Zero Summer

Salute to Turner

2005-01-12T12:38:00.000Z

Salute to Turner
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

Ho ho, this is Santa Maria, the Salute, and with sun in the freezing cold fog like this one suddenly realises that Turner's hazy views of Venice are works of realism.

Basilica San Marco

2005-01-12T12:37:00.000Z

Basilica San Marco
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

I know you've all seen it before, but it is extraordinary and the apricot light was wonderful. I love the undulating floor inside.

St John the Divine, Little Gidding

2005-01-12T12:36:00.000Z

St John the Divine, Little Gidding
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

The tiny, cold church at Little Gidding is, by vagaries of old ecclesiastical boundaries, a parish church, which meant the Ferrars could get away with all sorts of things, having it completely to themselves.

The History Boys

2005-01-12T11:06:00.000Z

I had the pleasure last night of dashing over the Thames to try for last minute tickets for Alan Bennett’s new play The History Boys at the National Theatre. From an extremely good spot in the middle of the stalls in the Lyttleton I watched what immediately stood out as one of the best pieces of theatre I have ever seen. If you are near a production, go and see The History Boys. It sits together with Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love (Haymarket, London, 1999) and a monologue adaptation of Beckett’s novel Molloy (Ireland, 1998) in the trefoil of my best shows ever (Theatre must be an unforgiving medium. When pressed to nominate favourite films, books, symphonies, I find myself stuck, but I can easily reel off the best dramatic productions I’ve seen.)

Apart from the attraction of being at a first run Bennett, I was keen to see what various reviews had suggested was a humorous but incisive consideration of the issues of writing and teaching history, as politically charged as recent works by David Hare. It seemed important, given the business I’m ostensibly in. To discover a rollicking, hilarious and tender, somewhat melancholy study of youth, teaching, learning, culture, which also touched on matters of history and memory, was a most enjoyable surprise.

The play is set in a boys’ grammar school in the north (Sheffield) in the 1980s. It follows the final phase of schooling of the eight ‘history boys’ of the title, who, in accordance with the ambitions of the odious headmaster, are working towards the scholarship exams for the great prize of Oxbridge entrance. The boys are used to wonderful classes with their inspiring but eccentric English/General Studies teacher, Hector, (played by the wonderful Richard Griffiths, the corpulent chef Henry Crabbe of TV’s Pie in the Sky and most recently Harry Potter’s despicable uncle) whose mission is to fill them with culture and who regards learning for the sake of exam success as ignominious. The headmaster arranges for a young Oxford graduate, Irwin, to come and workshop their history skills, building upon the aptitude realised in them through the foundation teaching of Mrs Lintott, in a programme of intensive exam swotting. The action unfolds in the tension between Hector’s unconventional methods and the dull pragmatism of the young Irwin as the exams draw nearer. I shan’t give too much more away, as the play is obviously more complex, somehow gloriously gentle and inchoate and sometimes painful, befitting the experience of the young men. (Why is it that stories of inspirational teachers and youthful passions are always set in boys’ schools/colleges?) There are fantastic parodies of TV historians of the Schama school (the programme includes a short essay by Schama, 'True Confessions of a History Boy') and of historians who argue from the wrong end of the stick for the sake of standing out, fitting the 'facts' to the thesis - 'think of something nice about Stalin and argue from there.' The historian being mocked half-mocks us for our current delight in the physical remnants of history, not its prayers, traumas and ideas, taking as the absurd example the worshipping as relics of the monks' toilet cloths exhumed from the pit at Rievaulx as the sum of our interest in the dissolution of the monasteries. And the wonderful formula: 'If you want to understand Stalin/Mrs Thatcher/[insert figure of choice], study Henry VII. There are sharp jabs at those who bloatedly claim to love ‘literature’ and ‘words’ in middle age instead of writing, films and stories, or those who read more about literature than they read the books themselves. There are points about how memorial rituals allow for forgetting. But this is all suggestion, hints, an amorphousness of ideas in the simple story of boys finishing school. And there's just a lovely, warm, lively humour informing it all.

The end is a little disappointing, with Hector’s ghostly refrain of ‘Pass it on, boys. Pass it on.’ sitting incongruently in a play which has been about ‘education’ throughout but in no way didactic. Part of Bennett’s motivation in writing it, according to his screed in the programme, was to expiate his sense of guilt at having ‘cheated’ (not literally) his way into and through history at Oxford, and it seems to reflect his time spent teaching at high school whilst discovering he had no desire to complete the post-doc in medieval history that his First had secured for him. Perhaps it all got a bit too close. Still, an extraordinary play and a fantastic performance by the whole ensemble, scarcely missing a beat. Names I shall certainly look out for.

January 2005

2005-01-12T11:05:00.000Z

The New Year has begun with endless sales and a whole lot of drizzle here in London. The temperature is up but the rain is falling, and I have only three weeks left!
I have just come back from a week in Italy, curiously enough spent with my old sparring partner Tim. I know that contravenes all the rules of modern dating, not to mention psychology, etc, etc, but thinking practically for a moment, who better to unleash upon all the ugliness of travel-induced fatigue and grumpiness than someone thoroughly familiar with one’s foibles, and with no sense of having to protect something by behaving with forced prettiness? I do not mean to point up only the negatives in this defence. It was a lovely reminder of why we were friends in the first place, with all the pleasure of common interests and contrasting ways of seeing. We went to Rome and Venice, delighting in chasing saints’ body parts, looking at cinquecento paintings and eating at trattorie, then came back to London via enough time in Nice to savour the fantastic vege/spices market and spend an afternoon watching the shifting sun on a quiet stony beach lapped by the Mediterranean. We filled all the interstices on trains by reading Iris Murdoch, and were glad of some southern light in the darkness of the northern winter.
It has been a very long time since my last posting, so some rough vignettes of December’s movements follow.

