very beautiful. Some of the medieval tomb covers and sculptures weresaved after the bombing and have been installed on the walls of the nave.

St Nikolai has a huge carillon, and here is a You Tube link

A carved pediment over the entrance

Mayor Siegfried zum Paradies and his wife Katharina Netheha zum Wedel.
Both were created by Madern Gerthener (1410/1420).

By mid-afternoon, we at last reached the ArchaeologicalMuseum in the Carmelite Monastery built in the late 15th century. What an amazing place. The monastery hasbeen refitted to house the museum without destroying the integrity of theoriginal religious foundation. The museum’s collection is displayed in thechurch nave under a ceiling that still retains bits of the painted decoration. Thecollection is a combination of local finds and an extensive collection ofClassical and Oriental pieces. The local finds are the most interestingalthough textual commentary on the artefacts only in German does limit theappreciation for those of us who studied German in high school and currentlyremember only about one in four vocabulary words. However a short video with achoice of written captions including English was a wonderful virtualreconstruction of the buildings being excavated in the Archaeological Gardenoutside the Dom. The building is a Carolingian-Ottonian Palace begun in the 9th century by Ludwig the Pious and various chapels and churches that eventually became the Dom.

The star attraction at the Museum is the monastic cloisterwhose walls are adorned with a 15^th century cycle of wall paintingsrecounting the life of Christ.

The cloister is lovely, but the glass enclosure kept catching
the light in my camera lens.

By the time we walked around the cloister, thedaylight was waning, and the skies were dark with rain clouds, so we will haveto return another day when the light is on our side to see these amazingpaintings done by Jörg Rathgeb between 1480 and 1526 on two sides of thecloister. The paintings are done as connected vertical panels beginning with the Nativity.

The weather was deteriorating by the time we returned to thehotel for a late afternoon rest, and a long nap in my case, and when we heardthe rain and wind pattering on the windows, we opted for an easy supper in thehotel restaurant.

2012

2012-01-02T10:17:00.003Z

We've been talking about you, 2012, for so long, I feel I know you already. As someone who puts little faith in pre-planning life, most years are a blank slate—perhaps blank notebook fits the metaphor a bit better—when the cover opens in January. Here's 2012 with full pages for two-thirds of the year already. Wedding planning will fill the early months for Susan's wedding in May. Before that, there is a wedding in California in April; the Queen's Diamond Jubilee gives the nation a special holiday in June; the grandchildren will be visiting for July; and the Olympics and Para-Olympics will cap off the summer.

Blessedly, the final third of the year's pages remain blank at the moment, but events, anticipated and unexpected, welcome and dreaded, will always be hovering, ready to change the script or to add a paragraph or page that will alter the plan, sometimes for the good, sometimes not. I am balanced at the tip of a pyramid, never quite sure if, or when, I will slide down a side and need to rebalance the equilibrium. Pre-planning of the serious kind just makes the balance feel more tenuous, adding unnecessary stress to the mechanics. So far, so good, not too many complaints or mishaps, slides mostly rebalanced, but that doesn't stop the events, if and when, anticipated and unexpected, welcome and dreaded from hovering.

Meanwhile, 2011 ended with two weeks in Hingham for a New England Christmas with the grandchildren.

Getting the tree ready

To be transformed by Santa

For three happy children

10 a.m. Downshire Hill

2011-09-05T10:23:00.000+01:00

Not sure how this happened. I just heard the smash and the breaking glass!

The woman talking to the policeman is the driver.

She opened the door and got out of the car immediately.

Very little damage to her car.

Police and fire on the scene, but no danger appears.

They smashed open the window to check the place.

Not just another day!

How I Spent My Summer

2011-08-22T14:48:00.004+01:00

They have left, Megan and Barnz and Bibs and Bobs and Trixie, after spending 6 weeks here in London with us. We all had a wonderful time, and my London now includes a whole new city devoted to entertaining children who are under 5 years old.

Here is a selection of photos of what we did this summer

One day it is the Fourth of July Parade in Hingham Massachusetts

And the next day your car seats are strapped into an airplane

Unless you are lucky enough to snag a bulkhead bassinet

And then you find yourself living in a flat in London

Where Daddy can enjoy real British food

And you can meet your Grandma Diana for the first time

Where you travel by train and bus and Tube to museums

Bobs on the Cubist Slide at the Tate Modern

Bibs at the British Museum

Bobs joining The Tiger Who Came to Tea at the V&A's Museum of Childhood exhibition
on the life and career of Judith Kerr who is best known in the States for her book When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit which recounts her family's escape from Germany in the 1930s

In England she is best known for The Tiger Who Came to Tea and for Mog, a series of stories about the family cat Mog who gets into trouble, but always saves the day. Dressing up in Mog costumes, while Bibs holds tight to Pink Rabbit

And there were lots of places to play including football with the Little Kickers

And lots of playgrounds including Coram Fields where the goats run free

Coram Fields is the site of the 18th century Foundling Hospital founded by Captain Coram to take in children whose parents could not afford to care for them. The remaining building is now the Foundling Museum. The grounds are used for the playground and other social service organisations serving children.

Playing with Ann Read's granddaughter Chloe at Golders Hill Park Toddler's Playground

Trixie enjoying her day at Golders Hill too

The Peggy Jay Centre on Hampstead Heath was the best place ever
for Under 5's to have fun

The wonderful Peggy Jay Centre pavement where vehicles of all sorts were available for testing

Nearby was a big kid playground that had a wading pool for the occasional days when the temperature was warm enough not to wear a sweater. Megan and Barnz were happy to miss the lengthy hot and humid spells in the US while here. Barnz and Bobs are wading on a day when we forgot swimsuits.

Even the South Bank Summer Festival "Beach" offered sand digging for Bobs who never
passed up a sand pit or a puddle on offer. Bobs's first theatrical experience, Archaeology: A Worm's Story at the Polka Theatre for children included digging in sand for the second act. He was enthralled according to Megan who accompanied him. Bibs and I went to a very English panto-style revue based on Quentin Blake characters at the same time. They also saw the Polka Theatre's adaptation of Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola during the day they spent at Lollibop, the Festival for Under-8's at Regents Park. English children are immersed in stage productions from birth.

Until late July when the school term ended, Hampstead's Community Centre offered a drop-in morning playtime for toddlers with a weekly calendar of music, art, and cooking activities, 4 days a week for a minimum fee. Lots and lots of toys on hand and a morning snack too.

The Kentish Town Farm, celebrating its 40th Anniversary next year, is a 30 minute walk for us.

Bobs admiring a very big pig. The Kentish Town Farm, is located in railroad rights-of-way where several lines come together. For Bobs, the trip to the farm meant looking at animals while watching trains whizz past. Two for the price of one (except it's all free).

In our time at home we all fell in love with the BBC's children's show Octonauts, on the TV screen behind Bobs. The Octonaut team live in the underwater Octopod saving creatures in trouble and teaching us all about the ocean environment and the plants and animals who live there.

Bobs was inspired to draw a whale

with excellent results. Whatever there is to say against TV for children, it's hard to argue that the Aardman Animation Timmy Time cartoons, and Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola episodes aren't wonderful entertainment. And when you add in characters like Postman Pat and Chuggington the Train and Madeleine, it's hard to turn the set off. And then there is Baby TV, which seems to be French, or Swiss, or Belgian in production. There is nothing more soporific than 15 minutes in front of Baby TV. The cult book Go the F--- to Sleep might be unnecessary if everyone had access to Baby TV!

The joys of TV watching were interspersed with music

and cooking

and reading

and with learning to crawl

and finding new places to settle

and some cuddling

We also had special days. The Lewisham People's Fair with Aunt Susan and Uncle Cato
and awesome butterfly face painting,

A pretty big Ferris Wheel

And a carousel that made Bobs happy

Trixie however had her reservations about fun in which she cannot partake

On a day when Megan was in bed with a flu, Bob and I drove Bibs and Bobs to Bekonscot Model Village, a place I have always wanted to see, but it never seemed quite right without children along. The village is huge and recreates real and idealised sites of Britain, and a few fantastic ones including the fields of dinosaurs and hippos grazing on our green and pleasant pastures.

There were model trains traveling through the town to watch for

And a child size train to ride around the village.
A definite must see for every return trip by the children

And the most special day of all was Bib's 4th Birthday.
Oh Joy! The Birthday Bunny found her in London after all!

And was quite generous too

Wearing her favourite present, a dress hand-smocked by Megan
with mermaids of Megan's own design

We took off on a special outing to Kensington Gardens

for a ride on the Carousel

and a visit to the Princess Diana Playground

Followed by a butterfly birthday cake from Marks & Spencer at home

Two days later there were even more and even better cakes, with glitter and fairies and flowers,
made by Uncle Cato's mother who generously hosted a birthday party for Lavinia
for the extended Wilkes family, Barnz's mother's family, to attend.

And where there were even more presents including this beautiful alphabet poster designed by Uncle Andy Tuohy (and available for sale at the best art museums in southeast England. And any Scouser should look for his Liverpool Alphabet poster, and other goods, available at the Tate Liverpool in September.)

Great Grandma Janet was able to wish her first great-grandchild a Happy Birthday in person

And Trixie met Great-Grandma Janet, Aunt Libby and Uncle Andy,
and Uncle Bernard for the first time.

The following day, Bib's Birthday celebration continued with a special overnight trip to Paris. She is a huge fan of the Madeleine video series, and was hoping to attend Miss Clavell's school while in Paris, so she donned a dress similar to the one Madeleine wears and set off very early with Mommy and Daddy and Dolly.

Waiting for the Eurostar at St Pancras

One minute you are on the Eurostar writing in your Moleskin Diary

and 2 hours and 20 minutes later you are in a café in Paris

Now to find Madeleine and Miss Clavell's school

At Notre Dame?

At the Opera?

Along the Seine?

At the Louvre?

A message has arrived. The school is closed for the summer holiday,
and Miss Clavell has taken all the girls to New York.

Oh well a comfortable bed

and sharing Daddy's Strawberries in Port are consolations

A new day and time to look for the Eiffel Tower

Taking the boat to the Eiffel Tower on a very rainy day

And there it is!

Visiting the Eiffel Tower: a dream come true

The metalwork is like lace

The stone footings are enormous

The Observation Deck doesn't offer much of a view on a rainy day

Au revoir

Back to London wearing a real Paris hat

One last special outing was a visit on the High Speed Rail Line to Folkestone on the South Coast
to visit Great Grandma Janet, Grandma Diana, Uncle Bernard, Aunt Libby and Uncle Andy.

A beautiful day to look at France across the English Channel

Folkestone is attempting to revitalise itself through cultural initiatives including a Triennial Art Festival
of outdoor art installations. Bibs and Bobs are disguised as Edwardian children.

Bobs proved to be an able walker of Great Grandma Janet's dog

We finished the afternoon with some delicious gelato

and back on the fast train for the 45 minute trip to London.

And now they have returned to the States. The summer is winding down here. Our end-of-summer August Bank Holiday is next weekend. Then it will be September and the new season of activities and cultural events will begin. In Hingham, Bibs will return to her Montessori School, and Bobs will attend a play program a few mornings a week. Trixie will probably walk before her first birthday in October, so Megan will have no rest!

Spring Travel

2011-06-21T23:46:00.012+01:00

The day of the Summer Solstice seems appropriate to sit down and publish a travelogue of my springtime season of travel. My Moon Diary, a pagan calendar Bob orders from a shop in Glastonbury every Christmas, tells me the time of the Solstice was 2:51 am, which means the Solstice was yesterday for you in the States. The BBC tells me that 18,000 people gathered at Stonehenge to watch the sun rise at 4:52 am. Sadly, clouds blocked the sunrise from view. More important though is the opening of Wimbledon yesterday, and for the next two weeks, the heart of the nation will beat to the rhythm of the games, sets, and matches of the tennis court.

