Week 5 in London

A very busy week (no change there), capped by a quick trip to Ireland.

Monday was the last and hottest day of London's extended heat wave. We had a group walk planned, which meant riding the Underground (always hot, but especially so during the heat wave), and then being outdoors for several hours starting at 2:30 PM (aargh!) Bad planning on my part. Our walk was to a section of London that is not well known--Little Venice. It's a park at the junction of the Piccadilly and Regents canals, and normally it is quite lovely. It was still kind-of lovely, though all the grass was burned. The canals were used to transport goods from the new industrial cities of the north to London in the early nineteenth century, fell out of use when the railroad was introduced, and were revived quite recently for the use of pleasure boats, lined up along the edges of the basin.

London Canal at Little Venice

People live in these boats full-time, and many of the boats had little tomato and herb gardens growing on top.

The Hobbit boat at Little Venice, dark tower and all

Several of the students and I took a waterbus from Little Venice to Camden Town, which is fairly close to our flats. Camden Town is either fun or horrifying, depending on your tolerance for body piercings and tattoos. Camden Market operates there, mostly on the weekend, but at a low level all week long. Passing all the booths selling their bizarre merchandise (pirate clothing, anyone?) was--I thought--fun, but witnessing someone actually shooting up on the sidewalk not so much.

Mike and I had an odd but interesting adventure that night. We went to Dennis Severs' House.It is a "house museum," but the people whose lives are commemorated there are fictional--the Jervis family of Spitalfields. Dennis Sever bought the house decades ago and then proceeded to restore the rooms to reflect different periods in the family's life--its seventeenth century beginnings, eighteenth century wealth, nineteenth century decline and resurgence. Letters, clothing, recorded sounds, even smells were planted in each room. Visitors were instructed to go through the house silently, looking at the scenes in each room and piecing together the history of the family. It was really well done and quite dramatic. The history was not bad either, though slanted. Here's the website if any of you are curious:

http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/

Tuesday: We took a guided tour of St. Paul's Cathedral.

St. Paul's Cathedral, London

Our guide was an older gentleman who did a marvelous job telling us about the art and architecture and cultural significance of the cathedral. I'd seen it a number of times before, but it had been thoroughly cleaned for the queen's jubilee in 2012 and looked marvelous. At one point the guide seated us in the choir stalls and joked that he was going to make us sing. I wish he'd been serious. What fun it would have been to sing in that space! We spent some time in the crypt looking at some of the tombs and memorials down there, including Lord Nelson's. Nelson was the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar--a total rock star in the early nineteenth century. When he was killed at the end of that battle, his body was preserved in a barrel of brandy so that he could be returned to London and interred at St. Paul's. We learned that his elegant shrine was actually recycled. It had been carved for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in the sixteenth century, but Wolsey had fallen out of favor by the time of his death. His former patron Henry VIII seized the shrine (along with all of Wolsey's other possessions), declaring that it was "too good for a butcher's boy." (Wolsey had risen from humble birth.) It remained, unused, in the possession of the crown, until someone suggested using it for Nelson's burial. So they replaced the archbishop's mitre at the top with some martial headgear and replaced Wolsey's name with Nelson's and, voila! a tomb fit for a Cardinal--er, war hero.

Mike and I and a handful of students made the trek all the way to the top gallery of St. Paul's (528 steps) and caught some great views of the city.

Mike at the top of St. Paul's

View down to the ground from the top of St. Pauls

That evening, Mike and I went to another play, "The Woman in Black." It's a long-running ghost story, a two-man play that was quite interestingly written and very well acted. We enjoyed it. On the way, I had to snap a picture of the gorgeous cloudy blue sky over a newly cool London.

Blue skies over London

William and Kate have a baby boy

In other London news, there was a notable birth. Some of our students were tracking the event on Twitter, and at the first mention that Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge (and Prince George) were getting ready to leave the hospital, they ran to the nearest tube stop and arrived at the hospital in time to see the royal family emerging. They were close enough to the front of the crowd to get some good photos--and to be interviewed on the NBC nightly news!

Reports that "Sherlock" will begin filming again this week brought flocks of tourists to our street, and many of them left post-it notes on the door of his flat. Here's the first one to appear: It says "Crime underway. Please disturb."