* * * * *

I went up to Little Gidding for Sat Dec 4, when the not-quite-Saint Nicholas Ferrar is commemorated with a ‘feast day’ in the alternative calendar of the C of E. I picked up a little blue Renault on the Friday afternoon in Cambridge, then drove indirectly to Huntingdon to spend the night (at the coaching in favoured by Dick Turpin, I was led to believe). I arrived there feeling very satisfied with myself, having tackled the motorways and the endless roundabouts and bypasses of the English arterial system without the fear and horror I’d expected. In the morning I wandered around and had a look at some monuments of Cromwell’s early life, such as his school, then set off with my trusty atlas in plenty of time for the 11am service. I made it with only five minutes to spare, having hit a closed road just where I needed to turn, pleased to discover that Little Gidding really was ‘England and nowhere’ as Eliot’s poem suggested. Without going into too much detail of what was a very gentle and slightly peculiar day, I have to say that I was glad to find that the place was so insignificant – just a tiny, freezing church on a hillside and some modest 1960s-70s house buildings serving as a retreat and home for the resident Canon, living there almost hermit-like. To find the site of my research so unimportant may sound perverse, but it fits nicely with my consciousness of how unimportant ‘obscure’ research in the humanities seems (even is?) to others and to me sometimes. Perhaps others amongst you will be familiar with the following sequence of responses when answering questions about your research topic:
‘Gosh, you mean you’re only studying England? And only one century?’
‘Yeah, actually, just 25 years in the life of one family, who lived in one place, and focussing on just these three aspects of their experience…’
‘Ha! That’s so funny! Don’t you get bored? What’s the point of that?’
I think it would have been a real pity, in that light, to find a massive, well-maintained monument and a huge body of literature, or a stunning set of artefacts…
I was also amused to find myself, so out of place there amongst 30 ageing Britons for whom the place had been really significant at different points in their lives – some had been involved in attempts to re-establish religious communities there – sat next to a man to whom I was related (the Lefroy link again). And the Canon there had a particular interest in WA colonial history, being much more keen to chat about Wollaston and the south-west rather than about the Ferrars and Little Gidding!

* * * * *

After Little Gidding, some time at Cambridge, in the fantastic environs of the uni library. It is an immense 1930s (late 20s?) brick structure across the Backs, overflowing with books. Though different from the patina and charm of the medieval and Tudor buildings one associates with the old universities, I loved it for its internal space and for the mundane detail which have aged so well – fittings mainly, like the brass catches on the toilet doors and levers on the lead-paned windows, leather inlays in the desks, chairs apt to accommodate the most ample of posteriors. And such a gorgeous smell! It was very Christmassy in Cambridge, with small groups of students singing carols (not busking) as if spontaneously in front of the neat little Georgian shopfronts, candles and evergreens all about, and lovely congenial pubs, just like a dream, full of happy people and an array of flat, grainy seasonal ales.

* * * * *

I spent quite a while at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, reading a collection of letters written by one of the women in my community. They are copied into a little gold-tooled white-skinned book, in the early C19th if the watermark is anything to go by, in someone’s mercifully legible, but also tiny, meticulous hand. The workspace was wonderful. I was in Duke Humfrey’s library, which has ceilings painted with the university crest, painted beams, reclaimed stained glass and papery clear leadlights, open shelves of beautiful leather bound antique volumes. Multiple Tudor-Stuart type portraits of the founders of the various colleges, the sort you’d expect to see in big houses or the Portrait Gallery, run like a frieze around the top of the walls above the bookshelves, as if pegged up in a child’s bedroom a long time ago and then forgotten about. Makes it seem ridiculous to focus on one’s manuscript when looking at the room and its decorations would be perfectly diverting for hours. And the chairs! They are like commodious wooden carvers stolen from dozens of dining room settings, only I think the place would probably implode if anyone tried to consume food for the body rather than for the mind and soul in there. Despite the rules, the whole place was very easy to manage. I was amazed at how normal it seemed once you got inside – not enormous, dim and very quiet, a bit of a mess, everyone left to their own business, only three librarians, nothing hurried. It is the arcane language of the place that is strange, the unwritten code. No one is willing to offer any helpful directions unless asked very directly. Cutting one’s teeth, as it were, by making a few outsiders’ gaffes, seems to be the accepted way of getting on. But it’s fine when you do ask. Every day I went up on the bus from London, watching the weather change. One morning would be mild and grey, with patches of sun warming up the gentle nutty colours of the last leaves and bristles of the bare trees from time to time. The colours were dusty and light, like cocoa powder before it’s been wet, despite the damp, making it hard to believe that it was icy and almost snowing the previous afternoon.

* * * * *

I more or less bypassed the actual day of Christmas, being in the unusual situation of having no friends or relatives around. Things hardly shut down in London anyway and I’d enjoyed the lead up in the crisp and twinkling city. I spent New Year in a great little pub in West London then set off for Italy on the 2nd. And now it’s time to go back to Oxford and squeeze in as much gainful work as possible there and here in only three weeks!

Seasons Greetings

2004-12-21T13:39:00.000Z

To all my lovely friends and anyone who has been following Zero Summer and has recently been wondering whether the pub I was staying in in the countryside had fallen victim to subsidence and been swallowed up by a sinkhole...

I hope you all have a very jolly Christmas/Chanukah/festive season in general, making merry with friends, family, fizzy drink and food!

There are odds on for the first white Christmas in the south-east for 25 years here, and so, as the temperature plummets, I'll be thinking of you all in warmer climes eating cherries, peaches and seafood whilst all around I can hardly see for geese, pheasant and mistletoe draped everywhere.

