Roman, aquatic, seedy, feral feet, verbal scoring, statuephilia

This week's highlights - apart from the general joy of having the week off werk:

1 Roman: Last Saturday, to Colchester (as JN has already blogged): the first Roman capital of their province of Britannia, before Boudicca (Boadicea) set it aflame. Time Team programmes showing excavations along the city wall, and of the hippodrome race-track alerted us to History Stuff there, as had glimpses of castle from taxi rides when I visited our local office there. So we boarded train at Liverpool St to tick the city off our 'must go see' list. At Colchester main station, we changed to a waiting (new?) Colchester Town shuttle train, just by the impressive ruins of St Botolph's Priory (C12); info boards there told us that St Botolph was a patron saint of travellers, whose churches generally stood outside city gates (as with London's St Botolph's), and that the name was usually a sign of Saxon foundation. The walking tour copied from Ramblers Association magazine took us around a stretch of Roman city wall, used as the boundary to a vast car park, to the river (low tide, lots of lovely mud) and a half-timbered Siege House with Civil War musket holes marked out by red metal rings, beside a grand Mill being sold off in apartments as one of many new residential developments -- Colchester, like Stevenage, is first stop out of London on the fast trains so an inviting commute. Shame about the City crash, and all those potential high-paying buyers brought low. Up East Hill, lined with dinky half-timbered, Georgian and Regency frontages -- but the amount of noisy speeding traffic still allowed through all this picturesque heritage came as a nasty shock, which shows how much we now expect old towns to be either traffic-free or traffic-calmed. Up to Colchester Castle, which signs claimed to be the largest Norman keep built in England, built on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius. The museum inside has, not surprisingly, an impressive Roman collection, particularly mosaics. We also caught a 'Guardians of theEmperor' exhibition, of Chinese miniature terracotta army figures from one of the later imperial tombs. On, past the ancient
St Helen's Church, now an Armenian Orthodox icon-adorned parish, and past the 'Jumbo' iron water tower, to the Balkerne Gate -- which says it's the only surviving Roman gateway in Britain (since Lincoln's was demolished by a passing lorry). Hole in the Wall pub beside it, and another long stretch of Roman city wall running along downhill from it. And after that, we trickled along the shopping streets, gathering loot. I make a point of checking out charity shops, on the grounds that what's bought from them is virtuous recycling in aid of a good cause, not self-indulgent consumerism. Joseph dived into a games shop and acquired a Scrabble set.

2 Verbal scoring: So evenings, we've been playing Scrabble during breaks in the telly-viewing schedule. JN plays it one lunchtime a week at werk, and now he gets to practice on me at home too, with the aid of the Scrabble Dictionary he has also acquired. We also have the Compact OED, with magnifying glass -- 12 vol dictionary reduced to two vols, plus another volume Addendum, to which we can appeal when the Scrabble dicker fails to acknowledge a word that one of us is sure has legitimate existence. I'm not much into games, but do enjoy the competitive pedantry of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. So far, we're neck and neck -- or I may be just ahead on points and the luck of the draw. We're pretty equal on the low cunning of hitting the high-scoring squares. JN keeps score

3 Statuephilia: To the British Museum Thursday evening, to see the golden and contorted Kate Moss, as illustrated in all the press coverage, meeting JN there when he finished werk. Greeted by a miniature Angel of the North, dominating the main entrance lobby a mere 20 or so feet tall with 40 foot wings (or 7m and 14m): JN managed to walk in past it without actually noticing it, intent on tracking me down where I was sketching in the Egyptian gallery (a sphinx and giant scarab). We toured the five Statuephilia displays. Moss among classical Greek marbles, nicely juxtaposed with the crouching Lely Venus, the surface sheen of her golden skin and undies finely textured. Ron Mueck's giant self-portrait head contrasting in colour and form with the similarly gigantic Easter island figure at whose standing feet it lies on its side. In the press photos, it looked pretty pointless, but when you stand by it, the detail of chin stubble, eyelashes, lined and wrinkled skin textures, and the pull of gravity on the soft tissues of mouth, chin and cheeks all seem touching -- human weaknesses, contrasting with the sternly stylised stone god above. Facing the entrance of the Enlightenment Gallery, the tall glass-fronted C18 display shelves are given over to Damien Hirst: an array of identical plastic human skulls, all splashed with vivid enamel paints. A reflection on museums as collectors of death, of course. But the Egyptian Gallery 'Dark Stuff' installation struck me as a cleverer way of making that point: two pikes with what seemed a random mass of stuff spiked on their points, casting the shadows of two human heads on the wall behind them; when you look at the stuff, you see it is made up of the mummified bodies of cats, rats, mice, birds, squirrel, insects, snailshells... If I were the museum, I'd want to keep all of them except the Hirst -- or perhaps move the Hirst to the Wellcome Gallery of health and death, alongside the equally gaudy Mexican 'Night of the Dead' display.