Suffolk and Essex

Our first spring trip to Ely was reported in my previous post. A week later we were back in East Anglia, this time in Suffolk, looking at the venue where Susan will be married in May next year. Bruisyard Hall is a Tudor manor house, that was formerly a convent of the Franciscan Poor Clares, founded in 1364 for wealthy women where now where else to go, a situation medieval women often found themselves in. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII granted the manor to one of his supporters, and early in the 17th century the current owners acquired the manor.

The village is much older since the parish church has a superb Saxon tower.

A Tudor barn next to the Hall is being converted into a stunning wedding venue right now. We were all impressed with the beauty of the design and the careful work being done to match new construction with Tudor framing.

The Tudor Barn

The wedding venue

Waiting until next year

Bruisyard is in Benjamin Britten-Peter Pears country, so we headed over to the concert hall at Snape Maltings where the Aldeburgh Festival is held every June, right now as a matter of fact.

Art and Nature at Snape Maltings

Then we headed over to the pebble beach of the North Sea in Aldeburgh to see Maggie Hambling's controversial Scallop Shell sculpture. The piece commemorates Britten and is placed on the beach where he walked. A small subset of local people despise the work, and it is regularly defaced with paint splashes and graffiti.

We stayed overnight in Ipswich, and for some reason my camera stopped working in the middle of the day so there are no photos of the wonderful medieval buildings in Ipswich, nor of the grounds of the fantastic Christchurch Mansion Museum with its eclectic collection including a extensive work by two local Suffolk boys, Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable.

On the way home, we stopped off at three churches in Essex that were treasure houses of medieval carving. My camera returned to action for a bit in the late afternoon so I was able to capture a little bit of what we saw.

A squirrel and other animals at Lawford, Essex

Grotesques at Great Bromley, Essex

Wales

One problem in this country is that nearly all the national holidays are grouped together in a few springtime weeks. Easter is a 4-day weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday, the first Monday in May is the Early May Bank Holiday. This is apparently quite a new holiday, brought in during the 1960s by a Labour government wanting a celebration to match the Socialist May Day holidays in much of Europe. Finally, the last Monday in May is the Late May Bank Holiday. Recently there has been discussion of shifting the Early May holiday to the autumn because at the moment there is only one holiday, an August Bank Holiday, between May and Christmas. The leisure and travel industry would love to extend the annual vacation season into the autumn with another three day weekend. That discussion was immediately quashed when the Labour opposition accused the Tory government of political motives in canceling a Socialist holiday.

We have spent most Easter weeks renting a National Trust cottage in different parts of England, but this year we decided to forgo the expense, until a few days before the holiday was upon us, when we looked at each other and said, "What could we have been thinking!" Bob trawled the Trust's website and found a cottage in Wales that was just a delightful place to spend a week. The hamlet of Cwmdu is owned by the Trust, and the Georgian terraced parade includes 3 cottages, a shop and post office, and a pub. The shop and pub are subsidized by the Trust and run by the community.

The Cwmdu terrace and our front door

Our charming living room

The view from our front window to the pub garden

We were staying in central southern Wales so we took day trips west and south to visit sites of interest.

St David's Cathedral

The birthplace of St David, Wales's national saint

At the National History Museum:
A traditional Welsh farmhouse with a beehive stone pig sty on the right

And here's the pig

A reconstructed Saxon village

Bluebells, the favorite spring flower

A historic church painted with bright artwork to recreate the interior
of a newly decorated medieval church

Not all religious art is erious

Noah's Ark

Dylan Thomas's Boathouse in Laugharne

Our bear Barley paying tribute at the grave in Laugharne

And to Caitlin too

The Gower Peninsula

Bob reading at Cefn Bryn, Arthur's Stone, a Neolithic tomb dated at 2500 BC

Georgian resort Aberaeron

There were also some worthy sights nearby. The nearest town was Llandeilo with an ancient history. The parish church named for St Teilo has two Saxon carved cross heads that date from 900.

We also learned that the important Saxon illuminated manuscript we saw last year in Lichfield Cathedral, called the Lichfield or St Chad Gospel, spent much of its early life in Wales where it is known as the Llandeilo Fawr. The Gospel was written in the 8th century, and donated in 820 to the church where it remained until the late 11th century when it was transferred to Lichfield, probably as a gift from a Welsh prince to a Saxon King. The Llandeilo Church now has a computer generated copy of the gospel on display.

Not far from our cottage was the remains of a Premonstratensian Abbey built in 1185 in Talley.

We were quite sad to leave the little cottage for the trip back to London, but the Royal Wedding was about to get underway.

The Wedding

We didn't have a full week in Wales because I insisted we had to be back in London for The Wedding. And we were so glad to have made that decision because the festive atmosphere was pervasive and contagious. Even grumpy republicans quieted their criticism for the occasion.

We watched the pre-wedding departures and arrivals at home on TV, and stayed with the TV through the vows. Then we hopped on the Tube for the West End, following in the footsteps of the main events just after they happened.

A surging crowd leaving the Embankment

A very English picnic in Victoria Embankment Gardens

A real guest leaving the service holding the full-size programme

The crowds around Westminster Abbey

The balcony at Buckingham Palace

When we returned home in the late afternoon, Bob was so enthused, he insisted we order a collection of commemorative pottery. I insisted they had to be made in England, preferably in the traditional Potteries towns of Stoke-on-Trent which is the basket case city of a once thriving industry now outsourced to cheap production in Asia. That limited us to Burleigh (saved from another bankruptcy by Denby) and to Emma Bridgewater, whose line was very nearly sold out by the afternoon of the wedding.

Emma Bridgewater's Mugs, in two versions, with their wonderful boxes

. . .and her Plate

. . . and Bowl

Burleigh's 3-piece set based on their traditional pheasant pattern

The happy weekend was capped by a reunion dinner with a childhood friend who I had not seen in some 30 years. She always loved to be in the middle of a party, and she couldn't resist a chance to be in London for a royal wedding, and her lovely husband surprised her with a last minute ticket. We splashed out for a super meal at Richard Corrigan's restaurant in Mayfair.

Thumbs up to Facebook for the reconnection, and I hope they return soon for a longer visit.

Cambridge and London

Mid-May we trooped up to Cambridge to see Susan be awarded what we refer to as her "fake MA." One of the things we learned when Susan went up to Cambridge is that a perk of an Ox-bridge BA is that 6 years, or maybe 7 years, after matriculation, you receive an automatic MA, with no study required or payments made. These degrees can be appended to your name as MA(Oxon) or MA(Cantab). Both universities of course offer and award prestigious graduate degrees which do require both work and tuition, but those degrees are MPhil's and DPhil's.

Conferment of degrees, fake or not, was adopted 800 years ago and is called the Congregation of the Regent House. Guests and graduates file in and out of the Senate House every 45 minutes, as each college or group of colleges is given an allotted time slot.

The Senate House designed in the 1720s by architect James Gibbs

The ceremony is conducted entirely in Latin with endless bowing and nodding between the officials presiding. The degree candidates are introduced by the head of their college to the Vice-Chancellor, or his stand-in, they kneel, offer their hand, receive a blessing, rise and nod conspicuously, then file out of the building.

No photography is permitted in the Senate House, and my camera, or perhaps something I did inadvertently, made my post-ceremony pictures very wonky, but it is the best I have.

Susan Buhr MA(Cantab)

Susan is currently studying and paying for a real master's degree from Birkbeck College at the University of London and has just been awarded a fellowship to pursue a doctorate at the University of Leicester.

The next day, to move from academic to wedding mode, Susan and I went to the Sunday morning Columbia Road Flower Market to see what flowers appealed to her.

In the end the beautiful Sweet Peas won our hearts

Paris

Conveniently, Bob had to be in Paris on business on the Thursday and Friday of the week before the Late May Bank Holiday, so we were able to have nearly a week holiday in Paris—at least for me since I did not have to work on Thursday and Friday as Bob did. We took the Eurostar on Wednesday night, and since it was business, our hotel was in La Défense, the Canary Wharf, or the Wall Street, of Paris. Planners once talked about "human scale" buildings and development. La Défense is as far from human scale as one can get, but certainly impressively monumental.

La Defénse Arch

Canyons of glass . . .

. . .but in the middle, a garden with flowering dogwood, my favorite tree,
left behind in New Jersey because they don't grow in Massachusetts or London

The French bastion of business is built over a huge military cemetery

I spent my two "working days" shopping. On Thursday, I went to Marché Saint Pierre, the discount fabric district at the base of Montmartre.

Metro stop at the base of Montmartre with Guimard's Art Nouveau ironwork

After that I was so caught up in the world of fabric, I forgot my camera entirely. I had great luck in the discount shops where a cotton "coupon"—a precut of 3 metres — cost 10 euros for the most part.

On Friday, I went to the big department stores Galerie Lafayette and, my favourite, Le Bon Marché.

Galerie Lafayette's central Dome

The Dome's stained glass roof

Detail of the painted decoration

Friday night, we moved to a hotel we booked through hotels.com that was the most wonderful hotel we have found in Paris. On a tree-lined street a block from the Luxembourg Gardens with a fantastic old fashioned bistro next door. We hardly moved for the remainder of the weekend!

That's not entirely true. We went to a Redon retrospective at the Grand Palais and a medieval music concert at the Cluny Museum.

Walking through the Tuileries

Doing what the locals do. Lounging in the Luxembourg Gardens on a Sunday

We returned to London on Monday relaxed and well-fed.

Chichester and Salisbury

This past weekend we headed to two of our favorite small cities to see museum exhibitions that we did not want to miss. Both Chichester and Salisbury have fabulous cathedrals, but we had no time for them this weekend.

The Pallant House in Chichester has a fantastic collection of British art housed in an old house that has recently been extended with a new wing with excellent exhibition space. We were there to catch the Robin and Lucienne Day exhibit. Lucienne's fabric and Robin's furniture set the model for post-war modern design. Molded plastic stacking chairs and waiting room benches are just part of the interior landscape for us all, but once upon a time, they didn't exist until someone designed them. There was also a exhibit of illustrations by Mervyn Peake, best known for the Gormenghast trilogy of books. Pallant House also has the best museum restaurant in England, and we were lucky to secure a table for a great meal.

We had pretty awful weather with high winds and driving rain squalls, but we managed to find three wonderful churches open on the drive from Chichester to Salisbury along the Portchester Ridge with broad views across Portsmouth and the English Channel. Well the views would have been much better without the stormy weather.

The Saxon Church at Boarhunt, Hampshire

The interior at Boarhunt

Sunday morning we had breakfast in the coffee shop at Salisbury Cathedral, and wandered around the lovely Cathedral Close waiting for the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum to open at midday for the Constable and Salisbury exhibition. John Constable's name is associated mostly with his birthplace in Suffolk and with Hampstead, but he spent important time in Salisbury too where he was patronised by the Bishop and became close friends with the Bishop's nephew and namesake John Fisher. Constable painted the cathedral and the landscape around Salisbury, including nearby Stonehenge, on his visits. The museum has collected paintings, oil sketches, watercolours, and drawings made during these visits. As a student of Constable's Hampstead work, it was interesting to see the places he visited in between his Hampstead sojourns.

John Fisher's House in Canons Row, Salisbury,
now a pre-pre school for girls

Salisbury Cathedral from an angle painted by Constable

This local museum had an extensive collection of costumes and of local cultural and natural history including an interesting room about Stonehenge, and another on Old Sarum, the original Salisbury settlement. We realised we had never been to Old Sarum, an Iron Age fort continuously occupied until the early 13th century when the inhabitants demolished the Norman cathedral in favor of a new cathedral in the valley below, and the whole town moved down the hill to the present location. By mid-afternoon we were hungry, and our Michelin Pub Guide directed us to another excellent meal, where we arrived 5 minutes before the 3 pm food cut-off. Our usual experience is to arrive 5 minutes after the cut-off. Old Sarum was still on spring hours, and there we missed the closing time by 5 minutes, but we were still able to walk around the outer ramparts, and also the weather had cleared into a glorious sunny day.

The ditch at Old Sarum

The view of the "new" cathedral in Salisbury from the site
of the "old cathedral" on Old Sarum

The view from Old Sarum

And that completes our springtime travels.