For the sake of saving a couple of trees, and also because I have managed to come over here with very few of your snail mail addresses (hence similar lack of postcards), please accept these greetings in lieu of Chrissy cards. More blog soon - something for me to do when London grinds to a halt at the end of the week. Happy holidays

I wandered lonely as a cloud (and now I have a lovely vase of daffodils, actually)

2004-11-29T15:52:00.000Z

Last week was a long one. There is something to be said about the intensity of study that isolation and the absence of other distractions can facilitate, but some days I do feel rather as if I am completing a retreat. I have to remember to talk to people in passing, to pop what turns out to be the rather flimsy membrane of the bubble in which I am floating around the city. Sadly sometimes the consequences of interacting in a place bursting at the seams with people but apparently full of lonely souls can be rather unwelcome. I like to operate on the principle that there’s no reason not to talk to people – fear just breeds more fear and suspicion, right? And lovely things happen when you talk to people. Why should I presume that a stranger harbours malign intentions simply because I don’t know them? But I do tend to end up a bit threatened by some interlocutors’, umm, overenthusiastic responses.
Being alone has refreshed my sense of the pleasure I derive from classical music. I have gravitated towards the two classical radio stations, having become increasingly disillusioned with Radio 4, which is the equivalent of my beloved Radio National, only sadly not up to scratch. It is possible that my sense of what it should be is distorted by the fact that I remember most clearly enjoying listening to documentaries such as one about the laying out of the pleasure gardens in Battersea Park in the eighteenth century, and Bertie Wooster-style 30s jazz whilst baking in the dim, steamy, smelly, stone-floored solitude of the kitchen in Ireland on wet Sunday afternoons. Nevertheless, I have been washed over and over with all sorts of things that I had forgotten or never encountered. Elgar had been most sweet and fitting this week. Not ‘Pomp and Circumstance’, which seems ironic, if not completely tongue-in-cheek, in Britain now, but the glorious melancholy beauty of the well-loved cello concerto.
A second pleasure has been my slightly guilty (ridiculous I know!) but tender reunion with the novel. I have a strange block in my mind which puts these out of bounds for much of the ‘working year’, and of course I didn’t bring any with me here – I’m on a research trip and I have plenty to do! I found myself compelled to buy Dan Rhodes’ Timoleon Vieta Come Home, based on absolutely nothing except for the painting of a dog on the front cover, and enjoyed it a great deal, most of all for the surprising and completely transporting episodes most reminiscent in tone of fable interspersed with the third-persona narrative of subjective experience so familiar in contemporary fiction. I think this book needs to travel, so if a bright blue paperback fetches up in one of your post boxes, feel free to make it yours for the period of the reading and then set if on its way again. Fear not! It’s an easy read – physically short, the style not convoluted and the print large and well-spaced – but for all its warm patches by no means excessively light… Bereft when I hit the end of that so quickly, I jumped off a packed bus on a rainy Saturday afternoon into the seamy half-light of a low-rent bookshop (hard to find these days), tripped on a tear in the patchworked carpet, jettisoned my fear of long books in favour of the luxury of one that looked as if it would take a very long time to finish and counted out 2.99 to pay for a copy of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. It is so powerful! And so full of flaws of repetition, which may not be flaws but the mark of a style that too much academic reading and writing has branded pariah. ‘Accidentally on purpose’ my mind conveniently smothered the memory of Sons and Lovers, the taste of which hasn’t left me even though I read it more than 18 months ago (didn’t see the BBC version). [Note to all men – read Sons and Lovers.] I was swallowed completely by the few paragraphs of Women in Love that I read on the train to Hampstead the following day, so I am reading it in tiny increments. Lawrence’s women are extraordinary! I am sure that his women are extraordinary because his people are extraordinary, and he actually granted women personhood. But Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen, sisters 25 and 26 in a colliery town at the turn of the century, and here I am palpitating over the eerie affinity with them I feel, 25 or 26 and in another world! I haven’t hit on any of his use of nature as a spiritual force that sometimes reveals the author’s temporal distance from the modern reader as sharply as the different (sadly not too different!) social/gender mores in the novels; that mystical urge to be of all earthbound things to which Lawrence shifts the focus to somehow cleanse or render blameless his characters’ sexuality without for a second detracting from their moral ugliness – a separate issue. That will come, I imagine. Enough, anyhow – my musings are a lot like half of a too-abstracted conversation!