Our famous, fictional, crime-solving neighbor Sherlock

Wednesday: We spent most of this day getting ready for our weekend. This is the part of the term when we let our students take a three-day trip to wherever they want to go. Half of our students headed off to Paris, and half to Scotland. We decided to go to Ireland, where neither of us had ever been before (at least not that I remember.  Did we go, Mom and Dad?). I'll report on our trip in part 2.

Week 4 in London

This week we were actually IN London--or a suburb of London--the whole time. It was nice to settle back into the routine for a while. Unfortunately, a big part of the routine this week was trying to keep cool. London is in the middle of the longest heat wave in seven years. And, because it is never this hot, London flats and public buildings don't have air conditioning. So we've been showering and changing our clothes several times a day. Today (Monday, the 22nd) the temperature reached 33 C (91.4 F), with high humidity. It's been in the 30s for much of the last week, with a brief dip into the high twenties on Sunday. London's average high temperature for July is 18 C (73 F), with 55 mm of rainfall. We're now beginning our fifth week here, and it hasn't rained on me ONCE. (It did rain somewhere: July's rainfall this year was 4 mm.) Everything is beginning to look very sad and scorched. 

Greenwich in 2013, the hottest, driest summer in 200 years

The good news is that rain is predicted for the next three days, with temperatures approaching normal (25 C). I can't wait!

Monday: I taught on the English Commonwealth period. Monday night Mike and I just worked, me prepping for class and correcting papers, and he reviewing proposals.

Tuesday: I spent the morning doing more class prep. I teach from 8:30 to 10:15 on Mondays and Wednesdays, which is quite a long block. And, because this is largely new material for me, I'm building my lectures and powerpoints from scratch. I took a break from the work and the heat and decided to walk to Selfridges on Oxford Street to pick up a set of Horrible Histories, as there were some skits I wanted to show my class. The route took me down Marylebone High Street, which turned out to be quite a nice shopping area, leading into the vast shopping area of Oxford Street. I stopped at Oxfam, a thrift store that collects from the rich and socially conscious, and I bought myself a nice blouse and cool linen summer dress (and, in the process of walking, waiting, and changing, sweated entirely through everything I had on.)

Selfridges, founded by an American entrepreneur in 1909, takes up an entire city block. I had to walk through Selfridge's huge electronics section to reach the DVDs and passed by a shockingly crisp video displayed on a new, 10-ft-wide UHD (ultra high density) Samsung screen. It was gorgeous. It made me feel like I had 20-15 vision. It cost L38,000 (about $60,000). So I didn't bother looking at anything else in the store.

That night Mike and I took the students to see Macbeth at the Globe Theatre. It was very well done. I thought Macbeth was particularly impressive. The only annoyance was the fact that jumbo jets flew over the theatre at regular intervals throughout the play--at least twenty during the night. I don't remember even one jet the last time I was there. Odd.

Mom gave our Sam a great children's book a number of years ago that told the story of the construction of the restored Globe Theatre--the brainchild of American actor Sam Wanamaker, who did not live to see its completion.)

Borrowed photo of the reconstructed Globe Theatre

And here's a picture of the interior from my last time at the Globe (2011).

Wednesday: More teaching and more prep. While I worked, Mike went scouting for tickets and ended up getting us seats to Billy Elliot.

Victoria Palace Theater, summer 2013

As you can see, there's some construction going on near the theatre, which is another hallmark of our London experience. Construction is EVERYWHERE. You'd think that, having just hosted the Olympics, everything would have already been spiffed up? Or maybe they just delayed their building projects until it was over?

Mike really enjoyed Billy Elliot. I liked parts of it. It was opening night for the boy who played Billy. He was a 10-year-old named Eliot, the youngest child who has ever played the role. (Billy is supposed to be 12.) He was fabulous and didn't seem fazed at all by opening night. Mike thinks--and he's probably right--that the heat kept me from really enjoying the show. As we walked in, there was a sign that said "All air-conditioned!" But the temperatures and large number of bodies in the theatre overwhelmed whatever system they had. It must have been over 90 degrees in the theatre. Mike kindly fanned me throughout the second half, but we were both relieved to get out into the night air after the curtain call.