4 Aquatic: the birds have come back to the swimming pool roof -- showing that it's now chilly enough for the warmth rising from the pool to attract them to stand on the glass panels above. So backstroke now enlivened by watching the permutations of their (mostly) one-legged silhouettes. So far, mainly the white shapes of seagulls -- pigeons presumably less sissy about temperature. Four swims this week, mostly 50 lengths/40 mins but Friday I made it to 70 lengths/60 mins.

5 Feral feet: But I'm ordered off swimming for the next week at least, and have to shower with my right foot in a plastic bag. My feet have been going weird for some years now: toenails more like claws, and lately, big toenails curving into a shape that illustrates what 'ingrowing' means. Last week, the right big toenail reacted to me being put into snug-fitting stylish boots for a whole day by cutting into its groove, which this week developed into infection. So I found a local chiropodist (Thu and Sat at the pharmacy around the corner), and yesterday found out what chiropodists do. As a consequence, I now have a right foot impressively swathed in surgical dressings: all toenails cut back and filed down by a whirring electric burr; the ingrowing strip cut right out from along the side of the right toenail, and a deep corn identified and cut out. All without pain, and leaving me able to walk away quite normally. Most impressed by the feral-foot taming: good value for £30/session.

6 Seediness: a while back, I decided I could cope with organising a local Seed Swap Day next spring: 22 Feb 09, at Bruce Castle. I got the borough-wide Allotments Forum, and Sustainable Haringey Food group to back it, and the Council to book the venue. This week, I've done something about it: checked with Hazel at Bruce Castle about space, basic layout, and options for running refreshments; and yesterday dashed off e-mails setting up a planning meeting with the Food Group and allotments people. And even managed to put info up on the web at www.sevensisterspermaculture.wikispaces.com

7. Party last night, flung by local artist and organisers of Friends of Tottenham Marshes, who live, we discovered, in the shadow of Spurs stadium. This afternoon, Friends of Bruce Castle AGM: JN is resigning as newsletter editor (after umpty years) but will stay on the committee; I am being hauled along as quorum fodder, and will take hyperbolic coral crocheting to get on with.

Colchester

Thwarted by bad weather two weekends ago, we had to abandon our planned visit to Colchester, first capital of Roman Britain (where, that weekend, some Roman re-enactments had been planned -- but which would probably have had to be drastically scaled down, so perhaps we didn't miss much). This Saturday just past, the weather was much better -- the forecast promised a pale overcast typical of the English autumn, but instead we had near cloudless skies for much of the day, following a walking tour (published by the Ramblers Association in their quarterly magazine "Walk") around the most historic bits of the town, with a long detour into Colchester Castle Museum for an inspection of their extensive Roman collections. (The Castle Museum is in fact a roofed-over Norman keep, the largest ever constructed in Britain by William's conquerors and the model for the Tower of London's White Tower.) And a temporary exhibition, of which we knew naught until we read a brochure on the train to Colchester, of terracotta figurines from the royal tombs at Xuzhou, capital of China's Western Han dynasty from 206 BCE to 8 CE. (Apparently, Essex is twinned with the PRC's Jiangsu Province -- who knew?) This unfortunately meant that we had to skip Hollytrees Museum of Local History, and -- running short of time before our train back to London -- failed to locate the extravagant early Tudor gatehouse to St John's Abbey (all that's left of the Abbey) just south of the town's Roman/medieval/Civil War walls, but never mind: Colchester has a Roman re-enactment on the first weekend of every October, so in twelve months' time we might be back there to examine what we missed on this visit. (Including the guided tour of the Castle which visits parts of it not otherwise open to the public, such as the Roman foundations of the Temple to the Emperor Claudius, destroyed in the Boudiccan Revolt in 60 CE.) In the meantime, enjoy this selection of photographs -- of the Castle Museum, of Judith at the Balkerne Gate (the main entrance to the town in the Roman period, which is thought to have begun life as a triumphal arch to the Claudian invasion before its destruction in the Boudiccan Revolt), St Botolph's Priory -- the first Augustinian monastery in England -- and the Saxon tower of Holy Trinity Church, both constructed of reused Roman bricks and tiles, and the historic holes in Siege House caused by the musket balls of the Royalist troops on 5 July 1648 as they attempted to break through the ring of Parliamentarians who were besieging the town. A strange siege, considering that the town actually supported the Parliamentarians during the Civil War, and the Royalists had been allowed to billet themselves there on the understanding that they would move on after just one night....