A Day Out

2011-04-12T18:51:00.000+01:00

I haven't been getting out much lately. Monocular vision, poor depth perception, and no peripheral vision on the right hand side closes in the big world of outdoors and makes it a slightly threatening place. People and kerbs and steps keep looming up out of nowhere.

Last Saturday was such a lovely spring day, I wanted to be out, but not necessarily out walking the whole day, so we drove off to spend the day in Ely, about 70 miles from London in the fenlands of North Cambridgeshire. We are cathedral junkies, and Ely was one of the first cathedrals we visited when we were new in England. We had been back once or twice, but not for many years.

The Fens are the marshy lands of East Anglia and Lincolnshire, that were first drained by the Romans, and then seriously drained in the 17th century by wealthy land owners using Dutch technology to create rich agricultural land from the drained peat bogs. Before the drainage, the high land areas were often referred to as Isles. In the early years of Saxon Christianity, St Etheldreda, a local princess, founded a monastery at Ely in 673. Her monastery was destroyed by the Vikings in 870, but rebuilt a hundred years later as a Benedictine house. In 1066, the Normans came and conquered, but they did not conquer the Saxon stronghold of East Anglia for another four years. When the Normans conquered, they built castles and cathedrals as quickly as they could to secure their foothold. Ely Cathedral was begun in the 1080s.

The West Tower

This is the north side of the cathedral showing the exterior of the special spaces within the cathedral in the photos I took on Saturday. From the right is the edge of the West Tower where you enter the cathedral. The nave behind it is 248 feet long. The nave ends at the Octagon, built in the 14th century after the Norman central tower collapsed in 1322. To the left is the North Transept which was begun in 1080. Finally, the large Gothic window to the far left is the Lady Chapel, the largest Lady Chapel in England, added in 1349.

Here is Bob in the South aisle of the nave. The rounded Norman arches with the alternating columns of solid drums and carved piers.

The exterior walls of the nave are filled with Victorian glass that shimmered beautifully in Saturday's sunlight.

The interior of the Octagon roof with the light pouring down into the crossing.

The arches around the Octagon are carved with heads and with scenes from Etheldreda's life.

The North Transept is quite plain, but the symmetry of the rounded arches is elegant.

Except for the painted 15th century Hammerbeam ceiling with the flying angels that appear in two rows along the side edges of the ceiling.

The Lady Chapel is a stunningly beautiful space. By the 14th century, the Cult of Mary was well established, and every church was adding a space devoted to the Lady who could intervene with her Son to grant the prayers of the faithful. From the first photo above, you can see the Lady Chapel was separate from the main building, connected by a narrow vaulted aisle. The fan vaulted ceiling is dotted with beautifully carved and painted bosses. The transition into Gothic Chapel with narrow piers and huge windows creating a light filled space in contrast to the dark mysterious space of the Norman Romanesque cathedral interior must have been a religious experience itself.

The Chapel walls are ornately carved along the arcades along all sides. Look closely though and you will see that every face or head has been carefully chipped away. There must have been a thousand heads in this chapel, gone forever, thanks to the iconoclasm frenzy of Thomas Cromwell's Dissolution troops. Thomas has never been one of my favourites because of this destruction. When my reading eyesight went sour, I had only finished the first section of Wolf Hall, and was feeling quite sad for him. When I get back to reading, I will remember these missing heads however.

England's cathedrals do pride themselves on being living monuments, and most of them have examples of contemporary religious art.

The Lady Chapel at Ely has had this modern Mary for several years, but the new metalwork reredos was just installed earlier this year. I am warming to Mary, but this posted sign indicates not everyone feels the same way.

Looking through my photos, and the new book we bought about the cathedral on Saturday has made me realise we are way out of practice with our church tourism forays. We missed so many treasures on this trip. Perhaps it was because it was the lure of the beautiful day outside or perhaps it was the lure of our next stop at Topping & Company, one of the best bookstores in England. (We had been to the Bath branch several years ago, but never to Ely's branch.)

After time well spent supporting a local independent bookseller and a superb lunch of codfish cakes for me and sausages for Bob in the garden of the Prince Albert . . .

. . . We headed to the Oliver Cromwell House . . .

where he lived with his family in the years before he went off to protect England from the King and the Papists, instead of bunking off with the rest of his Cambridge cohort to Massachusetts to found towns like Boston and Hingham and Braintree and Needham and Ipswich and so many others. (It can be very confusing to drive around East Anglia if you have previously lived in Eastern Massachusetts.) I guess that's why there is no Ely, Massachusetts. The Cromwell House devotes a little bit of their display to the question of Hero or Villain? But their answer is clearly Hero.

The House included a very interesting short film on the draining of the Fenlands. As an MP, Cromwell was an advocate for his constituents forced off the land by the enclosures and the drainages. So we headed over to the local history museum for more displays about traditional agriculture in the Fens. Another weekend, we will go back to visit the agricultural museums that explain the technology of the drainage systems that still keep the land from returning to marshy waterland.

A lovely day out. Next weekend, we head back to East Anglia to look at a possible wedding venue in Suffolk.

A Year Out

2011-04-12T18:50:00.001+01:00

What a year!
In one week, in the month of March, one year ago my world tilted a bit.

Megan was visiting with her two children, and I was worried that she was ill. No, she was just very newly pregnant, and now we have a second granddaughter, the lovely Trixie added to the world.

Susan was compelled to quit her job at the local museum because a triumvirate of the museum head and two trustees were interfering with her projects and unfairly impugning her abilities. She was offered a new job the following week, and another when that one ended. Unfortunately, museum work tends to be part time and short term, linked to specific projects and grants, so she is still chasing the elusive permanent job. Whilst she was dealing with unfair employers last year, she was also reconciling with a boyfriend after a short break-up. Last month they became engaged, and now we are planning a wedding for spring 2012.

Bob was made redundant to cap off that week a year ago. Miraculously he was offered another job despite his advanced age. During the interregnum of unemployment from June to October, we discovered the joy of free time, but were reminded of the joylessness of no steady income.

Going forward to another week last year, this time in October, when Bob was preparing to begin his new job, and I was preparing to travel to Massachusetts for six weeks to help Megan with Bibs and Bobs and the baby about to arrive, I went to the local Vision Express for some much needed new glasses. The eye exam indicated a problem in my right eye, was followed by a visit to my primary care doctor, and quickly followed by an examination at the ophthalmology clinic at the local hospital. I had a hole in the macula of my right eye. There is surgery to repair a hole, but no flying allowed for 6 to 8 weeks after the operation, which would have left Megan high and dry with almost no notice. So we decided to schedule the surgery for my return in December.

That's when the problem with the National Health Service began. We have never had any problems before, but scheduling surgeries seems to be a big problem. The December date was cancelled, which I was glad about because I didn't want to interfere with Christmas, in favour of an early January date, which was cancelled on the day before the surgery for a mid-January date, which was also cancelled on the day before for a mid-March date. By this time I knew I had to turn to private care through Bob's private health care policy. So mid-March, four weeks ago, I had the surgery done at England's top eye hospital by the world's best retinal surgeon.

The outcome is still not determined because the recovery is long. A bubble of gas is left in the eye to hold everything in place so the retina can heal, and the bubble dissipates slowly over 6 weeks. At first it occludes all vision in that eye, then it starts to "fall" or rise, since the optic nerve reverses what we see, but it bounces around like a balloon, and light shimmers off of it, so really it is just terribly annoying. My working eye lets me do things, but my binocular vision is terrible, as is my depth perception. I can't sew, but knitting is okay as long as it's not too complicated, hence all the knitting I have been doing. Reading small print on a page is uncomfortable very quickly, but reading computer screens with large backlit type is good, hence all the time I have been spending on-line.

A year of waiting for things to fall into place, and for the most part everything has fallen into a good place for everyone, so I can only feel happy for that, but somehow I feel a bit exhausted from never quite knowing what to expect next. I don't often remember dreams, but I had a dream last night where I got out of bed and left the flat, left the building, and to take a walk around the local streets, when I realised I had not brought my pocketbook, so I had no keys, no way to get back home, and I kept telling myself what a stupid thing I had done. Somehow, I did get back into bed (it's a dream), and I told myself that I would not have this problem again if I simply decided to stay in bed forever. When I woke up this morning, I lay there thinking I shouldn't get up because for some reason I was supposed to stay in bed forever. I was tempted to try it, but then I didn't feel quite exhausted enough for that.

Is it April already?

2011-04-01T13:51:00.001+01:00

The Knitting Resolution has been going exceptionally well. Here are some projects finished since the last update at the end of January.

A Hanne Falkenberg kit bought in Copenhagen 5 years ago. A sort of Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Surprise variation knit in two halves. The cast on rows are the front, back, and bottom edges, knit in garter stitch with decreases until the sleeve edge is reached. The neck yoke is added at the end, after the sleeve is sewn together from the shoulder to cuff, and the two sides are joined together along the back edge of the cast on edge.

The Einstein Coat, a pattern by Sally Melville, knit all in one piece in the best Elizabeth Zimmermann tradition. The yarn is a heavy bulky Rowan yarn bought by the bag from Liberty when they still had great yarn sales and Rowan yarn was worth buying, early in the century. I have no memory of what I bought it for, but it is the same yarn as the Red Felted Jacket, so maybe I was going to make another one. My friend Sunny made the coat the winter Christian was born, and I have always admired hers. I am very happy with mine. It's comfortable and it fits.

At the moment it is a neck cowl, but it could still turn into a cushion cover. It began life as a baby sweater from the Norwegian Dale yarn company. Despite using the proper yarn, needles, and size directions, I eventually realised it was big enough to fit a teenager. I love the colours, and the amount of work that went into stranding the design with so many colours made me regret admitting defeat, but I knew I would never have the ambition to carry on with it.

This is literally a little bit of fluff. When London's first modern yarn shop opened in Islington in 2005, Susan and I were on the doorstep on opening day. We were not as impressed as we had hoped, but we were both taken with the this fluffy pastel yarn with black specks. Very Vintage. I bought pink; Susan bought mint green. The pattern is by Teva Durham in Scarf Style, but mine looks nothing at all like the original because of various mistakes I incorporated into my version. This is the first time I used short row shaping, and had no clue what I was doing. Fortunately the fuzz hides all mistakes. I'm not sure where or when I would ever wear this, but I still love the soft fuzziness.

This is a real Mobius strip cowl. I always thought they were just the result of deliberately twisting the stitches when knitting in the round, the mistake everyone makes inadvertently once and discovers the sock cuff has a serious problem. But no, a real Mobius strip, mathematically speaking, has only one edge, and to do this knitwise requires nearly impossible contortions of needles and stitches, that also make the initial knitting decidedly difficult. Add to that my unwise decision to use a silky soft Chines bamboo yarn that splits very easily, and this was a project from hell. Yet an excellent project for hiding mistakes because at least half of the cowl is hidden at all times.

This odd ball scarf began as the Linoleum Dishcloth, a pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting, and distributed free on Ravelry. I wanted to try the slip-stitch technique. I still don't understand it, but I liked it, and loved it in my favorite colour combination of red and yellow, so I kept knitting beyond the dishcloth square into a full scarf with the slip-stitch linoleum pattern at the borders and a simple checkerboard around the neck. The yarn is Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece. The original pattern was designed for Peaches and Cream Yarn, perhaps the last cotton spinning company in North Carolina, now put out of business by Wal-Mart. Rest-in-Peace Peaches. Burn in hell Wal-Mart.

And now for a few new pieces.
Trixies' booties which match the sweater I made when she was born.

Easter Eggs for Megan and the grandchildren to use to decorate an Easter tree. The easy pattern is from the wonderful Purlbee website, and knit with Yarn Yard hand-dyed sock yarn.

And my very favourite Easter chick with his mini eggs, also from the Purlbee website. The yarn is mohair from the stash, bought in Boston in August 2007 on the occasion of Bib's first trip into Boston, and Megan's first trip as a mother, and maybe my first trip as a grandmother.