I am going to venture into the wilds of the Cambridgeshire countryside at the end of the week, followed by a few days in the Uni Library at Cambridge in the company of large pile of books. Little Gidding’s ‘one day of the year’ is on Saturday, so I am going to hire a car for a little while to get out there (thankfully no snow, ice or motorways to deal with!) My general query as to whether or not there was anything special I ought to know before turning up seems to have induced panic in the person on the end of the info address. As far as I can tell the return email was trying to combat the potential crisis of some outsider, i.e. me, turning up on site with no knowledge of the place at all and gleaning all their secrets to form the stuff of a thesis in a day. Oh dear! I did explain who I was and what I was doing… but there are some funny types in this business – history is very cultish. From this bloated generalisation, with no further explanation to you but to note that my bias issues from my daily-expanding experience of a subset of historians, and that I am told that I shall be forever safe if I survive the particular seminar I am due at this evening, I will move on.
A few things are still floating around in my head.
One: I thumb my nose at the pair of malcontents (yes, dear readers, I am aware of the irony and the adage about glass house, which, to compound it, is lately literally true as all visitors to Altona St will attest) who were complaining about the food at the British Library today. There I was, enjoying my herbed couscous with roasted veg and pan-fried haloumi and an enormous cup of tea, thinking what a great facility they have, with polite and efficient staff, a clean space, and an array of food and drink that includes organic and fair-trade options, plus an upscale restaurant on the above floor, looking at the glorious array of spines of books collected by George III displayed alongside my table and thinking how pleasant the low lighting in the seating area is, complementing the airiness of the rest of the building, etc, etc. A middle-aged couple plonked themselves down at the table behind me and proceeded with a litany on the theme ‘it’s gone down, definitely, hasn’t it?’ They claimed there was no salt (erroneously), claimed there were no white bread sandwiches (again wrongly: there is white bread, and brown, multigrain, bagels, ciabatta, baguettes, organic loaves, rolls…), and begrudgingly proceeded to eating their overpriced (very modest for London!) choices whilst improvising on ‘it’s definitely gone down’ in between and vowing to always come via Marks and Spencer in future. Glad to finish, I left thinking that they probably just wanted something ‘normal’ like the ubiquitous egg and cress or cheese and tomato and that perhaps the food was too exotic for those accustomed to an old-fashioned English diet. I glanced at their table as I went past and saw them eating generous fresh white bread sandwiches cut from a fluffy bloomer loaf, one with ham-and-cheese and the other with chicken. I know I shouldn’t dwell on this, but it’s famously difficult to get decent fresh food here and the BL does a great job, especially compared with the standard lunch of refrigerated, paste-filled sandwiches in plastic boxes.
Two: Thank goodness for little fluffy animals. An unplanned stroll through Holland Park the other afternoon was the high point of the week. There among the mud, the holly bushes and the last turning leaves, in fresh air and light rain in this little bit of woodland in the middle of the city, I saw beautiful roly-poly black rabbits with gleaming eyes, unfrightened by me being there and bouncing without reason in a show of exuberance. I felt like Snow White as the curious squirrels hopped over to my hands, with such a glut of new acorns and chestnuts to feed from that they didn’t seem to feel compelled to work at hording for the winter. And (vegetarians cover your eyes) there were the fattest, shiniest, cleanest carbony pigeons I have ever seen, entirely fit to be swaddled in pastry and sold alongside the game pies at the farmers’ market. Talking to all of these creatures perhaps makes me a bit odd, but perhaps the world of arts and letters will have a place for me as the funny old lady who talks to the birds.
Three: The farmer’s markets of London – the one I visited on Saturday morning takes place in a car park behind the underground at Notting Hill Gate – seem to be more than a way for wealthy people to buy fresh food. I went for a wander, knowing I’d see amazing produce, but was happily surprised to note how everyone there greeted each other, stall holders and market-goers alike: how are you going? Are you well? How did event X go? Same as usual? Etc. Lovely to see in a city noted often for being cold and hostile.
Four: I had a bit of a classic singleton experience last Monday. Decided at the last minute to go and see Bridget Jones 2 as a perk, so I went up to the Coronet (yep, the one where Hugh Grant watches Julia Roberts in Notting Hill) and sat in the middle of the balcony upstairs. It was dark and full of pairs of impulsive latecomers and groups of girlfriends. Somehow the right sort of film to be in, very light, and I almost forgot I was on my own there a few times. Solo film-going conquered. Another conceptual barrier shattered! For anyone interested, my celebrity spotting record so far is dismal - George Gregan and various other Wallabies who I don't know but others may, and Joely Richardson buying coffee and looking miffed at not being noticed.
Five: I am so pleased to see that the Tower of London precinct has been so thoroughly cleaned up! It was disappointing when I first came to London years ago, with a thick layer of grime like the uncleaned cities of the north and of the former Eastern bloc and I never bothered going back (still not very interested to go in). Even in the rain it was all warm honey stone and welcoming, however much of a travesty on the intended impact of the tower that may be. But that excursion is another story…