You Can't Trust These Judiths

I was standing on the roof of the narrowboat as it forged upstream towards the M25 beyond Picketts Lock, spreading my arms wide, doing my king-of-the-world impersonation, urging Judith to take a photograph of me; and she did. Or she thought she did. Or her camera told her she did. But when we got home this afternoon from our boat trip up the River Lee (or Lea) we found that in fact no such photograph had been taken. Had the camera baulked at the shortness of my skirt? The daredevilness of my balancing on the roof having ingested so much wine? Or had The Wugster basically effed up with the picture taking?

Detailed explanation must surely await another time. Until that time, here are a couple of rather duller pictures of our time on the water this afternoon. (It's the second weekend of October! It's warmer than it was in August! Kick it for me one time, dude!)

The Last of Summer

Very erratic weather we've been having for the past couple of years, as Judith has doubtless mentioned before. This year, June and July were dry, sunny and very warm; August was rather cool, damp and overcast; September gave us wild swings from one extreme to the other. A fortnight ago, on a Friends of Bruce Castle outing to Kentwell Manor in Suffolk, we had glorious sunshine and temperatures of 18 Celsius; last weekend was rain, rain and more rain, putting the kibosh on our planned trip to Colchester for some Roman re-enactments.

This weekend -- when we should have been experiencing autumnal chills, with even the daytime temperatures heading towards 10 to 13 -- we're back at 19: blue skies and sunshine, warm enough to walk around in next to nothing. (Well, next to nothing as far as I'm concerned; Judith, whose temperature response system was set by growing up in the Bismarck Archipelago, finds anything less than 25 Celsius to require a fleece jacket and double-layer trousers.) Here's a couple of photographs of us on our allotment this afternoon -- Judith weeding amongst the beans (newly-planted beans, you will notice, growing vigorously away as though it weren't October at all), and me strimming down the grass to make compost with the allotment association's strimmer.

Tomorrow, according to the forecast, should be a degree or two warmer, with the clouds still holding off. Should be just fine for our boat trip up the River Lea with other members of the Friends of Tottenham Marshes. Photographs of that in due course!

Scott Hanna's E-Mail Address

....is sp_hanna@yahoo.com.au.

I've had a quick look through Blogger's help files, but can't immediately locate (if indeed it exists) a page explaining how those other than the blog administrator can add people. So the quickest and easiest way to add Scott as a contributor may be to send him an invitation, in the same way Judith and I were added.

After the builders

So here we are: the Builders finished On Friday, leaving us with the strong smell of paint and shoulder deep in boxes to unpack back into their contents' ordained places. I had the first two weeks of the building work off, and Joseph had their final week off: my, what a lot of incidental little jobs you find that you'd better deal with in the wake of builders doing the big work. What difference has the work made? First effect of the insulation that we've noticed is how much quieter it makes the front of the house -- we see cars drive by, but no longer hear them through the walls. We haven't yet been able to see what difference the insulation makes to temperatures inside: true, we had a run of chilly days, but we kept windows open to let out the paint smell, and now that we can breathe inside with windows shut, the weather's gone mild again. But even so, I think those rooms that didn't have a brisk gale blowing through them felt kinda cosier, with no clues as to outside temperature striking through the brick of the walls. We'll find out as winter sets in.