Thursday: Our entire group spent the first part of the day in Greenwich, to the east of London along the Thames River. We traveled by boat, which was pleasant. Greenwich has all kinds of things to see and do--the National Maritime Museum, with great displays on sailing and exploration and the Atlantic World; the Queen's House, with a lovely collection of art; the Royal Observatory, which houses the Prime Meridian (for only L14, you can take a picture of yourself straddling the line!); a huge painted hall; and a refurbished 19th century clipper, the Cutty Sark. We arrived there close to lunch time and strolled over to the town center. We decided to pass on the pie & mash with eels.

Traditional Greenwich lunch

Instead, we dropped by a bakery and bought scrumptious sandwiches (me: pastrami and gherkins in a yummy roll. He: Chicken, bacon and avocado in a baguette.) We also got a strawberry tart and a slice of blueberry cheesecake. Have I mentioned how good the pastries are here?)

I loved this sign on the street near the bakery (and, apparently, very near the prime meridian).

After lunch we wandered around the Observatory a bit and read up on black holes and super-novas.

Here's Mike pointing out the true measurement of one foot.

I was impressed with the humility of this quote from one of the world's smartest men. (Sorry about the blur.  It was pretty dark in there.)

Greenwich Maritime Museum display of figureheads from ships

We returned home by boat. On our way up from Westminster Pier I spotted this statue of Boudicca, the Celtic Queen who led a revolt against Roman oppression in 63 AD and burnt London to the ground.

Boudicca, Celtic heroine, Westminster

On either side of her you can see her daughters, whose rape by Roman soldiers was the trigger for their mother's uprising. On the side of the statue, which was erected in 1902 when Britain was still a major imperial power, is this inscription: "Regions Caesar never knew / thy posterity shall sway." Not quite as modest as Newton.

Boudicca statue inscription

That night, we took the students to St. Martin's in the Fields to hear a concert of baroque music by candlelight.  

Concert at St. Martin's in the Fields--one of my favorite places in London

We got the cheap seats--just L8 each--up in the balcony, but they were actually very good, right above the Trafalgar Sinfonia, a chamber group of twelve performers. They were amazingly good, and the acoustics were excellent, too. And the music! Most was baroque--selections from Vivaldi, Bach, Albinoni, and Mozart. But they also played Barber's Adagio for Strings, which I adore. A wonderful end to the day.

Friday: This was the day our students were most excited about: our visit to the Harry Potter Studios.

It was located in Leavesden, a suburb to the north of London.

Mike and me in line for the Harry Potter Studio tour

The tour takes you through some of the major sets actually used in the Harry Potter movies, including the Great Hall, the Gryffindor Common Room and dormitory, the Weaselys' kitchen, and Dumbledore's office. 

The Great Hall, minus CGI ceiling

The Gryffindor common room

Harry's room in the Gryffindor dormitory

Dumbledore's office

The Weaseleys' kitchen.  See the self-knitting needles?  They were actually working.

And, of course, Diagon Alley

The Mirror of Erised

Pensive at the Pensieve

The bridge at Hogwarts

There was a small display of costumes, showing how some scenes require progressive versions of the very same outfit. 

Harry's jacket in progressive stages of degradation for his scene fighting Voldemort

Jenny flying over Hogwarts

Mike fleeing the death eaters

We had a fabulous time. The whole exhibit was put together and run very efficiently, in true British fashion, and all the students--even the one (out of 30) who had not read the books or seen the movies--thoroughly enjoyed it.

Saturday: The day we got ready for Sunday.

Sunday: And what a Sunday! Mike and I both spoke in Sacrament meeting, and I led the music. Then I taught a lesson in primary and helped out with sharing time. Then we ran home to cook (Victoria's yummy Saucy Peanut Chicken in Yoghurt) for another group of six students, then I gave a fireside to our 30 students on LDS Church History in Great Britain. Whew! But at least I didn't have to make the dessert for the whole group this time. I have to admit that I dreaded Sunday all week, but it actually went well, and I wasn't even wiped out (much) at the end of the day.

And that's why I didn't post my blog until today.

Week 3 in London, part 2

Thursday: We had to be packed and into the bus by 6:45 AM this morning to make it onto the ferry back to the mainland. Our first stop after making the crossing was Thomas Hardy's cottage. Kristine scheduled another poetry reading, which the students did out in the lane beyond the cottage while we waited for it to open at 11 AM (we'd thought it opened at 10 AM). The cottage was picture-postcard pretty.