For the rain it raineth...

2004-11-18T19:12:00.000Z

On Monday I finally dragged myself into the British Library, abandoning at least temporarily my extensive dalliance in the city’s more guilty pleasures. I was very pleased to discover that the café is run by Leith’s, established London restaurateurs. The cups of tea and coffee are enormous and the waiting staff is very obliging. My inaugural meal was a roasted winter vegetable salad with goats’ cheese and baby spinach, a tie in with one of the current exhibitions called ‘The Writer in the Garden’ (which features a variety of books and literary artefacts, including – Harriet, are you paying attention? – the manuscript of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia). Very nice to get some greenery, real and virtual, especially not wrapped in soggy bread. I even have a sneaking suspicion that the unidentified and really quite pleasant vegetable I was eating was actually turnip. You can see I have my priorities straight. Speaking of things green and pleasant, I was scandalised to discover, wandering through Devonshire Square on Sunday, that the ranks of espaliered trees I had been swooning over in the St Paul’s garden are being planted throughout the City, one by one. They come ready trained, their arms stretching out rigidly to either side like palsied English Shivas. When the strings are cut holding the damp Hessian (so lovely in the right context, that texture and smell; I think I’ll have to mount a campaign to restore it from the sullying of so many corked wine associations) bundles around their roots, they are plonked into neatly spaced holes in the ground, touching fingertips with the adjacent trees in the wobbly rhythmless chorus line trying to stop each other from keeling over. So much for the myth of them being carefully tended and urged towards each other over the years by a kindly old green-fingered steward/ess until they grow together in an organic puzzle. About as real as the idea that venerable rambling houses like Penshurst were autochthonous, ‘genuine’ and ‘native’ unlike the blockish neoclassical protuberances the Jacobeans erected all over the countryside. Ben Jonson, you servant of romance! All that effort leading a poetic school of verbal economy, of perfect rational, classical restraint, and in the end your Penshurst must have inspired all those builders and gardeners who liked things warped and straggling, Morris and the Sackville-Wests and even the kindred foes Lutyens and Jekyll (pronounced Jee-kill according to the BBC). Too many schools and categories are identified to classify aesthetic things. It is worth pointing out that other poets drew equally on the classics and chose to celebrate delight in disorder, concordia discors (anyone with a spare moment I recommend to you Robert Herrick’s poem which is a good example of the gorgeous lightness that you may encounter in [some!] seventeenth-century verse www.englishverse.com/poems/delight_in_disorder). The trees in the parks are showing more and more of their skeletons, reserving strength for essential inner functions as it gets colder and darker, shedding like radiotherapy patients. No offence implied, all those familiar with the ravages of cancer. Most of the trees are canker free, although another wave of elm disease is bowling over lots of old survivors. Continuing the association ad absurdum, it is conker season, and some poor school kids in Co. Durham have been banned from playing conkers without first donning safety goggles. That puts conkers in the same boat as all sorts of risky and exciting pastimes, such as high school chemistry lab work, squash, piloting WWI biplanes, working with a lathe, competing in the car race in the Hanna Barbera cartoon alongside Muttley and that evil bloke…Ah, dogs, that was where I was going. I love watching the dogs being walked through the park, come rain or shine. They exhibit such extraordinary joie de vivre and remain bouncy and carefree despite having to spend most of their time cooped up in terrace houses or (so much worse) handbags. They seem oblivious to the cold. The fallen leaves and mud just add to their pleasure. I am alarmed to say that I have not so far seen a single squirrel. This is terrible! What has become of the cute furry little guys who provide so many hours’ viewing pleasure? Perhaps it has something to do with the dogs or the kids being exercised, although the dogs tend to go for the waterbirds if anything, and the kids are kept on far too tight a reign to manage to molest squirrels. The very little kids and babies don’t pose much of a threat anyway, given most of the ones I have seen rugged up in pushers for healthful outdoor excursions have been hibernating. I think they just shut down in response to the cold and the crowds, which is jolly convenient for the parents I suppose but certainly defeats the purpose of taking them to the park/parade/infernal seasonal lighting-up of shopping arteries (Never catch a bus through the middle of town when the Christmas lights are due to be turned on! Had I only known…) And on babies, pregnancy is definitely in vogue over here, that and being Spanish (of which more shortly). A few years a ago the ‘yummy mummy’ phenomenon was documented/invented by the British media, referring to the trend of young, wealthy and fashionable women getting around with distended bellies or accessory children in tow. It’s very much passé now, but, as in our own Humanities department, the pregnant look is clearly popular. Or maybe ladies in the family way are just more visible because they have the free time to hang around in shops and having their hair done. That’s before their lives are transformed and they are reduced to afternoon coffee dates in the nearest Starbucks refuge with other shattered looking women avec prams and papooses (papoosi? What is the correct plural?) Many of these women are indeed Spanish. Perhaps the Brits have been concentrating so long and hard on their enmity with the Frogs as to have forgotten the other imminent peril, posed, as all good students of naval history will know, by the Spanish; for it would seem that the dreaded infiltration has been well and truly accomplished. When I was here a few years ago, Scandinavians, especially Swedes, as well as Italians were clearly predominant among the hordes of foreigners, in particular those of the under-30 working and travelling variety. To be sure, they are still here. But now it would seem that the young and truly funky are most likely to be Spanish. Whether this is attributable solely to the mushrooming of UK outlets of the Spanish clothing retail giant Zara and the continued popularity of Campers footwear is a moot point. Some might say it is well past time that the good people of Iberia eked revenge on the grotty Brits who lumber into their resorts, fraternise despicably, buy up all their villas and monopolise the services of sun-kissed pool-cleaning youths… There is a preponderance of mature Spanish tourists too – as I said before, you can tell, because they’re fantastically stylish. That and they tend to speak Spanish. There are also more Asian students/holiday workers than last time, meaning young people from East Asia. The English say ‘Oriental’ or from the ‘Far East’, because Asian refers to all the locals of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi extraction. I shall leave on that abrupt note, as I am squandering precious time in the BL, awaiting the imminent (I hope!) delivery of some books which should have been here half an hour ago...

*****

Thursday evening, and I am again in the BL, this time with the wireless running. Those books never did turn up, but some others have arrived, plucked from their cocoons in Boston Spa and freighted down into my hands, where I fear they are liable to crumble. Is it true that they are kept in a disused saltmine cavern their, chilled and dessicated to preserve their lives? (serious quality of life issues would be raised if they were living things...). My parting tip, as I sign off at the end of the first really soggy day, is for all who have not had the pleasure to go out and borrow Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night. With imaginary 19th Century Cornwall playing Illyria, it is worth watching simply for the extraordinary work of Ben Kingsley as Feste, the bagman sprite, who sings ballads such as "Hey ho! The wind and the rain" in tones fit to haunt. He retains that slightly unsettling quality so well, spooky and a touch malign, like all of the animating spirits in Shakespeare. Oh, and Nigel Hawthorne's achingly preposterous Malvolio, complete with toupe and canary garters.
Apologies for the unbroken mass of this post!

Thames Floodlit

2004-11-13T18:27:00.001Z

Thames Floodlit
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

I couldn't help thinking, as the spectators gasped 'Isn't it pretty!', that the sight of floodlights over London probably just felt haunting for anyone over 55.

Millennium Eye, Remembrance Day 2004

2004-11-13T18:27:00.000Z

Millennium Eye, Remembrance Day 2004
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

The poppies cascade down the face of the Shell building, framed through the big bicycle wheel.

Poor Old Horace

2004-11-13T18:26:00.000Z

Poor Old Horace
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

Lord Horatio Nelson looks terribly lonely up there. There are plenty of others more deserving of my sympathy and attention, such as the living who suffer, but I had to go and photograph the Admiral in the cold dark night. He reminds me of the Happy Prince up there, and if ever there was a story to induce spontaneous public weeping in the remembrance, it's that one. And poor Cyril and Vivian (Connie and Oscar Wilde's sons) - written for them, so beautifully, but what must they have felt?