How I Spent My Week

2011-01-31T11:02:00.001Z

The title could be how I spent my month since it is the last day of January, and I have not posted at all during the month, but frankly, it hasn't been a month to remember fondly, so I don't really want to memorialise it.

I did pull myself together for some serious "let's start the new year off right" resolutions. I sorted through my side of the bedroom clutter and have held to the resolution to put clothes away instead of making piles 'to be dealt with later" — usually much later when they topple onto the floor. I also sorted through cookbooks, admitting to the fact I never look at half of them. Limited shelf space should be the limiting factor for collections. So there are piles to take to Oxfam.

Every January, Bob and I say we really should go to the cinema more often, and then we go once or twice during January, often find ourselves disappointed, and that is it for the remainder of the year. True to form we have been to two films this month, The King's Speech and The Social Network, and we loved both of them. With that encouragement we will now see if we follow up with a film in February, finally breaking the January-only cycle.

I am most proud of finding the courage to pull out into the daylight, all of my unfinished knitting projects or objects (UFOs). A few were finally frogged — knit-speak for ripping it out — or as the frog says, ribbit, ribbit. The remaining 24 UFOs were sorted into piles on a spectrum of "this can be finished in 30 minutes" to the infinities projects that will stretch into eternity — e.g. the granny square afghan of the 1980s.

This week I finished the 30 minute projects:

A bag that needed lining

A felted bag that needed lining and a button closure

Everyone should spend their days padding hangers . . .

. . .unless they are knitting dishcloths (from a Ravelry pattern). Although in this case I used wool, felted it lightly and made it into a hot pad instead.

An exercise in learning Domino Knitting that I accepted would never go further. I also threw this into the wash to felt lightly, discovered that the geometric arrangement of attached squares let me sew them into this shape which probably has some topological name. I decided to simply call it my Shetland Artifact since I made it from Jamieson and Smith Shetland wool, bought at the shop in Lerwick when we were there.

But the next day, this little fellow emerged!

The disastrous coat, knit nearly ten years ago, when I began knitting again. The sleeves were too long, so I cut them and hemmed them, but it never fit, was too heavy to wear, did not have pockets. Last summer I threw it into a hot wash and a hot dry, and miracle of miracles, it came out as a perfect felted jacket! All it needed was a new button. The old button (see green bag above) was too large for the shrunken buttonhole.

And finally, this week I made marmalade. From organic Seville oranges in the mayonnaise and peanut butter jars. It would have been smart to get some jars before actually cooking up the marmalade. And from some old blood oranges and lemons in the Kilner jars. Now we just have to remember to put marmalade on our toast to use it up.

Day 25 or Christmas At Last!

2010-12-25T23:57:00.003Z

Window #25

Let's be honest, it is about the gifts! And what a great haul of gifts this year for all of us this morning. Somehow we all managed to make the right buying choices, sometimes when we were flying blind, leading to great gasps of "this is exactly what I wanted, but forgot to ask for..."

My gifts pretty much all revolved around food. My daughters have decided I should stop being such a rubbish baker and Megan, who is the gift for baking, contributed the very very hot Flour Cookbook that she is cooking her way through. Her photos of this week's doughnuts and sticky buns qualify as food porn. Then Susan kicked in with Macaron heaven: the useful how-to handbook, and the Ladurée gold plated picture book to remind me how long it has been since I have been to Paris.

We all got pie makers, Megan courtesy of Williams Sonoma over Thanksgiving when we spotted it in our favourite catalogue. Then I discovered the pricey W-S offering is just a repackaged version from a B-list English TV chef, offered here for cheaper and cheaper as you move down the food chain of discount outlets. Megan kicked in the cookbook of English Pie fillings.

I'm not a fan of coffee table restaurant books, but Noma would be a major exception. I think it was ranked as the best restaurant in the world recently. Noma is part of an amazing cultural centre in Copenhagen that is devoted to Denmark's northern island possessions. The lunch Bob and I had there a few years ago was a life experience to savour forever.

The salt grinder is practical in that it will replace the one that is all gummed up. The chocolatiere is the
fun extravagance for whizzing up some hot chocolate as England's coldest December in 100 years grinds on to the bitter end. Posh Crosswords from Susan, an Andy Cutting CD (world's cutest accordion player), some sock knitting yarn, and a tiny box of treats from Paul A Young, the best chocolates in London, round out the best Christmas ever.

Advent Calendar Day 24 - Christmas Eve is Here!

2010-12-24T23:55:00.001Z

Window #24

What would Christmas be without favourite story books read to our children long ago, and still secretly enjoyed. Richard Scarry's Animals' Merry Christmas may be the first Christmas book we bought for Megan. Everyone in the family knows they can make me weep by merely mentioning "The Christmas Tree Lamb" story. Santa Claus and his Elves is a translation of a famous Finnish book that recounts a year and a day in the life of Santa Claus. The Finns know these things because he lives there apparently. I haven't seen any adverts this year, but when we moved to London, there used to be daytrip flights to Lapland for families to visit Santa at home. Everyone knows The Polar Express, which was maybe never a big favourite of our children, but it does remind us that Chris Van Allsburg was our next door neighbor in Providence when he was writing and illustrating it. An Early American Christmas is our all time favorite. Last year we were able to find a copy for our grandchildren, so a new generation can continue to be enchanted by the story of the German family who brought Christmas to an American village steeped in Puritanism.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night — as the most famous story of all concludes!

Advent Calendar Day 23

2010-12-23T22:10:00.001Z

Window 23

We have presents! Our local bookstore provided and then wrapped most of what I needed. A present all the way from South Africa arrived in the post today. Christmas can come on time, on schedule.

We also have two more cookies — Lemon Spritz and Bob's favorite Almond — the last cookies are still dough, sitting in the refrigerator awaiting Susan's Thumbprint tomorrow.

Tomorrow is devoted to food — buying it, preparing it, and serving it. Tonight is devoted to making the final list of the season, keeping everything in order tomorrow. On the other hand, maybe curling up in bed with a book and a cup of mint tea sounds like a better idea.

Advent Calendar Day 22

2010-12-22T22:09:00.001Z

Window #22

Out with the old. . .the world is reborn on this post-Solstice day. . . and in with the new. . . My feet can rejoice in the arrival of my new Giesswein slippers were delivered today. I've been wearing these comfy Austrian boiled wool slippers since buying them first at LL Bean decades ago. Every 4 or 5 years they give up the ghost and need replacement.

The pink pair has real sentimental value because I bought them in Venice. There were people who thought that slippers as a souvenir of Venice was an odd choice, but hey, I got to remember Venice every time I wore my slippers. The pink ones from Venice had a covering of cable knit over the boiled wool, a style I had never seen before, but I'm afraid they didn't wear quite as well as the plain old boiled wool. Today my favourite bright red Giessweins arrived, and when my navy fleece robe arrives from Beans, I will truly be ready to settle in for that long winter's night.

Advent Calendar Day 21

2010-12-21T21:43:00.000Z

Window #21

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us – listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

Susan Cooper's poem written for and recited at the Boston Christmas Revels.

Advent Calendar Day 20

2010-12-20T20:34:00.000Z

Window #20

Heading toward the Winter Solstice Watch: Sunrise at 8:03//Sun peeks through gap in Hampstead roofs at 8:34//Sun reaches top of same Hampstead roofs at 8:53//Sun disappears behind low clouds by 10:36//Sun breaking through clouds at 11:23//Some pale blue sky as the sun reaches midday on its low arc across Hampstead rooftops//Sun has once again dropped to the height of the roofs at 13:54//Sun has dipped below the rooftops at 14:27//Grey sky has replaced any wisp of pale blue by 14:52//Lights on as darkness descends at 15:28//Sunset at 15:53.

This year's Winter Solstice will be tomorrow, 21 December, close to midnight at the Universal Time/Greenwich Mean Time of 23:39 which happens to be our local time, but this year the sky has a special event planned for the Shortest Day — a total lunar eclipse. The first time since 1638 when the two phenomena have occurred on the same day. The eclipse will begin here in London at the time Bob's alarm is set for every morning, but because the moon is so low in the sky right now, we won't be able to see much of anything.

1638 was another period of political and religious unrest. Civil War would break out in England in a few years. Meanwhile unhappy religious sects and congregations were settling themselves in North America, including in Hingham where the Norfolk congregation of Peter Hobart had been living for three years. Mainland Europe was tearing itself apart in the 30 Years War that pitted Protestant reformers against the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. The Ottoman rulers offered support to Hungary, and Austria to this day still can't quite accept the idea of Turkey as a member of the EU.

Advent Calendar Day 19

2010-12-19T23:45:00.001Z

Window #19

We put on a good spread last night, but the star of the post-sing-along supper is always the cheese Bob chooses at our local market's Neal's Yard stall. Much of it has been nibbled away last night and over the course of the day today.

Two goat cheeses, two cow cheeses, and the big hunk to the left is Stichelton the amazing new unpasteurised version of traditional Stilton. We have been gobbling it ever since Bob read a recommendation from a food critic. Neal's Yard has been a major distributor of artisan cheese made in the UK for 30 years. Cheesemaking is becoming an important industry as the UK now makes several hundred cheeses, many of which are becoming notable exports.

I can't imagine life without cheese. My life changed when I had my first taste of Brie during college, bought at the beloved Chanticleer shop in 1960s South Hadley — fresh fried doughnuts in the morning, giant size cookies in the afternoon, and a deli counter with French cheese — and can you believe it, all attached to a yarn shop!

While we were in the States last month there were two relevant cheese stories in the news. One on a British cheese winning the Gold Medal at an international competition; another on the FDA's efforts to stamp out artisan cheesemaking in the US. We were terribly disappointed when we ate all but one* of the New England artisan cheeses served at Henrietta's Table, Cambridge (Massachusetts) local food haven, and I will link to Bob's blog post on cheese for his thoughts.

*Searching the Henrietta's Table website and their list of local sources for food, I think I can credit Shy Brothers Farm in Westport, Massachusetts with making the Hannahbelle cheese we liked.

2010-12-18T23:56:00.001Z

Window #18

Jonathan's Cohen's Christmas Sing-Along at the Royal Albert Hall is a much enjoyed event in the run-up to Christmas. We have been attending for probably ten years now. Jonathan's mother first invited me to go with her when she had an extra ticket. I came home and told Bob that was the best Christmas concert I had ever been at, and next year we must both get tickets. Since then we have invited various friends, and every year everyone comes back again, that's how much fun it is. Today we had a box for 12, but sadly the weather was atrocious across London, and only 9 of us managed to make it to the Albert Hall. Ironic that as we sang of our longing for a White Christmas and Winter Wonderland, half the hall was empty at this sold out show because we in fact had a White Christmas Winter Wonderland to contend with.

Mid morning the snow came down at blizzard force in North London. We probably had four inches of snow in two hours. Fortunately, the storm wound down pretty quickly, and the Tube was running at almost normal speed.

With all the snow and excitement I forgot to take a single photo so I had to crib this photo of Jonathan and Sophie-Louise Dann from the Albert Hall website.

As usual we hosted a supper for everyone here afterwards.

Advent Calendar Day 17

2010-12-17T23:58:00.001Z

Window #17

Around midday, a snow squall blew through Hampstead. Blizzard conditions lasted for about 45 minutes leaving a covering of snow before the sun came out for the remainder of the afternoon. Our afternoons are very short these days with sunset sometime after 3:30. Much of the country is being blasted with terrible weather. Airports are shut on the busiest flying weekend of the year as everyone heads off for Christmas week. Roads are clogged with cars and lorries. And the weather forecasters are saying this weather pattern could last for a long time. Much of the country will certainly have the white Christmas they thought they wanted all this past years. No one can predict if we will be that lucky in London.