Thomas Hardy's cheery cottage

Hardy apparently had an idyllic childhood and a happy marriage. Makes it hard to figure what drove him to write such dark novels as Tess of the D'urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, not to mention poetry like "Neutral Tones." We were followed into the cottage by a very unruly tour group--of senior citizens. They wouldn't wait their turn, they ignored the guides' request for only ten people at a time on the upper floor, and they went up the down staircase. I actually got a little panicky as the floor groaned under the load of at least twenty people and hightailed it out of the house. Note to self: Don't be like that when you're old.

Our next stop was Lyme Regis, where Jane Austen set an important scene from Persuasion (my favorite Austen novel). It was a popular seaside resort in the 19th century, and it clearly still is today. 

Here's the scene that greeted us at Lyme Regis (and made us wish we'd brought our swimsuits).

Did I mention that we're in the midst of a heat wave? It was in the high eighties today. (I know, I know, but the humidity is higher here.)

After we walked out to the cobb, Kristine read the students the scene where Louisa Musgrove jumps off the stairs and injures her head. And then I reenacted it.

Kristine reading the scene from Persuasion where Luisa Musgrove falls

Catch me! Hey!! Catch--

We got in early to our next hotel in Exeter. Mike and I ate dinner at Yo! Sushi, one of those places where the food is on a conveyor belt and keeps chugging past you. These kinds of places encourage you to spend way too much money. But the sushi was pretty good.

Friday: Lots of travel today. First we drove out to Tintagel, a spectacularly scenic ruin on the north Cornwall coast. 

Tintagel in Cornwall, looking like it grew naturally

Another view of the ruins at Tintagel

Mike and me at Tintagel

This is "Merlin's cave," named to support the legend that Tintagel is where King Arthur was born.

The clear sea at Tintagel

We were all dying to swim in the beautifully clear turquoise water. And a couple of students did get wet. Jessica dipped her head in the water, and Preston slipped in after climbing out to a place he couldn't retreat from, completely soaking his jeans and long-sleeved shirt.

Students battling unseasonable heat in Cornwall

The rest of us were saved from too much envy by spotting LOTS of jellyfish in the water.

Jellyfish at Tintagel

The janitor assured me that almost all of them do sting. Eeek!

View from Tintagel

Mike and I hiked back up the steep path to the village a bit early to buy Cornish pasties for the students to eat on the bus en route to St. Michael's Mount. We'd been told that Pengenna Pasties was the best place to buy them. Given their enormous size, I figured twenty would feed our bus load of 33. I nearly cleaned out the shop. The baker said, "I have six steak." "I'll take them all," I said. He said, "I have three steak and stilton." "Give me the lot," I said. I bought all their steak, steak and stilton, and lamb and mince pasties, and a good share of their cheese, onion and chive and vegetable ones. As the baker wrapped and loaded each one (a process that took about fifteen minutes), the line behind me--and the faces on the people in the line--grew longer and longer. I kept assuring them that more were in the oven, and by the time I was finally done a tray full of steak pasties was indeed cooling on the rack. So no one tripped me on my way out the door.

Mike and I had a steak and stilton pasty, and it was GOOD. I hadn't expected that. The pasties I've had before were adequate, but badly in need of some seasoning or sauce. The stilton gave the steak a wonderful tang, and the crust was perfectly browned, flaky and flavorful. The students, and even Kristine (who had, like me, had bland pasties before), were duly impressed.

Tintagel Honey Shop

And this gentle suggestion, for the Doc Martin fans.

From Tintagel, we drove south across the Cornwall peninsula to St. Michael's Mount. It is an island you can walk to via a causeway, but only during low tide twice a day. On the top of the island is a castle, formerly a monastery dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, who is said to have appeared to fishermen at the island in the 5th century AD. After the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry VIII's reign, the monastery was converted to a castle, and it has been in the St. Aubyn family since 1659.  

Here's a borrowed image of the causeway and island of St. Michael's Mount off Cornwall

Castle at St. Michael's Mount

The old chapel on the mount was lovely. Our very funny guide (with a beautiful Cornish accent) pointed out a little door leading to an underground cell near the altar. Rediscovered during a renovation, the cell held the bones of an anchorite whose body was sealed up in the cell after he died there. (Our guide also claimed the anchorite was 7 feet 4, which was why they couldn't remove him from the tiny cell for burial.)