Chilly chilly, evening time (pick the pop reference...)

2004-11-13T18:07:00.000Z

Dear reader,
As I type I am listening to the Women’s Hour on BBC 4, trying to think through whether it is a nasty anachronism or whether it can be interpreted as, refigured in its latter days, an affirming female-governed space. Once more visiting the land of no television – not entirely a bad thing, except for losing out on the privilege of seeing BBC dramas before they reach Australia – and not having loaded up the laptop with music, I have bought myself a little radio for company, for background noise, and to satisfy my appetite for news and documentary. It is crystal clear outside and several degrees closer to freezing as a consequence. The dark is just starting to fall, and I’m digesting my warming late lunch of soup after coming in from this morning’s expedition.
I went to follow the procession for the investiture of the new Lord Mayor of London; Alderman Michael Savory, I think is his name. I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I hoped that it would retain some of the character of the medieval ritual. Charles Phythian-Adams, the grandfather of studies of civic ceremonial, would have found his nose somewhat out of joint, I fear, because the modern parade consists of floats and marching hordes representing a variety of groups, everything from the recycling lobby to the dogs’ home, alongside the various regiments and mounted police in their regalia. There were beefeatery chaps armed with pikes and various gilded carriages, with and without canopies, carrying the masters of the different guilds (why most of them were enthusiastically gesticulating with glove puppets rather than occasionally condescending to cast their gaze across the throng from beneath their ermines remains a mystery.) The path begins at the Guildhall, processing towards St Paul’s where the new Mayor receives the Dean’s blessing, then on to the Temple to swear allegiance to the Queen, then looping back to the Guildhall. At 5pm the Mayor will ignite a ton (literally, the imperial measure) of fireworks at Blackfriars Bridge. Fireworks are tremendously popular, pulling vast crowds, which seems indicative of the people’s desire to come together against the adversity in the world. Tonight’s show is the biggest on the capital’s calendar. The show was a bit disappointing, largely because it was difficult to see, but I thought that it was quite appropriate that all sorts of elements of the City’s community were involved. The giant milkfloat with its array of bashful milkmaids wearing lopsided, puffy off-the-shoulder blouses and bonnets over the top of their tracksuits was a particular highlight.
It’s November, which means Christmas, and the streets are abuzz. As well as a lot of shopping there are events going on all over the place and the people all seem excited and keen to participate. Again, I think this might reflect a sense of desperation because of fear at the state of the world. There is much less of a feeling of apathy, which was the disturbing though not altogether unsurprising tone that I noted in England last time I flew through (early 2002). Thursday was Remembrance/Armistice Day. A pitched battle was taking place in the papers over the choice of the 10th of July as the commemoration date for the Second World War, diplomatically sited as it is between VE day and the date of V in the Pacific. Those who lost relatives and friends after 10 July are very upset that the celebration which apparently reflects the end of hostilities should take place when they would have still been in the fray. Another fight was raging over whether or not it was appropriate to wear poppies, with one agency for peace offering white poppies, playing on the white feather I imagine, as an alternative to the traditional red ones available on all the highstreets, to express disapproval of conflict per se and commemorating innocent victims of war. Now, most of us in the uni bubble have done a fair bit of thinking about memorialisation in the last 5 years or so, and we tend to feel pretty uncomfortable about the standard forms of commemoration, particularly all of that which revolves around erecting pointy plinths all over the place and perpetuating cult[ure]s of nationalism, etc. We also cringe at the false outpourings, sentiment in place of feeling, as witness the Diana phenomenon and numerous others. I don’t want to spur a debate with my friends on this point, but I chose to wear a poppy, a red one, for the sake of remembering at all, just because so many people have died and suffered physically and emotionally because of wars. And that’s worth remembering, in our too amnestic state. Without politics. In the evening I decided I needed to go out into the world, feeling tired but that it was too early to settle in, so I went into town to take a photo of Nelson up there above the city in the dark. Having done so, I kept wandering, and found myself at Whitehall (my subconscious tends to take me to loaded places – I had no intention of going anywhere in particular). There were barricades all around, ready for the processions, largely delayed until tomorrow where the wreath-laying service will take place at the Cenotaph. Not many people were around, except for in the St Stephen’s Tavern, and I went slowly past the Cabinet War Rooms, looking at the heroic bronzes of generals stood out the front at regular intervals, particularly noting ‘our’ Monty, there with his cocksure splayed legs, oddly sculpted so that his trousers have the look of molten curdy cheese. I went down towards the Thames where people were milling around, and took up a spot on the bank alongside news photographers. Across the river is the Millennium Eye, the giant Ferris wheel with its pods stuck out on the end of hundreds of enormous bicycle spokes, all lit up at night. It stands in front of the County Hall, now home to the Aquarium and the Saatchi Gallery. A little way down is the Shell building, a non-descript flat-faced tower, onto which was projected, that evening, a cascade of poppies on a green ground, pouring down its face over the message ‘Your best way to remember’. Shortly before 6pm a series of searchlights perched on barges and on the banks projected their blue beams into the sky, and at 6 three planes flew low over the river. As they banked up higher again, the beams showed a shower of red droplets. 3 million poppies were dropped over the Thames in honour of those Britons killed in conflict since the end of WW2. Flashes were popping all around, and when it was over the photographers expressed disappointment that the spectacle wasn’t more impressive and didn’t come out so well on film. I think they missed the point.
Last night I heard a performance of Bach’s cantatas by candlelight at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I sat in the doorway of the parson’s box in the side aisle, with a profile view of the alternating soloists framed in the curve beneath the high pulpit bounded on one side by a pillar and cropped by the lid of the harpsichord (the basso was lovely). Sitting there was sort of like being wedged between the layers of a wedding cake, all florid royal icing and marzipan stucco at the top propped up by columns above the dark, cigar wood pews and panelling beneath. It’s not a romantic church, as they go: staid but triumphal in its C18th style with a massive royal coat of arms in pride of place and brass candelabras. But with the lights down it was lovely, and fragrant, softened and suddenly warmed up, more as if it was made from different chocolates. The cantatas are relatively brief and exquisitely sweet, virtuoso play within quite a constrained framework, typically baroque for that – beautiful, easy to digest, but no less special for being ‘easy’. I wouldn’t have minded curling up and sleeping in there.