Advent Calendar Day 16

2010-12-16T23:29:00.000Z

Window #16

Today was devoted to Christmas food shopping and preparing for a supper party on Saturday night. Between trips to Marks and Spencer and Borough Market, I also signed my Last Will and Testament. The solicitor's office overlooks the Thames at London Bridge. Today London was dressed in taupe and greige between the grey buildings and sky and the brown churning river. Our weather is about to take a turn for the cold once again with perhaps some more snow this weekend. There were flurries in the City when the BBC was reporting from the Old Bailey the welcome news that Julian Assange has finally been freed from jail.

I haven't been to Borough Market in a couple of years. The birthplace of London's food revolution has been co-opted by the tourists, clogging the aisles, taking photos, but not actually buying food except take away sandwiches, so the character of the place has changed. Today was nice though, few tourists, not crowded in today's sloppy weather, and lots of stalls with old familiar food. I was there especially to buy the most amazing butter Bob found when he stopped off at the Market after signing his will a few weeks ago. So my haul consisted of French butter from unpasteurised cream with chunks of Ile de Ré salt, French Comté cheese, English potted shrimp, and Spanish smoked paprika.

I started baking my Christmas cookies tonight. I am going to cut back to only six kinds this year, so I am half way there with shortbread, clove crescents, and maple-ginger in the tins. On Megan's recommendation, I also made some fine looking banana bread from some not very fine looking bananas using the Flour Bakery cookbook recipe. If I hadn't nibbled too much cookie dough, I could try the bread, but that will have to wait for breakfast I think.

Advent Calendar Day 15

2010-12-15T23:26:00.034Z

Window #15

Christmas Concerts have always been a key part of celebrating the holidays. During the Providence and Boston years we tried to never miss the Boston Camerata's Christmas concert. And of course since Bob started singing with choral groups in New Jersey and then with Musica Sacra in Cambridge (Massachusetts), we always attended his concerts. That was a wonderful way to introduce Megan and Susan to concerts when they were quite young because it was exciting to see Daddy on stage. Megan was old enough to hand out programmes too. Later our favourite family Christmas event was the Revels in Sanders Theatre at Harvard, especially dancing to the Lord of the Dance in Memorial Hall's giant foyer.

I certainly miss the Revels, but the cornucopia of holiday concerts in London is unbelievable. Tonight was Joglaresa singing In Hoary Winter's Night, early carols and holiday songs from (mostly) the British Isles. In tonight's window their instruments are set out pre-concert on the stage at King's Place. Belinda Sykes, director of Joglaresa, is a huge fan of the late John Fleagle who sang with both the Boston Camerata and with the Revels. The programme included two of John Fleagle's settings of medieval songs, so that was a lovely reminder of where we came from. Bob couldn't come tonight because of an office party event, so I invited my friend Ann who is a great music lover, and actually raised a string trio/quartet of musicians. A few years ago one of her daughters had us in stitches telling us about playing on the streets of Washington, D.C., where they lived, for pocket money. And how they hit the jackpot playing at the ferry landing on Nantucket one summer, raising enough cash to attend a music camp in England. Ann loved the concert, so Joglaresa has a new fan.

Advent Calendar Day 14

2010-12-14T23:54:00.001Z

Christmas is cooking season, so every year the cookbooks come out for the old favorites and for some new options. Sarah Leah Chase's Nantucket Open House Cookbook has been around forever, and provides the important Christmas Breakfast Recipe, and a regular mix of party recipes.

The others are much newer. Delia's new Happy Christmas book replaces her 20 year old standard (adopted by me when I moved to London). Sarah Raven, now mistress of Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst through her husband Adam Nicolson, is the trendy vegetable foodie of the moment, with a series of books over the past few years. Her Garden Cookbook and the Complete Christmas have become standards for traditional recipes with a modern, but not too radical, twist.

So like Santa, I am making my lists and checking them twice to buy the ingredients and prepare a cooking schedule for our supper party guests this weekend.

Advent Calendar Day 13

2010-12-13T18:44:00.001Z

Every year I agree to hostess my quilting group's potluck Christmas lunch. We call ourselves the Flying Geese because we are forever flying off to visit family in our home countries or flying off on holidays or flying off to live in some other country. The natural world of the expat is flying somewhere else.

Having a fixed date for the potluck means that I have a real deadline to get the Christmas decorations out and up for the event. Now most everything is in place, and I can enjoy having them around me for the next month. This is my Turkey Tree, a traditional nearly lost American folk art of dying turkey feathers and wrapping them around wire with tape to make the branches and stem. Santa is by Tim Jumper, a nationally known wood carver who lives in Hingham. The sheep parade is led by hand-sewn English wool sheep from the Country Living Fair in London.

For lunch the Geese enjoyed carrot soup and deviled eggs, chicken teriyaki with rice pilaf and a festive red and green vegetable medley, apple crumble and a giant fruit salad.

Now the decorating is done and the potluck is over, so the next job is shopping, my least favourite part of the season. Fortunately, Bob loves the shopping, so most of the hard work can be left with him.

Advent Calendar Day 12

2010-12-12T21:58:00.001Z

Window #12

Here it is the Leaning Tree of Hampstead!

Decorated with all our wonderful ornaments. The glass balls that date back to my childhood trees. And the ornaments collected over a lifetime. Some I've made. Some the children made. Some are gifts that remind me of special people every year when the ornament is unwrapped. Some were bought on holiday trips. Each ornament has its own story. And the star is still the felt one I glued together in Providence 36 years ago when we finished decorating our first tree and discovered we had no star to set on the top.

And here we are half way to Christmas already.

Advent Calendar Day 11

2010-12-12T00:32:00.001Z

Window #11

I love visiting the Christmas Markets in Germany. The first trip we took was to Nuremberg in 1999 where this mug is from. The Glühwein helps keep you warm as you wander in the market square. You buy the mug with your first cup of wine, then with every refill you pay just for the wine, and trade your mug for a clean one. We collected tons of mugs every time, enough to pull them out at Christmas for mulled wine gatherings.

My favorite Christmas markets are in Nuremberg and in Munich. We haven't been able to get to Germany during the Christmas season for several years, so tonight I decided the next best thing was a Christkindlemarkt dinner with potato pancakes, applesauce and sour cream, my favorite nibble at the markets, with some Glühwein to accompany.

I didn't make any Lebkuchen the traditional treat of Nuremberg, but I did make a traditional doorstopper English fruitcake today. I've been macerating the dried fruit for several days. Today I whipped up some butter, sugar, self-rising flour, and eggs, mixed the fruit in, and baked it in a slow, slow oven for most of the afternoon. Couldn't be simpler, but then you are left with a fruit cake to eat — which is somewhat easier with brandy butter on the side. I am always fascinated by traditional foodways, and realised that in northern climates in December there are no fresh fruits, so of course sweet treats for the holiday season were based on the fruits and nuts preserved when they were harvested months before. And the fruitcake has a shelf life that will last the winter as the fruit is doubly preserved by drying and by alcohol.

Today was a busy day. We bought a Christmas tree this morning, but whilst having a terrible struggle setting it up at home, we realized the poor tree has a terrible kink in its trunk so it can't stand up straight and tall — our poor scoliosis tree. Tomorrow will be the decorating day.

Tonight we went to a June Tabor concert at Kings Place Concert Hall. She has such an amazing voice. I always feel so calm after hearing her sing. She was previewing her new album to be released next year with music about the sea, very eclectic music from across the British Isles and France. She hasn't played London in a couple of years, and the small Kings Place is a perfect venue for her intimate music.

Advent Calendar Day 10

2010-12-10T22:09:00.000Z

Window #10

Santa and Rudolph have been with us for a long long time. (Mama Goose is a more recent adoption.) Santa was one of those fabric printed novelty items to cut out, sew together, and stuff that I made some 30 years ago when Megan was a toddler. A very 1970s sort of decoration. Rudolph was a gift for Susan back when Santa brought the girls a stuffed animal every Christmas.

Today the big job of shoving furniture out of the way to make a space for the Christmas tree whilst still having places for guests and us to sit and enjoy the said tree has been accomplished. So tomorrow we can go tree shopping.

Bob is a connoisseur of trees. In Hingham where the trees were a lovely shape, our ceilings were so low, we could never have a huge tall tree. Here our ceilings are high, but the trees are short and shapeless, and the top third has no branches to decorate. The tree stands were opening when we were in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. I so wanted to pack one to bring to London. Well whatever, this year's tree will still be the best one ever.

Advent Calendar Day 9

2010-12-09T22:54:00.000Z

Window #9

The Onion Man was back today! He always turns up in Hampstead around this time of year. The first year we were here, we saw a man on a bicycle dripping with strings of onions and thought perhaps he was some sort of carnival act. I don't remember if I bought any onions that first year, but I have bought a string or two of shallots, onions, and garlic every year since — at least every year that I see him when he passes through Hampstead. Wearing his beret and striped Breton shirt, he parks his bicycle near the Tube Station on Hampstead High Street or in front of the Chemist/Natural Food Store in South End Green. Every year he says he will be back in January, but I don't think I have ever seen him after Christmas.

This link to Wikipedia on Onion Johnny offers the whole historical-cultural story of the Breton onion trade.

Wikipedia claims there are very few Onion Johnnies, although the numbers are growing, so I feel blessed that we have one. My onion string looks a little sparse, so I might have to try to catch him and buy another. The shallots are especially good, big and fat and pink, so I bought two strings because recently I have been reading lots of recipes that include shallots.

Three cheers for traditional agriculture. . .

Advent Calendar Day 8

2010-12-08T22:22:00.001Z

Window #8

Finally I am unpacking the Christmas decoration boxes. This is the carved wood display bought on various holidays mostly in Germany, but the pedestal is from Norway. The tree is from Dresden. The musicians are from an antique toy shop in Nuremberg. And the animal audience is from Rothenburg in Bavaria.

Still cold here in London, but the Farmer's Market is going until Christmas. My vegetable box was also delivered this morning filled with goodies that have survived the weather. A Cauliflower and Stilton soup for supper was just the ticket.

Advent Calendar Day 7

2010-12-07T22:13:00.001Z

Window #7

Stopping at Marks and Spencer to pick up some dinner, I discovered the Christmas Radio Times is already on the news stands. This is an important event in the life of the country because Christmas is celebrated by eating and drinking, and watching special TV shows. Once the Radio Times is available, we can block out the TV schedule and plan other events accordingly. As the strap line says, "It just wouldn't be the same without Radio Times!"

This year's 6:00 pm Christmas Day Dr Who will feature Michael Gambon as Scrooge; The Royle Family will be back too at 9:00 pm, but up against Agatha Christie's Poirot. Of course the BBC i-player and similar on-line repeats for other networks makes the world a simpler place for compromise. I am very excited about an update to the wonderful 1970s series Upstairs Downstairs which begins on Boxing Day with episodes on the following two nights. Keeley Hawes and Ed Stoppard move into the Eaton Square house in the 1930s after the Bellamy's sell up. I haven't had time to look much farther than that yet.

Much of today was devoted to making shopping lists and placing orders for food deliveries for our regular Christmas parties. It's also time for another fruit cake to use up the ends of dried fruits and nuts that have collected since last year. It was a bit of a shock to discover that Christmas Cakes (baked) and Christmas Puddings (steamed) would be classified as dreaded fruit cakes in the States. Last year I made a fruit bread that was quite good from the dried fruit and nut leftovers, so this year I will try a cake recipe, but I am not ambitious enough to have started it three weeks ago on Stir-Up Sunday so the fruits can macerate for days and the alcohol soaked cake can ripen for weeks.

By the way, another local holiday obsession is what pop single will be the best selling Christmas Number One this year. At the moment I have no idea who the contenders are, but undoubtedly they have something to do with Pop Idols and X-Factors.

Advent Calendar Day 6

2010-12-06T23:58:00.004Z

Window #6

Today the Christmas Muffy VanderBears and her animal friends came out of their 10-month estivation and began grouping for the Annual Dress Up Parade. Muffy's motto after all was Life is One Big Dress-Up, and Megan took it to heart for her Muffy collection — much cuter than any Barbie collection. When Muffy morphed from toy to collectible, Bob began buying me the annual Muffy Christmas Bear with themed costume — Muffy Santa, Christmas Tree, Snowman, Mouse, Eskimo, and so on. When we needed more bookshelves and added them to the long hallway through the flat, the shelf tops became the perfect venue for Muffy to step out and show what she does best. After the Welcome Santa Bears, the Muffy Parade is my favourite Christmas decoration.

