'Roger's Rant' rocks Dorset

Even before I had a work-permit, the Lovely Miss Lizzy had booked the last weekend in July on my calendar. Her dad Roger, a dyed in the wool folkie from wayback, was turning A Significant Number and decided, rather than a party, that he would host his very own folk festival in their wee village in Dorset, and would I please come along?

Would I ever!

The weekend started out just like an Enid Blyton adventure - when curious work chums asked where I was headed, all I knew was 'my friend's parents house in a tiny village somewhere in Dorset'.

Lizzy turned up fortified with provisions for the drive down (cold sausages, pork pies, and some sugar snap peas as a token nod to Lizzy's new gym membership) and we slung instruments and overnight bags into her car, pausing briefly to admire the view in Salisbury and stopping to gather booze at the nearest late night stupormarket, whiling away the hours nattering like a pair of girls gettting ready for a sleepover.

Actually, as I was staying in Lizzy's old bedroom, it was JUST like a sleepover. People whose parents still live in the 'family home' have the most fascinating personal spaces - it's quite mesmerising to be installed amongst all the relics of someone's life: old treasures still highly prized, recent castoffs. And in Lizzy's case, a superhigh single bed with a tiny window set into the sloping roof that looks over the main street of the village.

Milborn St Andrews is the kind of place where kids grow up rambling over fields, and learning to ceilidh dance. There is one shop and one pub. It was gorgeous!

Roger's birthday celebrations kicked off that very evening, with a quick bite of supper before heading down to the (one) pub for a music session. There was something strange-yet-familiar about hearing folk songs I've learned in Oxford repeated miles away as part of someone else's musical tradition, some verses slightly altered or omitted all together, choruses sung to slightly different harmonies. And one bloke sang a song that I know for a fact was written by my oxford drinking chum, Ian Woods. Then there were a whole lot that I'd never heard... I have so much to learn!!

Seeing Lizzy catch up with old friends from school continued the strange-but-familiar theme; it was like going home to my cousins' old stomping ground in the Gippsland district, three hours from Melbourne. Familiar stories even though the faces were of strangers, people I didn't know, but might have heard tales about, and who all made me feel very welcome, just because I was a friend of a friend and had 'come all this way, to Milborne'.

Music sessions followed on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with a ceilidh (I was asked to sing in a break - eek! and yippee!) and supper on the Saturday night in the village hall. Astoundingly, in all those hours of music, I never heard the same song twice...

Roger is the most remarkable cook. His supper and Sunday-tea tables read like a Blyton novel too - scones with home made preserves, pork pie, mushroom quiches, Dundee cake and things I don't even rightly remember the names of. I was sent home with fresh eggs and home grown raspberries tucked into my bag, feeling rather spoilt.

Roger had so much fun he wants to do it all again next year. I think that's a cracking idea.

Flood update: no longer funny

Okay, the first day it was all a bit of a hoot, all that wading and joking about sewage - but 24 hrs later, two of my workmates didn't make it in, or went home early, because their houses were about to be flooded, and several other mates moved all their gear to upstairs floors because their backyards have become swamps.

They said at first it was the biggest flood since 1947 (what joy they must've been amid the post-war rebuilding going on). By the end of the week it was the worst in 200 years.

Oxfordshire and Warwickshire (where we live and Ants works) have been two of the worst hit areas, although not a patch on Gloucestershire, where 350,000 people have no drinkable water and thousands have no power after a substation flooded.

Our home is fine - on a big hill - although this first pic shows how badly the Cherwell has bust its banks, just a mile from home. The actual riverbed is about 200 metres out of shot to your right...

Ants couldn't get to work the first Monday - Oxford train station had been closed since Friday. Banbury (half way between here and Warwick ) was under 2-3 feet of water, and there was no rail-line or road open between Oxford and Birmingham. Parts of Oxford around the station are flooded, and buses to Eynsham, the village where I work (4 miles from Oxford), were diverted a good 5 miles around the wet mess.