I loved this modern sculpture of St. Michael fighting the devil

Our guide said the one priceless treasure the staff has been instructed to save if the place goes up in flames is this sculpture of the castle, made of wine corks by a former butler.

Wine cork sculpture of the Castle

Like Glastonbury, St. Michael's Mount is supposed to be crossed by "ley lines," sources of power that tend to attract New Age mystical types. When we finished our tour of the castle, our guide pulled out a couple of dousing rods and walked back and forth across one of the lines, marked by stones in the pavement. And the rods did swing open and shut each time he crossed the line. The students were fascinated, and many of them took a turn. Mike and I did, too, and the rods swung for both of us.

Mike dowsing along the ley line

They swung, a lot or a little, for everyone except one student--the one who really wanted them to! Our guess is that there really are lines of some kind of magnetism running through the earth, and that the student's own body polarity just didn't work with this one. Who knows?

Saturday: We spent a second night at the hotel in Exeter then drove to Winchester. Kristine sang us a very fun rendition of the New Vaudeville Band's one hit, "Winchester Cathedral." Very catchy, actually. We inadvertently arrived in Winchester on a "Friends of the Cathedral" day as well as a local street fair, so it was very crowded. The cathedral was built to be the longest one in Europe, and it does seem to stretch on forever.

Winchester Cathedral interior

A church has stood on this spot since the sixth or seventh century. This particular building was built in the twelfth century, with updating to the "vertical gothic" style in later centuries. Mike and I actually like the plain old Norman style better, although the gothic is breathtaking.

Winchester Cathedral, interior

The land that the cathedral stands on was once a swamp, and the water table is very high. As a result, the crypt floods every time it rains. This modern statue stands in the empty space.

Remember the vibrant colors at Dover Castle?  Medieval cathedrals were once riots of color as well.  You can see remnants of the original paint in some spots, and others have been restored to their former glory.

Winchester Cathedral, with restored medieval paint

Winchester was England's capital when it was first united under the kings of Wessex, including Alfred the Great. Many of the old Anglo-Saxon kings are buried there, not in tombs, but in mortuary chests containing their bones. Strike "their." During the Civil War, which hit royalist Winchester very hard, the parliamentary troops knocked down the chests from their shelves and strewed their bones every which where. Locals gathered the bones up and placed them back in the chests, but there was no way to tell if they had gotten the right bones in the right boxes. When we visited, the placard telling about the chests was in place, but the bones had been removed to the lady chapel at the back of the cathedral, where DNA testing was taking place to try to sort the bones into their right places!

My favorite part of the cathedral were the vast western windows.  

Borrowed image of western windows of Winchester Cathedral

When I saw them, I thought, "What beautiful modern, abstract stained glass windows!" Turns out they predate the English Civil War, during which parliamentary troops shot out all the stained glass of the cathedral. Locals picked up the glass and, unable to recreate the original images from the destroyed remains, made a collage.

Borrowed close-up view of reassembled western windows at Winchester Cathedral

Isn't that wonderful?  More information on the windows appears here:

http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/visits/southtrip/winchcath2.shtml

Winchester had other treasures as well, including many carvings of the medieval "green man" figure, representing the life-giving force.

The Green Man at Winchester Cathedral

Pre-Raphaelite memorial at Winchester Cathedral

A very old, but still used (while we were there, in fact) baptismal font at Winchester Cathedral (I love this so much!)

Jane Austen's tomb and memorial

Medieval Great Hall at Winchester

Alfred the Great statue at Winchester

After a quick visit to Winchester's reconstructed medieval Great Hall and to a statue of Alfred the Great, the king who managed to unite England and drive out the Danish invaders (for a while, at least) we headed a few miles down the road to Jane Austen's home at Chawton. She actually died in Winchester, where she had moved to be close to her doctor. But she spent some of her best writing years in this cottage given to her and her mother and sister by their brother Edward, who had been adopted by a wealthy, childless aunt and uncle.

Jane Austen's charming home at Chawton

There was a copy on one wall of a lovely, tender letter by Jane's beloved sister Cassandra describing Jane's last days and how much she would miss her.

We finished our tour around 3 pm and headed back to London. Happily, it took an hour less than we expected. A tiring, but rich week.