I finally left the flat today for more than a food purchasing expedition. Bob and I went to a concert at Cadogan Hall, near Sloane Square: Richard Thompson singing bawdy English Renaissance songs backed by Phillip Pickett and the Musicians of the Globe Theatre. A great concert in a packed hall, and Harry Shearer was sitting across the aisle from us. Bob recognised him right away. Other people were stopping to talk to him, and I heard him say things like, "Thank you, that's very kind of you to say." So he must be a nice person.

Phillip Pickett used to be one of our favourites when he directed the New London Consort and was the artistic director for Early and Baroque Music at the South Bank Centre. He put on great concerts and terrific themed Early Music Weekends every September. Then poof he was gone, the Weekend was gone, and Early Music concerts at the South Bank were sparse. The Folk-Rock that made Thompson and Fairport Convention famous in the 1960s was based on English folk music much of which was derived from the words of these sorts of songs of the street which in turn were sung to popular musical airs. In other words it all comes around in the end. So Richard singing songs about Faust, playing a period reproduction Renaissance guitar (made in Duluth by a craftsman also sitting across the aisle from us, identified when he took a bow at Richard's introduction) backed by a gamba, a lute, recorders, and other period stringed instruments sounded great, but the encore of a recent Richard Thompson song backed by these same instruments sounded equally great. For more and better information on the people and the music link to Bob's review here.

Pickett's programme notes talk about a time when music was not divided into narrow categories. This afternoon I watched/listened to a viral U-Tube of the Hallelujah Chorus being sung in the food court of a US mall that was great fun to watch, as people either look confused, look enchanted, or joined in because they know the music. The immediate comments attached are what is pathetic: some are upset that people are daring to mention Jesus in public, others seem to think this is a religious display by evangelicals, but it is clear that few are either familiar with the piece or recognise it as simply a great work of art that lifts the human spirit completely separate from personal points of view.

And finally, Happy Saint Nicholas Day in the lead up to Christmas!

Advent Calendar Day 5

2010-12-05T20:42:00.000Z

Window #5

Christmas began today when the decoration storage boxes were lifted down for unpacking over the next week. The Hallway Greeter Bears (and their puppy mascot) are now dressed for the season so we can all feel cheerful.

Other than that, a very slow day of sleep, eat, and visit with Susan who I had not seen in nearly two months.

Advent Calendar Day 4

2010-12-04T22:20:00.000Z

Window #4

Today we were supposed to begin unpacking Christmas decoration boxes, but it was a lazy day, and I could only find this little puppy who probably never was put away last Christmas. There are always a few strays around. We did get around to some necessary food shopping which included these Mince Pies that are a special English Christmas treat. Are mince pies, everyone's least favourite — except for my long dead mother so I have always had a warm feeling for them, if not much of a taste for them — even still made for Thanksgiving dinner? The glory of the English version is that they are always tiny, just a bite or two so there is never too much of that spiced fruit filling to go with the yummy flaky crust. These pies are made by an artisan baker somewhere out there and sold at our local market butcher stall.

Bob ordered the holiday supply of wine and beer on line, and I began paging through the Christmas cookbooks to put together shopping lists for the old standard recipes. Christmas Dinner will not be my meal this year, so no decision on Turkey or Goose need be made. I much prefer the other meals: Christmas Eve, Christmas Breakfast, and Boxing Day left overs, so I am happy to forgo the roast and veg cooking.

Looking at the calendar, I see that we are having a banner holiday season. With Christmas and Boxing Day on Saturday and Sunday, that means a four day weekend, and with New Year's Day on a Saturday, the following weekend will be three days, not counting the half-day Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve preceding the weekends. London will empty out with everyone going to Egypt and Bali and Barbados. I figure I won't really want to have an away Christmas until the year we face the season with none of our children at home, and so far that hasn't happened. I love our Christmas decorations too much to want to be away from them!

Advent Calendar Day 3

2010-12-03T21:12:00.000Z

Window #3

What could be better than homemade bread on another cold blustery day in London. This is a spelt loaf made in an attempt to use up numbers of grains in storage jars that have probably passed their sell-by date, but chucking them seems sinful in a commodity bubble universe. Eaten for dinner with some French artisan butter studded with chunks of salt from Ile de Ré that Bob bought at Borough Market and some smoked goat cheese from a farmer's market, along with a cup of mushroom soup from Marks and Spencer (no artificial ingredients, no preservatives, on special, two soups for £3 — the cauliflower cheese soup was excellent too). Thank heavens to be back in the land of real food.

Bob made it home from Paris just as I was slicing the warm bread, so he got dinner too. The Eurostar is suffering from the weather along with every other transport system, half the trains cancelled, including Bob's, but he managed to get a seat on another train. Mick Jagger also got a seat on the same train. Bob saw him on the platform being led by security staff to a First Class carriage, and says he looks really really old. The journey took hours extra, but at least they aren't stranded in either the tunnel or a snowdrift in Kent.

The Advent Calendar Day 2

2010-12-03T00:03:00.002Z

Window #2

Today I am recognising the wonder of wool socks to keep feet warm and comfortable all winter long. I began knitting socks a few years ago when sock yarn of wool reinforced with nylon for strength became available. I have my friend Sunny to thank for introducing me to these yarns when she was visiting and pulled out an intricate Fair Isle pattern sock on her needles. I was impressed, but she said, "No, no, no. the intricate pattern was dyed into the wool." Way back in the 1970s, I had knit a few pair of socks. but the wool ones shrunk pretty quickly, and what was the point of spending time knitting with un-natural acrylic yarn. The striped and patterned socks are great fun to knit as the pattern develops.

The spiffy patterned yarn was not available in England for years, so I stocked up on trips to the States, to Germany, and to Italy. Then the whole sock knitting trend exploded in the UK too. I signed up for a sock- of-the-month club, and a nice woman in Scotland posts a skein of yarn every month. Of course at this point I am years behind in sock production, and my potential wool sock stockpile is a bit massive — but very attractive to admire. Some on-line groups are signing up members to 52-pairs-of-socks-a-year pledges, so I guess I'm not the only one to be over-yarned and under-socked. My goal is 30 pairs so I can wear a different pair everyday for each winter month. I figure they will last me forever then.

The above socks which I wore today are heavy Norwegian Ragg wool bought in Oslo and knit in Hingham nearly two years ago when my grandson Bobs was born. The heavy Ragg wool makes them a bit uncomfortable in shoes, but lovely to wear with slippers around the house.

The cold and snow continues here in the UK with most problems in Scotland and Northern England. Here in London we seem to be having geographically disproportionate snow accumulations. Our back garden in North London as it was this morning had a little snow cover, and we have had only a few flurries over the day.

Talking to Susan in South London this afternoon, she tells me she is literally snowed in. The snow has fallen non-stop last night and all day today, with accumulation of at least a foot. The trains and buses are not running so she was unable to get to work today. And there seems to be little end to this wintry weather pattern according to the news reports. Visions of Dickens's Christmas Carol and Thomas's Christmas in Wales are dancing in everyone's head!

The Advent Calendar

2010-12-01T23:06:00.000Z

Window #1

I love Advent Calendars, and here it is the first of December, and we don't seem to have a calendar window on hand to open and begin the countdown to Christmas. Before he left for the States, Bob went to his favourite Advent Calendar store and bought two for the grandchildren, but I don't think he chose one for us at the same time. I can't ask him because he is off sleeping in Paris after two very long days. We flew back to London yesterday on the longest flight in a long long time — no tail wind at all. A long flight with little food except for pasta at 9 am and a muffin —just a muffin — for lunch (unless you were Bob, upgraded to First Class, where there were two full meals). A flight then extended by the Winter Wonderland of the UK where snow has shut nearly everything down including the runways at Heathrow which needed de-icing, since nothing could take off, there was no room for any planes to land.

Bob was then up at 5 am to find his way to St Pancras International for a Eurostar trip to Paris where he was giving his debut presentation at a bank conference today. Late afternoon, London time, he phoned, "I'm walking on the Champs-Élysées. . ." which sounds exciting except he couldn't find his hotel from the incorrect address given to him, and Paris is no warmer than London. So via the hotel's website and a Google-map, we found his way to a warm bed for an early night.

Back here in London, a warm bed was also my sought after Holy Grail. Susan had turned off the boiler, rather than turning down the thermostat, while we were away. In ordinary weather that would have been a green and prudent thing to do, but London is having the coldest autumn weather in decades, with temperatures hovering at the freezing mark for weeks now. The boiler is back on, but thick masonry walls take time to warm up. Then many of the radiators needed bleeding to get them to heat up. Some still aren't cooperating.

Now 24 hours later, I am no longer feeling chilled to the bone. I attribute my survival to my beloved LL Bean Norwegian Sweater that got me through every winter in Massachusetts. I filched the sweater from Bob because the Extra Large size allows various under layers of long underwear, turtlenecks, jumpers or cardigans as needed for current conditions. I brought my beloved sweater to London in 1998, but the weather was never cold enough to need it. Eventually I brought it back to the States, and sort of lost track of it for a decade, then last summer when it turned up in a pile of clothes, I presciently set it aside, thinking I might like having it in the autumn when I returned to Hingham for Trixie's birth. Indeed I did wear it nearly everyday, and now it is back in London keeping me warm. So my first Advent Window pays tribute to the sweater that I may need for a good long time after hearing the BBC forecasting snow and cold for days to come.

Old Home Providence

2010-11-17T00:19:00.000Z

Of the various places I have lived, my very favourite is of course London, but the second favourite is Providence, Rhode Island. My history with Providence goes back to 1974 when Bob was offered a graduate place in Brown University's Linguistics Department. And now much of a lifetime later, we have come back full circle to another Providence connection through our son-in-law who is working there at an internet start-up company.

We lived in Providence from 1974 until 1978 when Bob finished his Ph.D., left for four years in San Diego, and returned to Providence, with two children, in 1982. I desperately wanted to raise my children in Providence, but sadly there were no jobs for an unemployed Ph.D., even with re-training for the 1980s finance boom, and by the end of 1983 we had packed up and left Providence for good. Wall Street and New Jersey became the future. As Bob says, living in London has been the reward for that forced march to New Jersey.

We have been back to visit since 1983, but the wrench of leaving was so painful, we cut off all contact with the people and the place during the New Jersey years. When Bob was offered a Boston job in 1991, we briefly considered the commute from Providence as an option, but the nightmare of the long commute on New Jersey Transit for seven years quickly brought us to our senses. Now of course poor Barnz is suffering the commute in reverse from Hingham.

Last Thursday, Veterans' Day, the only holiday, except Christmas and New Year, not Monday-ed in the States meant no school for Bibs and three children at home all day, so Megan popped us in the mini-van for the Great American Tradition of Visiting-Daddy-at-Work. Sadly there was no time for photocopying favourite stuffed animals — 25 years ago, we had some dynamite copies of Susan's favourite woolly mammoth from several angles done at Moody's Xerox machine — but the children acquitted themselves well and have been dubbed the Barna-babies by office colleagues.

And I had a chance to see a bit of Providence, which is such a different place from 1974, despite the economic hard times of the past few years. Rhode Island has had an unemployment rate second only to the perennial first place Michigan recently. In 1974, Rhode Island was nicknamed the "armpit of New England" with Providence the axilla at the head of Narragansett Bay. We were charmed by the place, but endlessly gobsmacked by its eccentricities.