Far worse off though is Witney, about 5 miles out from Eynsham, and home to a lot of the lads and lasses from work, which has been partly under water for 2 days. Their high street finally reopened today, but might go under again overnight, as the river Windrush may rise again as more water moves down from upstream.

Eynsham has a severe flood warning in place because the Thames runs right past it and there's a danger of roads being cut. As it is, the Thames, normally 10-15 metres wide, is more a lake than a river these days... (I took these pix out the bus window on the way to work).
The two lines of trees in this last pic show where the Thames usually runs.

It’s all a little freaky but we're keeping ourselves safe and dry. And thank the gods, all our mates are okay.

Flood story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6911226.stm

Oxford Pix: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6911497.stm

Oxford story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/6911321.stm

Back home, 'Aunty' has picked it up too: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/23/1986116.htm

Paddling home...

After days on end of rain, which has seen major flooding in many parts of England, Ants and I decided to chance a walk into town to see the Oxford Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museums.
We've been wondering for a couple of days how long it would take for the rain that's fallen upstream to make its way down to us, flooding Oxford's famous water meadows. The answer: about three hours, between when we walked into town at 2pm (commenting at how high the Cherwell was running) and when we headed home around 5pm.

The pathway that had been dry when we left was now under 6 inches of water for several hundred metres!

Undaunted (and in true English style), we doffed boots, rolled up our trousers and waded through, then came home for a wash, and a nice cup of tea...

The Museums, by the way, were amazing - complete throwbacks to 18th and 19th century colonialist 'collector' mentality - there were Moa skeletons and a triceratops skull, shrunken heads from South America and countless beads, pieces of jewellry and other artefacts from so called 'exotic' cultures around the world. I'll say this in their favour though - unlike the British Museum (aka the 'Museum of Stuff We Nicked' according to my English chum Mark), there is at least lip service given to ensuring that the materials on display have 'mostly' been donated by the indigenous peoples that created them or at least 'traded for european goods'. A good start.

And a jolly fine afternoon!

Ely Cathedral

Ely lies just a short train journey from Cambridge, across flat farming land that was no more than a boggy marsh until 300 years ago, when Dutch engineers were brought in to drain the swamps (who would know more about keeping water at bay than the lowlanders of Holland?)

Known locally as the 'Ship of the Fens ', Ely Cathedral is said to be one of the most stunning. I have to agree. A lot of the stonework is not original, nor is the riot of painted colour - both are the work of caring Victorians with an eye for detail, who could not bear to see the building fall into ruin. They have my thanks!

Ely is also one of the most accessable cathedrals - for a wee extra fee, you can join a tour that goes right up inside the gorgeous apex and out onto the roof. The views, inside and out, are amazing. Just look...

Day-trip to Cambridge

Cambridge and Oxford: two of the most famous universities in the world and so much in a world of their own that they are collectively referred to as "Oxbridge".

Living in one, it was inevitable that eventually I would have to visit the other. So one spare Saturday back in June, I hopped on a bus for the three hour journey across the southern English flatlands.

I was not disappointed. Oxford claims to be older, but Cambridge tells its story more freely: its colleges are mostly free to enter during the day (Oxfords' charge up to £6 - that's $A15 - a pop) and tales are written on walls, leaflets, storyboards,. My Let's Go guide provided the rest.

What struck me was the number of colleges founded by women. Clare College was founded by Elizabeth de Clare, descended of my hero, William Marshall. St John's was founded by Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.

Clare College

St John's College, and Margaret Beaufort's statue

At the front of Trinity College(below) , founded by Henry VIII, grows an apple tree said to have been descended from the one that dropped an apple on on Isaac Newton's head, inspiring his treatises on a weird new concept, called 'gravity'. 'Let's Go' says the college is Britain's third largest landowner, after the Queen and the Church, and that it's possible to walk from Cambridge to Oxford without stepping off Trinity land.

Lording over them all, though, is Kings college, featuring the university's only fountain (somebody famous used to bathe nude in it - I forget who) and a massive chapel that features' Reuben's Adoration of the Magi. How could anyne fail to be inspired reading for a degree in such a place?