Ken palace

2004-11-10T20:45:00.000Z

Ken palace
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

The modest view from the end of my street.

roofscape

2004-11-10T20:44:00.000Z

roofscape
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

The view from where I was perched doing my washing.

London, Sunday 7 November 2004

2004-11-10T19:55:00.000Z

My Sunday was one of those lovely days that only this city can offer. I’m going to ignore my ambiguous feelings surrounding my current confused pop culture ape status, sitting here with my machine in a city coffee house, and smash a bottle of bubbly all over my keyboard to launch the Kate (Carrie? Bridget?) virgin blog.
I awoke with the satisfaction of having cruised in a fearless post-plane haze through the previous day’s conference at Queen Mary and slumbered similarly unfazed through the enthusiastic firework explosions as Friday’s Guy Fawkes frenzy carried over through Saturday night. Perhaps it’s all the ghastly war footage but I find myself eerily unmoved by sounds approximating gunfire and mortar detonation. For a nation obsessed, in an endearing and enriching way, with its history, there was a blanket silence concerning the reason for the ‘biggest ever’ bonfire night celebrations. It’s one ugly piece of history and not a good advertisement for tolerance, but there’s nothing like fire to raise the spirits of a foundering populace… Things seem a bit sad and worried here in the UK, as might be expected, and it was not helped at all by the death of the three young Black Watch soldiers in the mindless storming of Fallujah. The fireworks seem to be working as an effective antivenene: fighting (hostile) fire with fire. Anyway, Sunday…
I went up to Covent Garden – generally to be avoided categorically on weekends by all those wishing to avoid/avoid admitting that they are tourists – to visit a regional foods expo. There were dozens of little booths set up in the Piazza pedalling their wares and more importantly offering free samples of the same. I can heartily recommend Kentish cobnuts, which look a bit like acorns, as well as Loch Fyne smoked salmon (didn’t score one of the famous oysters, sadly) and a variety of artisanal cheeses, in particular English goats’ cheese which has a texture like that of a middle-aged cheddar and is far milder than the typical Italo-French-style numbers that we’re used to. I am much enamoured with this regional specialty stuff, even when it starts to approach the slightly fascistic slowfood DOC-style classification. A sample of what was on offer: ale, chocolate, sloe gin, game, bacon, berries, bread, preserves, pies… After some taste testing I decided to head off along Long Acre and away from the throngs. I wander in this city, and I wandered to the Embankment, up and over the Jubilee footbridge, surprised at how few times I had actually crossed the Thames. The view is amazing, of course, and this time has the added attraction of that famous Sir whatsisname’s (will fill in when I remember) phallic rhapsody down towards the Canary Wharf (I think), affectionately known as the Gherkin. Imagine a spacerocket that’s been forced through a softserve icecream machine and come out a bit twisty and you’ll have some idea of what it looks like. Quite fun really; a friendly addition to the skyline. On Southbank in front of the Festival Hall I stopped at the impromptu memorial that has grown around the Met’s murder sign where last week three teenagers beat to death David, a tough-looking, flanny-wearing, thick-set and balding 37-year-old barman. Because he was gay. Candles, flowers, a police information booth in feathery rain. The gulls were milling around in their improbable white, untarnished by grime unlike everything else in the city, but with their black eyes and the egg-shaped patches of grey around them they looked as if they were mourning, faces smeared with ashes. I lingered a while, then carried on a little further thinking of the fear that’s spreading like contagion in the place. I came across two beautiful, beautiful – I mean Rinascimento parade-of-courtiers type beautiful - if parodically over-dressed, youngish blokes laughing and smiling and walking arm in arm whilst their spunky little ginger dachshund gambolled on a scrap of grass. Not victims them. Some life in the world maybe.
Soon I found myself a couple of bridges down, in the shadow of the chimneys of the Tate Modern. The gallery is just superb, and, having not intended to go in that day, I decided to leave it for another time when I felt more focused. So I climbed up onto the wobbly bridge and passed over the Thames again, looking down at the oily little patches of beach on the banks and noticing the preponderance of Spanish tourists. Is it just me, or are the elegant Spanish the only people who actually wear Burberry plaid? It is in keeping with their preference for camel and tan coloured clothing, and sits well with their quilted, leather-bound jackets and smooth-groomed hair. On the other side my eyes were pulled up to the dome of St Paul’s, and I wandered over to the garden on the cathedral’s right flank. The well-tended oblong with its sunken lawn and espaliered fruit trees (ah! I love espaliered trees) has quite a lovely sculpture at its head, a lithe couple caught in their twisted aspiration sideways and upwards, rather like all the marble Daphnis and Chloës morphing into laurels. It is very romantic, and I would endorse it whole-heartedly if it weren’t for the fact that I think it is loaded with a not-so-subliminal ‘family values’ message. Or I could choose to ignore that and enjoy the genuineness of the love it otherwise seems to express. At least she doesn’t seem to be trying to escape.