Rhode Island is not an island, although some of its area includes islands in Narragansett Bay, and as the smallest of the states, is more like a city-state — think medieval Florence — than like any of the other 49 states, except perhaps Hawaii, which is a real island state. Geographers talk about the lasting importance of Initial Occupation, which in the case of Rhode Island, if you don't count the Native Indians, was Roger Williams, a true eccentric. Born in Smithfield London, educated at Cambridge where he became a Puritan, he emigrated with his family to Massachusetts in one of the early years of settlement. Living in the Massachusetts theocracy, he managed to piss off everyone with his rabid belief in the complete separation of church and state, and his dedication to treating the Native Indians fairly. He was eventually tried for treason and heresy and found his way into the Narragansett tribe's territory where he established a settlement he named Providence Plantations which joined with the settlement on Rhode (now Aquidneck) Island to form one of the original thirteen colonies — the first to declare independence, the last to adopt the Constitution — more eccentricity. The official name is still the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, affirmed earlier this month, when residents voted down an initiative to drop the Providence Plantations from the state's name. Puritanism was too tame so Williams founded the first Baptist Church in the New World, and the classic meetinghouse built during the 1770s is still the site of Brown University's undergraduate commencement. He then went on to join other fringe sects.

Soon after our arrival in 1974, Buddy Cianci was elected mayor of Providence and the world turned upside down. The 1970s was my favourite decade because that was the last time I remember when problems could be confronted honestly and sometimes things even got done smoothly and correctly. Prime example, Nixon was a crook and a liar, and when that was evident to all, he was ousted. The Sixties overturned mores; in the Seventies, for a brief few years, we still believed we could change the world. Providence was falling apart in the mid-1970s, the last department store — The Outlet — where I bought my first beloved Bernina sewing machine closed down, and the centre city was essentially moribund. At the same time, the country was gripped with commemorating the Bicentennial of the United States, and few cities could offer up a feast of history like Providence could. The Providence Preservation Society had been protecting houses and streetscapes on the tony East Side from incursions by Brown since the 1950s, but they were expanding their interests to the greater city, and with support from the new city administration, hotels were rehabbed, theatres and performing art centres were opened and reopened by the time we left in 1978. Sadly Buddy Cianci was also on his way to court and possibly jail by then too.

Another eccentricity of Rhode Island — once again think medieval Florence — is that smallness breeds familiarity, tribalism, and ultimately crime. In this case some of it organised crime, since the premier New England Mafia operated out of Providence at the time, but much of it more on the order of: we grew up together on the Hill (several to choose from: Federal (Italian), Smith (Irish), College), you help me, I help you, everyone gets what they need. When we were having trouble with a new car, a kindly neighbour offered to have it stolen so we could collect the insurance. He knew the parking lot where it could be best done. (We declined the offer, but did consider.) A few years later, he headed up an important City Board that he was probably not really qualified by expertise to sit on, but he had grown up on the right Hill, and he needed a job.

After we left for good, Buddy Cianci returned as Mayor and really undertook a massive overhaul. A giant downtown enclosed mall brought department stores back, condos and office buildings, and the project he is most associated with is uncovering the river. The American Industrial Revolution began in the village of Pawtucket, at Providence's northern edge, when Samuel Slater illegally slipped out of England having memorised the design of Arkwright's Derbyshire cotton mill machinery which he promptly sold to the wealthy Brown family of Providence. Mills needed water power, and there were plenty of rivers at the head of Narragansett Bay. When steam took over, rivers were in the way of development, and often channelised and paved over for roads that were by then more essential. By the Millennium, every successful city boasted a waterfront or a riverfront, so Providence tore up the roads at the foot of College Hill to uncover the rivers beneath, created the RiverWalk greenway, and thousands visit the city on Summer weekends to view the thrilling WaterFire Festival events.

Soon enough, Buddy once again was back in court and back in jail a few years later, accompanied by quite a few colleagues this time. Including someone I worked with briefly in the 1970s, but I am happy to see that his old job was held for him because Rhode Island is a forgiving sort of place, and he was a very nice guy, and I'm sure he didn't really mean any harm by whatever it was that he did. I have no doubt he was just doing something to help a friend he grew up with on the Hill, while doing good for his wife and kids. just the Rhode Island way. In recent years, the boom and bust of the past decade have not been kind to the city and the state. Saving treasured places is always an uphill battle, and often one that needs to be fought more than once.

Autumn Glory

2010-11-03T02:40:00.000Z

When we say we live in London for the food and the weather, people tend to think we are either joking or being cruel. We are telling the truth. I now have three grandchildren, all born in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. The first was born in July — much too hot that time of year to want to be in New England; the second was born in February — much too cold that time of year to want to be in New England. The third grandchild has hit it right — born in October, my very favourite month to be in New England. The leaves turn colour in September in the northern New England states, then the colour line moves southward week by week. This year I arrived in mid-October when our southern Massachusetts leaves were reaching their glorious colour peak.

Our house where the elm has already shed all its leaves.

Our overgrown back field is beginning to turn

A maple at peak colour

A mix of colours carpet my friend's deck

The view from a friend's window

My favourite shade of autumn leaves is this reddish gold

The grounds of a local cemetery

Down the street from our house

So it is true that in this one season of the year, I might rather be in New England than in old England.

It's Election Day. . .

2010-11-02T20:25:00.000Z

A dejected future voter

It's the first Tuesday in November, Election Day, in the US. The rest of the world holds their collective — socialist? — breath waiting for the results every two and four years. The rest of the world may pay more attention than US citizens since not very many people care enough to go out and vote. In Presidential election years 50% to 60% of eligible voters bother; in non-President years, the turn out of voters doesn't even reach 40% of those eligible. Once upon a time I might have vented about dereliction of duty as a citizen, etc., but I can no longer work up that sort of ire, when most outcomes of elections seem to run the gamut from disappointment to outright disaster. Election fatigue also needs to be seen as a major factor in suppressing voter participation. For months, citizens have been subjected to a barrage of political adverts in the press, in the post, on TV and radio, and very worst are the robo-telephone calls, whose frequency force people to turn off their phone ringers for a bit of household quiet. Last night the robo-calling reached such a crescendo that Bob could not telephone us from England because the message "all circuits are busy" was a constant refrain. I read that something like $5 billion dollars has been spent this year on the election — yes I did say Billion; a third of the country is on food stamp assistance and 50 million people have no health insurance, but the political machine rolls on.

I have voted in every Presidential and Congressional election by absentee ballot in the 12 years since we moved to London. Today I was able to go to the polling place at our town's high school to vote — taking a black marker to fill in the boxes denoting my choice of candidates on the large A3 size card ballot. I also voted NO on the three silly and damaging voter initiatives, such as reducing the state sales tax, when this state, like all 49 other states, is nearly broke, but I did vote YES on my support for medical marijuana if such a law is ever considered by the state legislature. So I have done my civic national and international duty, but I have little hope for the outcome that will trickle out tonight and tomorrow from across the country. Friends are talking about making inquiries on the possibilities of moving to other, saner, countries.

Meanwhile, the post-Halloween pumpkins are still cheerfully adorning front steps around us here in New England.

Bibs and Bobs with our pumpkins.
The Jack-o-Lantern designed by Bibs

Down the street . . .

Up the street . . .

Special Edition, Special Addition

2010-10-27T01:30:00.001+01:00

Megan had her third baby this afternoon!

A second girl joins big sister Bibs and big brother Bobs. She is 7 lbs 13 oz and 20 inches long.

She doesn't have a name yet. Probably tomorrow.

Her gestational nickname was Trix or Trixie, so we usually refer to her by that nickname.

Daddy Barnaby came home from the hospital and took us back for a short visit tonight.

Introducing the Family of Five

Bibs says hello

Megan always looks great

Swaddled and asleep after her first feeding

A Favourite September Tradition: Sunday

2010-09-23T16:28:00.002+01:00

Most years during the Open House weekend, we stick to to the inner boroughs, but this year, with our newly expansive view of London, exploring an outer borough or two seemed appropriate. We set off on Sunday bright and early for the farthest west borough of Hillingdon.

First stop was St Mary's in Harefield, one of our 1000 Best Churches, which is decorated outside and in with fantastic carvings and monuments.

An ancestor of Lady Diana Spencer lies here.

Sunday was the congregations seasonal Harvest Festival, and the church was beautifully decorated.

Hop vines and apples decorate the piers

A magnificent vegetable arrangement

Hillingdon was once rural land dotted with hamlets and villages dating back to medieval settlements. During the First World War this empty quarter, 14 miles west of central London, was used for landing aircraft. The hamlet of Heath Row was demolished as the airport began to expand with the growth of air travel in the 1930s. In the late 1940s, the government purchased land from the village of Harmondsworth to build the runways, and the surrounding hamlets were subsumed by the enormous airport.

Our next stop was the village of Harmondsworth to see the magnificent Great Barn dating to 1426. The previous government had approved a Third Runway for Heathrow that would have obliterated the remnants of medieval Harmondsworth still extant including the barn. Fortunately, the new government overturned approval for the scheme as one of their first acts.

190 feet long and 40 feet high

Dubbed the Cathedral of Middlesex by John Betjeman

Original early-15th century wood structure is intact

In anticipation of the windfall to come with the runway expansion, an offshore Gibraltar company purchased the barn for £1 a few years ago and has let it deteriorate. Last year, English Heritage (the public-private quango that takes care of historic public property) stepped in to repair the roof to prevent further structural damage. EH is now suing the owners and may be able to get a mandatory purchase order if the company does not respond.

We moved on to another tithing barn in Ruislip which is still part of an extant medieval manor complex managed for commercial and public use by the town. Manor Farm has been occupied since the Normans arrived and built a Motte and Bailey fortress.

The Motte and Bailey site

The present Manor House dates to the 16th century, and has been refurbished and turned into a local history museum.

The Tithing Barn is said to be the second largest in England and was hosting a wonderful crafts fair with food stalls. The huge Tithing Barns were used to store the harvested crops owed to the Lord of the Manor and the Church as rent by the farmers who worked the land.

The Tithing Barn

Other Manor outbuildings are used as a public library, workshop space for artists, and meeting rooms.

We then drove east to the neighbouring borough of Harrow to visit Pinner, a medieval town that deserves more time than we had this afternoon. We stopped off at West House, once a gentleman's country estate set in a private park which is now a public park, and the house has recently been refurbished and opened as a museum exhibiting a collection of artwork by Heath Robinson, a one time resident of Pinner. Robinson's great love was landscape painting, but he made his living with illustrations and satirical cartoons.

The First Aeronautical Wedding was on display

West House will rotate the Robinson work on display so we will have to return regularly for further treats in the gallery and in the lovely cafe on site.

Finally, as the afternoon wound down, we arrived at the Church of St Lawrence in Little Stanmore, one of our 1000 Best Churches, and what a stunner. James Brydges, Paymaster General to the Duke of Marlborough, made himself a fortune and was made Duke of Chandos. He married a North London girl with a nice house which he elevated into a Baroque palace to match his boss's Blenheim. He incurred so much debt, his son had to sell off everything, a famous Georgian Fire Sale that furnished other great houses across the country. Chandos took on the medieval parish church and turned it into a Baroque masterpiece with grisaille painted Evangelists and Virtues on the side walls, Bellucci murals on the end walls, and a Laguerre decorated ceiling. Chandos hired Handel to compose for him, and the organ with Grinling Gibbons carved ornamentation, was built for Handel to play the commissioned work.

The Duke's Mausoleum stands in a side chamber, designed by James Gibbs, architect of some of London's most famous Georgian churches including St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, the template for most of New England's lovely spired churches.

Looking through the Open House booklet, I can see that in the past two months, we have visited, or at least been through, nearly all of London's boroughs. But the list of places to see and to walk grows longer rather than shorter, the more places we visit. I know London never ranks high on the pervasive lists of the "Best Places/Cities to Live/Retire" etc. because it is dirty and crime ridden and expensive, according to the criteria embraced by list makers, but I can't imagine a better mix of cultural landscapes, available activities, and international reach, all tied together by a public transport system that continues to expand, than this city in which I am lucky to now live.