Behind the main college buildings, grassy lawns slope down to the river Cam, named since saxon times and source of the town's name. The Cam was littered with punters, launching themselves beneath the Bridge of Sighs (every self respecting town has one, built in the Venetian style - Cambridge's even spans over water, unlike the one in Oxford).

I confess I had gone to Cambridge secretly hoping that my adopted home town would prove itself superior in every way. Parochial? I guess I must be.

Cambridge's oldest building - a 12thC Norman church

The first thing that struck me, though, was that Cambridge somehow felt more open and spacious, and therefore bigger. As I wandered through, I realised how subtle differences made a big difference. Where Oxford's colleges have thick walls, or even whole rooms, facing onto the street, Cambridge's stone walls feature openings of various shapes, providing a glimpse of the wide lawns and quads beyond. Cambridge streets are more likely to be paved with stone instead of asphalt, making them lighter in colour and less at odds with their surroundings. Several market squares are bordered in traditional buildings - so far removed from Oxford's Gloucester Green or Frideswide Square (both ugly and unco-ordinated). Even their modern buildings - shops and the like - are made in complementary styles, colours and finishes, so that in 3 hours of wandering I saw none of the eyesore 1960s council buildings or concrete carparks that caused Bill Bryson to rail against people calling Oxford one of England's beautiful cities.

He's right - my home town's beauty is patchy. Anthony's view, that Oxford 'always looks like it's trying to keep everyone else out'. There's even less litter in Cambridge. Oxford council, expect a barrage of mail on dud planning decisions very soon...

Oxford still has much to crow about: Cambridge may be prettier, grander even, but Oxford feels more lived in and more ethnically and socially diverse. If Cambridge has a seedy, arty, musical underbelly, she didn't show it to me that day.

Best of all, as my bus wound its way back across the heartland, arriving in Oxford felt like coming home.

My first (outdoor) festival - Cornbury!

After the wettest June on record, it stopped raining for the weekend (although only for the weekend!), so that I could go to my first outdoor music festival! (Okay, maybe not just for me.)

Cornbury is kind of a sister event to the Oxford Folk festival, held in the grounds of Cornbury Park mansion, about 15 miles from Oxford. I went with one of the girls from work – a Dublin lass named Ciara, no less – and friends of hers, so I wasn’t hanging around entirely without mates, although I arrived at least 3 Pimms before they did.

Ciara turned up sporting the brightest wellies (sorry – gumboots!) and smallest skirt combo I’ve ever seen, expecting ‘sunny day but wet ground’, only to find that the main stages were all on a hill, which had drained beautifully overnight so we could even sit on the grass. Miss Dublin proved remarkably adept at moving from sitting to standing with her dignity intact – although she did confess, having downed a few pints that ‘I did put on absolutely huge pants this morning, just in case'.

Pants, for the uninitiated, are NEVER trousers in England, as most Aussies find out to their detriment...

Smalls and practicalities aside, what a day! The music was all fantastic. Big names included The Waterboys, the Proclaimers, Hothouse Flowers and David Gray, plus some new people I'd never heard of before and DEFINITELY have to buy albums from! Yet another Dublin lass, this one named Imelda May, just blew my sox off with funky ska-inspired jazz blues. Plenty of Pimms & Lemonade (which is THE summer drink of choice over here!), ciders – very reasonable at 3 quid a pint – sunburn, and a good boogie had by all.

Anthony missed the fun, but don’t feel too sorry for him – he was away in Wales, having scored a re-enactment job with Nick, his boss at work, at Beaumaris castle. It's on the Isle of Anglesey, which is somewhere I have been DYING to go for ages... check this out!!!

I'm a bit jealous - must make him take me back there!!
PS Yes, that IS Anthony wielding a pike. Doesn't he look tall?!

Faith in human nature

Remember how buzzed I was about having a bike? Well I was gutted when six weeks later it got nicked from Oxford rail station, specially since I was too broke at the time to replace it.

However, the pedal power pixies must’ve been looking out for me - I arrived home on Thursday to a letter from the police saying my bike had turned up in a hedge about 8 miles away. A chap from the local football club found it and turned it in. I picked it up today, it's in almost perfect working order.