I decided that what I wanted was a less monumental church, and I could feel my stomach protesting, so I left St Paul’s with its very accommodating flybills advertising a Thanksgiving service for London’s American community. Walking through the centre of town is always interesting, especially on weekends as there’s nobody around. It’s hard to believe that such a busy place can enter this sort of hibernation two days out of seven. I am less familiar with the City, even though I know it quite well from maps, and I am always pleased to learn a new bit of ground. Just when I thought my wandering was taking me to a real dead end – I had been along Little Britain and thought I was finally stuck when I went down a service road for Bart’s hospital – I found a fairly unassuming archway announcing the entrance to the (originally Augustinian) Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great. One becomes accustomed to seeing these remnant gateways crammed cheek by jowl between more modern buildings, and they don’t necessarily signify the survival of the building for which they were constructed. I walked under St Bart’s gate and up the slippery slab pathway past a few gravestones protruding drunkenly from a raised lawn, towards the church which looked to be built from the cocoa coloured bricks that are one of London’s ubiquitous building materials, and which generally betoken construction after the Restoration. I went in to the anteroom of the church and realised that I had found something much more spectacular than the restrained chapel-type neoclassical lines that I had expected. Through the wooden doors and into a capacious pillared interior, arcades of gorgeous soft Romanesque arches (semicircular rather than the pinched points of the gothic), and all with a diffuse chalky light filtering through the lingering haze of what is indisputably a church of the bells and smells persuasion. A couple of cassocked souls were scurrying about in the shadows and I was told they’d be locking up soon, so sadly I had to leave before I’d drunk my fill. There were even deep red flowers and wintry foliage in displays you might expect to find at a very posh wedding. If anyone should find her/himself in EC1, please go and find St Bart. It is extraordinary, and I’m going to give up describing it any further as I can’t hope to give you anything like a reliable impression. Alas, I am no Ruskin, no Pevsner – though some of us might question the distinction of these chaps. But oh, the texture of the floors, the recesses worn into the stone from the footfall of so many years, the papery glass. 1123, dear readers! Incidentally, this was where the scenes of Will Shakespeare’s penitence were filmed for Shakespeare in Love. I vaguely recall the delectable Mr Fiennes kneeling before the altar.
I walked out and found myself at West Smithfield market site, and feeling very satisfied with the upshot of my stumbling I resolved to find a tube station. Back to High St Ken, where Sunday shopping was proceeding wildly, I went up the Church Street and bought The Observer. The Sunday papers are fantastically indulgent and a great economical buy; I’m still reading it this week. I was going to settle in with a coffee somewhere, but couldn’t help going for a bit of a walk through familiar territory (in ’99 I lived behind Notting Hill Gate and I am yet to return there, but I did spend a lot of time walking up and down Campden Hill so I thought I’d just have a bit of a look). Then I thought I’d go a little further afield, given there were so many bodies doing their shopping, so I went to South Ken station and walked through the backblocks of Knightsbridge and Chelsea (ha! if they actually have backblocks…) up to the King’s Road, wandered around there a bit and finally settled in to an armchair in a Caffe Nero. Perhaps it’s not worth remarking the astonishing proliferation of all the different coffee chains. At least the coffee’s pretty good, a whole lot better than what’s available by that name in the bits of the UK not yet invaded. Eventually I wended my way back to the Sloane Sq underground in a light rain, window shopping along the way - dreamy shopping! if you can leave aside all qualms about consumerism. In Kensington again I had a plate of vegies and noodles in an Asian bar, before retiring for Sunday evening BBC (aww, Michael Palin climbing down from the Himalaya), some Radio 4 and more of the colour supplement. No sniggering about my middle class (which I own), middle-aged tastes!
* * * * *
Since Sunday, I have installed myself in a nice bright variation on a bedsit in a perfect spot. Seriously the top end of the market and a different creature entirely from what I’ve experienced before and what I saw when searching for a base. If I manage to upload the photos, the view from the end of my street about 20m from the front door (indeed, out the window) will show you where I am. Yes, that’s the Kensington Gardens. Other miscellaneous facts:
At Sainsbury’s I used the self-checkout, which is great fun if a bit slow for the inexperienced shopper. Signing for the credit card on the little sensor screen I produced a very wonky signature. Note to all those coming to the UK: by January the ‘pin and chip’ system will be enforced uniformly, meaning that you need to know your credit card pin number as well as signing for things. Shopping in a different place is always amusing for a while, and I’m heartily enjoying Braeburns and Bramleys, the mysterious Satsuma citrus and fresh salmon that’s cheaper than sausages. The organic movement’s in full flight as is the push for local produce, and it’s nice to know the name of the farmer who grew your raspberries, though I feel slightly uneasy about this tendency to name and even photograph the suppliers and their farms because there is something a bit feudal about being reassured that the labourers are in their place, identifiable and doing their job.
I registered at the IHR (Institute of Historical Research) up at the university yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised by its shambolic interior and the way they waived the need to look at any identifying documents, unlike the customs and immigration officers who, perhaps not unreasonably, have a special suspicion reserved for young antipodeans. Soon we’ll be giving blood samples. And yes, we have been referred to as antipodeans twice so far in academic settings. I went to a seminar at the IHR last night and met some great people, including a few heavies, followed by a gently raucous dinner at a Chinese restaurant around the corner.
And now I must go and attend to more prosaic matters. Some of this blog was written sitting on the roof (see photo) while my washing was spinning, and now it’s finished I need to go and buy a plug and a teatowel and a few things that the mind didn’t register on previous provisioning expeditions. Where did I put my jacket?

City Heat

2004-10-31T04:33:00.000Z

City Heat
Originally uploaded by Kate Riley.

Hot down, summer in the city...

2004-10-24T03:51:00.000Z

Test post.