A Favourite September Tradition: Saturday

2010-09-23T16:28:00.000+01:00

Open House London is an annual event that comes around on the third weekend of September. Nearly every borough participates (What's your problem, Barnet?) with both public and private buildings open for visits. Architects hoping to drum up new business offer their recent work, local museums and churches find it a great way to remind residents of their existence, and buildings which in the workaday world restrict entrance to members or employees grant access to the curious for this weekend. In mid-August a 70-page booklet begins to appear in libraries and participating museums listing this year's options by borough. Organised people can immediately get on the phone to reserve spots for places that require pre-booking. People like me, just page through and formulate a dozen possible itineraries.

Saturday was a half day because an important stamp show is held on this same weekend, and Bob is a keen philatelist. We did manage to see three churches on Saturday afternoon. Although Barnet does not participate, the Hampstead Garden Suburb, which is in Barnet, does have a special page in the Open House booklet. The Suburb is just one stop north of us on the Tube, and the bus that is still conveniently, but irritatingly, stopping across from our flat takes us there in a few minutes. Henrietta Barnett, a turn of the 20th century do-gooder, inspired by Ebenezer Howard's utopian urban planning volume Garden Cities for To-Morrow, embarked on her own project in 1907 by hiring visionary planner Raymond Unwin and architect Edward Lutyens to create a Garden City for London. Like most utopian suburbs, this one ended up expensive and populated by the upper middle-class who could afford Utopia.

Lutyens created an elegant Central Square with an Institute for adult education — a crucial element in Ebenezer Howard's plan for improving the working class masses who would, theoretically, make up a percentage of a Garden City's residents — on one side, flanked by two churches facing each other across the square. The Institute is now a highly academic girls grammar school named for Henrietta Barnett. Lutyens's St Jude-on-the-Hill (Church of England) is magnificent, with an interior completely painted with murals.

Across the Square is the Free Church, for Dissenting residents of the Suburb, a much simpler building with an undecorated interior.

We then traveled into Bloomsbury to visit a church that I had read about and was anxious to see. The Lumen Church is a Dissenting (United Reformed) Church with a long history connected to London's Gaelic population. Various church buildings came and went over two centuries. A York Minster imitation was damaged in wartime bombing and replaced in the 1960s with the present smaller building. The surrounding property was used for parking lots and church halls. A few years ago the congregation sold the adjoining properties for millions of pounds, and used the money to build a new church within the existing walls. The architecture partnership Theis + Kahn won a RIBA award for their work on Lumen and have since been nominated for the Stirling Prize.

Lumen's Exterior: c.1960

New Front Window: Sculpture and Cafe

The Cloister

The Sanctuary with Window from 1960s church

The Sacred Space

The Sacred Space rises through the Sanctuary

Looking up from inside the Sacred Space

Three interesting churches, and home again for another Saturday night with Mad Men.

The North: Friday

2010-09-23T16:20:00.001+01:00

17 September 2010
Home again today, but yesterday's all day car ride didn't make much southerly progress. We spanned the length and breadth of Cumbria, and ended up in a perfect chocolate-box country town, Kirkby Lonsdale, that I had never heard of, but is apparently a prized destination for many. We booked a comfortable room and ate a fantastic dinner and breakfast at The Sun which helpfully provided a copy of a walk to something called Ruskin's View in their information notebook.

First stop was the church, one of our 1000 Best Churches, directly behind the pub. A Norman church with fat carved piers just like Durham's.

I love the Rainbow Banners

Each pier has a different carved pattern

A Green Man capital

Continuing through the churchyard we arrived at Ruskin's View, which turns out to be a spot where Turner painted and which Ruskin considered to be the finest natural landscape in the country. It is pretty spectacular.

The walk continued around the outskirts of Kirkby (pronounced Kirby) and back to the Market Square.

The 13th c. Market Cross in the Swine Market

The River Lune

The town sheep

The 13th c. bridge

By midday we started on the long ride back to London, making a few rest stops on the way. First in Saltaire, a Victorian planned town, built by Titus Salt for the employees of his textile mill. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, but we had no time to walk beyond the mill building for photos that offer a flavour of the townscape. The fabulous church was under layers of scaffolding, so I couldn't even snap that.

Salt's Mill

We also stopped in Sheffield, England's Steel City before deindustrialisation. The new museum complex includes a small metalwork gallery, a small crafts gallery, a special exhibits gallery (closed for mounting a new display), and the weirdly presented Ruskin Gallery. Ruskin's enthusiasms were prodigious, and one of them was to open a chain of museums in the industrial cities to bring culture to the masses and to train their eyes to appreciate beauty. Sheffield's was the only one to open and to close, leaving the city with a Ruskin Collection of bits and bobs intended to elevate common thoughts. The new Gallery is a hodge podge of rocks and minerals, copies of famous Italian paintings, watercolours of Venice, renderings of architectural ornamentaion, Audubon birds, and hundreds of other items. The running theme of commentary accompanying the display is that you too can be trained to appreciate beauty just as Ruskin desired, and thus inspired to go forth and be creative. Whatever.

And that completes our five days in The North.

The North: Thursday

2010-09-23T13:20:00.012+01:00

16 September 2010

We spent much too much time in the car today, but the best crosses are not conveniently located, and the scenery was spectacular. Having seen Bewcastle on Wednesday, we heeded Pevsner's rating of the best European art of the 7th century and headed off to Ruthwell in Scotland. The Scottish border is sharply oblique, and not far from Hadrian's Wall in the west of Cumbria. We crossed the border at the famous illicit marriage town of Gretna Green — with a billboard hoarding advertising a marriage chapel at the side of the road.

Ruthwell's Cross is inside the church in a purpose-built extension with the base set below floor level so visitors can see the best carvings at eye level.

The Archer beneath the restored crosspiece

Christ Glorified standing on beasts

Mary Magdalen washing Christ's feet

Healing the man born blind

Birds and Vines as at Bewcastle

Runes carved into the border of each side are the words of an
Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood possibly by Caedmon.
The runes were probably carved 200 years after the Cross was made.

The Visitation

Ruthwell is dated early 8th century, slightly later than Bewcastle, and the carvings include more figurative work illustrating specific Christian symbols and Biblical parables. The figurative panels include identification inscriptions in Latin.

We then crossed back into Cumbria and drove south through the gorgeous Lake District to see the Gosforth Cross.

On the way we stopped in Torpenhow, one of the 1000 Best Churches which offered these wonderful carved capitals facing each other across the chancel arch.

The Good enjoying Heaven

The Evil suffering Hell

Gosforth's Cross is dated c.940 when northern England was ruled by the Vikings, so Gosforth is a Norse Cross with carvings that reflect Scandinavian culture including the traditional gods.

The Gosforth Cross is round at the bottom like a tree trunk
and squared off at the top

Longinus piercing Christ's side at the Crucifixion

Odin on his steed Sleipnir

A Dragon

Gosforth Church was a treasure trove of carving reflecting the unique mix of Saxon and Viking culture in coastal Cumbria where the Vikings were not plunderers, but settlers in this later period of migration from Scandinavia. The Saxon church was refitted by the Norsemen who converted to Christianity. Next the Normans rebuilt the church in the 12th century. Finally, a Victorian rehab turned up treasures rubbished by earlier generations.

These are Hogbacks, probably tombs, from the same period as the Cross or,
Pevsner thinks, a bit later. They were found during the church renovation in 1896
used in the foundation of the 12th century rebuilding of the church.

The Saint's Tomb

The Fishing Stone illustrating the Christianisation of a Norse myth.
Above is a hart, a Christian symbol of conversion and baptism.
In the centre is the serpent representing evil for pagans and Christians.
In the boat is Thor trying, but failing, to kill Midgardsorm, the World Serpent.
Christ 1 - Thor 0

The North: Wednesday

2010-09-22T23:52:00.014+01:00

15 September 2010

The luxurious phase of our trip has now kicked in after the rigours of Norman dorm rooms, and midnight strolls on medieval stairwells to the outhouse. We never travel without our pub guides to ensure fabulous meals in every obscure corner where a 1000 Best Church lurks. The gastropub revolution began in full swing around the time we moved to London, so we have never been subjected to the terrible meals we remembered from our trip in the culinary Dark Age of 1974. Seeing Britain on $5 a Day involved cheap bed and breakfasts with nylon sheets — I will never forget the feel of those scratchy sheets — and greasy full English breakfasts. Three-course set lunches in cafes with a cup of soup named after an indeterminate vegetable, a choice of meat roasted until grey and no choice of whatever mix of mashed root vegetables that appeared on the plate — and I who dislike gravy had to actually look at the food which at least would have been hidden under the lashings of brown goop — and blessedly the apple crumble with lots of hot custard for the pudding. Often there was no dinner because only expensive restaurants in cities were open after 6 pm, and small towns had no restaurants at all. Frankly, things weren't much better outside of London 20 years later when Megan and I were here in 1994, also traveling budget class. I seem to remember one Saturday or Sunday when the only food we could find was the Pick-and-Mix at Woolworths.

The new twist on the gastropub in the countryside is the addition of boutique hotel rooms. Pubs of course were traditionally also hostelries for travelers, so most of the older pubs have upstairs rooms that are being refitted as bedrooms. Our Michelin pub guide has special symbols for pubs with rooms, so we used it to book rooms for the remainder of the week. Saturday's Financial Times confirmed the new trend with a front page banner on the best pubs with bedrooms across the country. Our dinners were superb; the breakfasts so good, we skipped a real lunch every day in anticipation of the dinner to come.

Next stop on the Saxon tour was Hexham Abbey which we had visited before, but long before we knew anything about Early Christianity in the North. Wilfrid was responsible for establishing the the monastic foundation here in 674. Wilfrid trained at Lindisfarne, but traveled to Rome with Benedict Biscop and became an advocate of Roman practice. In fact, he argued the winning side at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Hexham was burned by the Vikings, abandoned, and rebuilt as an Augustinian Priory in 1113. Twice a day, the sexton unlocks the gate to the narrow stairwell that allows visitors down into the crypt of Wilfrid's 674 church which was built with stones cribbed from nearby Hadrian's Wall and other Roman fortifications.

Bob in the crypt where Wildrid would have displayed
relics — a Roman practice

Recycled Roman stone in the crypt

The present church is a cornucopia of art treasures across the centuries.

The crossing and north transept of the medieval church

A Roman tombstone of Flavinus who died at the age of 25
after serving as a standard-bearer for 7 years in the army

Acca's Cross, 8th c.

A detail of the carving on Acca's Cross

A Green Man misericord, 15th c.

The Leschman Chantry Chapel, c. 1500

Leschman: A Fox Preaching to Geese

Leschman: A Glutton

One of four Dance of Death panels
Death dances with a Cardinal. In the other panels he dances
with a king, an emperor, and a pope.

We drove over to the neighbouring town of Corbridge, a Roman garrison town, with an active history in the Border country wars.

There was a lovely, peaceful church, with a Saxon tower, and a fortified vicarage that I sadly didn't get in a photo.

Then it was time to head off in search of the three most important Saxon crosses, according to Bob's reading on the subject. The route to Bewcastle was along Hadrian's Wall, and the weather had turned beautiful and autumnal over the day, so we had to make a quick stop at an easy access point to the Wall.

Hadrian's Wall

A pond formed by quarrying beside the Wall

The Wall's ancient stonework

Hadrian's Wall Walking Path

Bewcastle in Cumbria, near the Scottish border, is reached by back roads through fields of grazing cows. Pevsner is quoted everywhere as having believed that Bewcastle's Cross and Ruthwell's Cross in Scotland are "in art the greatest achievement of their date in the whole of Europe." The date he refers to is late 7th century.

Bewcastle Churchyard

All four sides have intricate designs. The figure at the lower left is thought to be
either John the Evangelist or an aristocratic layman with a falcon.

Christ stepping on beasts

Complex Interlacing

The Sundial

Birds and Vines

There is some evidence the carved designs are influenced by Syrian artwork. The long distance travel by Wilfrid and Biscop to Rome indicate that Northumbria was connected to the Mediterranean world. In addition, Theodore of Tarsus, educated in Syria, was Archbishop of Canterbury during the late 7th century. So the idea is not at all far fetched.