I'll be sore tomorrow though, cos I rode it all the way home...

All aboard for hogwarts, erm, I mean Christ Church

Oxford Cathedral is actually located within the grounds of Christ Church college, one of Oxford's most elite halls of residence. It was founded by Cardinal Wolsey, and later taken over by Henry VIII (when he took over most of Wolsey's grand plans, including Hampton Court Palace).

So the only way you can see the cathedral is to pay the (rather stiff) entrance fee - unless you go to a service on Sunday, something I'd like to do just for the free squizz.

And yes, the other thing Christ Church is famous for is that its dining hall and grand staircase provided the inspiration for the sets of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter flicks. You can see the similarities, below...

Uffington Chalk Horse...

...is the oldest chalk horse in Britain, at least 3000 years old. And it's in Oxfordshire! I've brought a few folk to see this in their travels. It's next to the remains of an ancient fort, known as Uffington Castle, but it's doubtful there was ever more than timber palisades here. Still, it's pretty cool, winding your way up a steep hill, wondering if your little hire car will make the distance, and battling fierce wind and cowpats up to the chalky bits. Cool.

Charles I's ironic folly and Hampton court revisited

It was the last weekend before our Historic Royal Palaces memberships expire, so I had to cross two more sights off my list this weekend.

The Banqueting House is all that remains of the royal palace at Whitehall, which was once, at 15o0 rooms, the largest building in the world. Whitehall burned down several times in its history, finally remaining unrestored after 1698 and gradually being subsumbed by other buildings, including Downing Street and much of Pall Mall.

The surviving room is famous for its massive, vaulted ceiling, covered with ornate and beautiful art painted by Reubens, commissioned by King Charles I. Ironically, the monarch was walked through or past the hall on the morning of his execution, in 1649. A pivotal tale in English history, perhaps, but at the end of the day, it's just a building...

Far more exciting was Hampton Court Palace revisited. I'd made a whistlestop journey out here just before moving to Oxford. This time, with Anthony and Nicola in tow, we made a day of it - and still didn't see everything!

What to say about this place (she says, furiously checking back to see what she said last time, in May 2006). Oh, here we go:
"This sprawling masterpiece was started by Cardinal Wolsey, chief advisor to Henry VIII, and like so much of Wolsey's work, taken over by Henry when the good cardinal fell from favour after refusing to divorce the King from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Little remains from Big Henry's time, although his Great Hall - which even with seating for 500, was too small to feed all his staff at one sitting - and nearby reception rooms have been recently restored. The Chapel Royal is larger than many village churches and the kitchens have to be seen to be believed."

I was agog, once again, at Henry's kitchens, and spent far too much time trying to work out the ebb and flow of daily culinary life. I also had a big fat gripe to Ants about how the cafe, just metres from one of the world's most famous kitchens, turns out such crap and modern (and overpriced!) food. Prepackaged sarnies and salads and cake... I don't care if they were made fresh at the palace today, where are the slices of Grete Pye, the quails eggs, herb salads and baked custard tarts that would have been served to the king - and could turn a tidy profit AND make people smile here! It's becoming a regular beef (pun intended) of mine - English tourist attractions do nothing to improve foreigners' perceptions of English food. If only I were allowed a second job...

The best bits, though, were still to come. The Tudor buildings have been progressively expanded over time, by William of Orange, the Georges and others, and these rooms finally show some of the grandeur and ceremony I've seen from Renaissance Europe and had fully expected to find in the palaces of a nation that considered herself great. (I still hold to my theory that any country with as many royal residences as England has could never fit them out as sumptuously as a Versailles, a Schonbrunn or Schloss Charlottenburg. If only the English had learned to bathe! Then they wouldn't have had to flee to new premises every two months to avoid impending outbreaks of disease...)

Anyway, I trawled endlessly through royal suites, wandered the amazing gardens and even found the Royal Tennis court (with people actually playing Royal Tennis on it - cool!). It's probably best explained by pictures...




Above: Hampton Court's exteriors - from Tudor to Renaissance and the lavish gardens.
Below: the famed (and much lusted after) kitchens - check out the size of the spit fireplaces!!!

Cool, huh?

Posh nosh in England

Ants was working all weekend, so I found a B&B in Warwick and took m'self off to dinner while the boy finished work.

A decent bar will always get my vote if they don't turn a hair when you walk in, pick up a wine list and order a glass of wine and a table for one. The Keep gets full marks.

Maybe they thought I was an eccentric heiress? Certainly the service was lovely - attentive and perfectly timed. And they'd seated me in a perfect little nook opposite two angled mirrors - so I could see everything going on in the restaurant but not have to stare at visions of myself dining.

And the food! Penne with a luscious garlicky cream sauce and courgettes (I even remembered to call them courgettes!), impossibly crisp steamed veg (England doesn't typically 'do' vegetables much, crisp or otherwise!), decadent icecream and chocolate desserts, fresh herbal teas and a really scrummy wine list.

It's fair to say that the English have spent decades earning their reputation for appalling food. Greasy pub grub, kebabs that don't quite smell right, veg boiled to within an inch of its life, baked beans at breakfast. And what is it with 'salad cream'???

On my budget, I've enjoyed precious few truly memorable meals (although haggis with whisky sauce in Edinburgh, tea at The Ritz in London, and the eclectic Georgetown in Leeds experience all rate a mention). I've had many forgettable meals that cost a lot more than the £20 I parted with this night.

I'll definitely be back - and will bring friends if I can.

Sending m'self to Coventry

After catching up with that gorgeous bloke of mine, who has been working fearsome hard of late, we found a fantastic little guesthouse (plain but comfy rooms and nice touches, like real coffee and herbal tea at brekkie!). Next morning, I took myself off to Coventry in search of the country's newest Cathedral and a glimpse of the naked lady statue - this is, after all, Godiva territory.

I've always been curious to see the town that my Cuzin Tup called home for a couple of years. And it gave me a chance to add to my Cathedral tally (now at 8, plus 5 Abbeys) - although "Cov's" is the most unusual yet. The Church of St Stephen wasn’t actually a cathedral at all for most of its life – the ‘official’ cathedral of Coventry was nearby St Mary’s, although it never really recovered after the reformation… After surviving eight centuries of warfare, Reformation and the decay of old age, St Stephens was granted cathedral status in 1918, only to be firebombed by the Germans in November 1940 (Mum, in case you're interested, the unlucky day was the 14th...)

Ironically, reinforcing iron beams that had been installed just a few decades earlier to support the roof contributed to the building’s demise – as they warped in the heat they pulled the whole structure down in on itself.
The ruined building was cleared of rubble and cleaned, then left as a reminder of the war, in the same way that some churches in Germany have (the KaiserWilhelmGedachtsnichtKirke in Berlin springs to mind). The nave now stands open to the sky, the windows still clinging to fragments of shattered stained glass, the only complete structure a bell tower.

Walking out what would have once been a left transept door, the whole building flows seamlessly into the new cathedral built next door. I hadn't, at first, intended to go in there, but it rained, so in I went.

It smells like an old church, and for a new building, it captures the majesty of buildings centuries older. Stark soaring stone, ribbed and membraned vaulted ceilings with cris-crossing stone and timber, modern takes on stained glass masterpieces, and behind the altar, vibrant from floor to arcing ceiling, a brilliant green, gold and grey tapestry of Christ lends warmth and colour to natures greys, browns and bronze. Above the choir stalls, spiky timber 'trees' hold lights - or are they doves of peace? I couldn't help but be impressed, although there were too many congregationists around to feel quite right taking photos. This was a place for the practicing of a thoroughly modern faith, and fundamentally holy. I took my leave.

Of course, Coventry is also famous for Lady Godiva, the Saxon queen whose husband said in jest that his wife would ride naked on horseback through the town before he would lower taxes. As someone with good experience in getting my kit off for a noble cause, I can only stand and applaud this one!

Surprise. Anthony didn't give a toss about my cathedral photos, but really wanted to see these ones! *sigh*