During yesterday's rain, which flooded various parts of the country and stopped us heading off to Colchester to see Roman re-enactments among the genuine Roman ruins, we were able to admire the raindrops plonking onto the new glass roof outside the kitchen door and running off to end up in our new slim-line mini water-butt (100 litre). Our big job yesterday was taking up the old bathroom carpet, which used to be cream but caught the black dust that came down when the old ceiling collapsed, JN used it as a template to cut the new carpet (of a shade called porcelain, but pretty much the same cream) to size. One of our two DIY encylopedias gave detailed instructions for the laying of foam carpets: put down underlay of strong brown paper or similar (most of the old paper layer was still intact enough to re-use); put double-sided tape around the edge of the room and fixtures. We got that far on Sunday: this evening we tackle laying the carpet and securing its edges on the double-sided tape. Meanwhile, most of the kitchen is now back in place -- except that we need to re-paint gloss white a set of shelves which now looks yellowed against the spanking clean new white walls. So the two (or is it three?) boxes of stuff to go back on it remain piled up in the living room behind the TV. So do half a dazen boxes of my clothes, which can't be sorted back onto built-in wardrobe shelves until JN has sawed off the end of each shelf the 20mm now occupied by insulating sempatap.

The new roofed over back passageway (porch? loggia?) is jam-packed with stuff to be sorted into some sort of order. Some of it is rubbish, to be thrown into the back of the municipal dust-cart tomorrow morning (but will we be able to hear it so we can make sure it does get taken away?) Some of it should get decoratively arranged onto the folding white-covered wire grill greenhouse shelves currently leaning against the dining room sideboard, once JN has performed the miracle of the electric drill and rawl plugs to mar the pristine whiteness of our new boundary wall. And I need to re-glue tesserae into the mosaic splashback I made to go above the washbasin in the bathroom, which has been painted a bit more insistently aqua than it used to be. Apart from that, almost back to normal.

One week down ... one to go

The first week of the school holidays has passed relatively uneventfully.

We've spent days in the park playing basketball or cricket, riding bikes (avoiding swooping magpies!) along the river, or at the pool splashing around.

We did manage to see Wall E - which we all liked - although Hamish was not as keen on it as the rest of us. The none-to-suble message about the oncoming collaspe of the environment due to human abuse and overuse didn't phase the kids much. The kids are used to continual messages about "reduce, recycle, reuse" so didn't really comment of the wider issues wrapping round the main love story in the film

Hamish, Connor and I (Bella opted not to go) also visited the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition with wooden models of his inventions. The kids were impressed with all the moving cogs and wheels but the replica model flying machines were voted "most impressive".

The photos at the top of this post are of Hamish and Connor working out how to put together the pole bridge Leonardo designed. It took us a while of fiddling around but we eventually got there.

Uriah Jack came to stay with us on Wednesday and Thursday night. It was good to catch up with him as we hadn't seen him since Christmas last year. He seems to be enjoying boarding school - more than he thought he would apparently. He played soccer and table tennis last term and says he has two best friends who he hangs out with most of the time. Jack is in Geraldton now with his mother for the rest of the holidays I think.

Tomorrow the kids and I are heading down south to Albany. Mark is off overseas again (Malaysia) to talk to some people about building a waste management recycling plant (he should have come to see Wall E with us). Weather permitting I hope to take the kids to the Stirling ranges for a walk up one of the mountains one day - but I am not sure what we will do the rest of the time. I am taking down some bikes to leave there and will bring the wet suits to go swimming - so this should keep us busy . We will also try to catch up with Julian briefly on the way back home on Friday.

Anyway toodaloo - and I will drop another line when we get back home.

What's happened to Farmer Julian

Got Scott visiting this weekend, so have just showed him the family blog. And looking at the Channel 9 web-site, Farmer Julian seems to have vanished. What's happened?

Greatest Show in Tottenham

A weekend or so ago was Lordshop Rec Festival, with the Second Annual Tottenham Food and Produce Show. Of course I entered some stuff: my colourful hyperbolic crochet coral reef won a first, so did my arrangement of assorted seedheads. My jar of apple and pear jelly didn't win any award. And my blue plastic bag, a string bag crocheted out of the bags that the local small groceries round here give away, cut round and round into long strips, won second in the handknits and crochet class. Both the crochet projects were conversation pieces. Particularly with the plastic bag, people going around would glance over the display, then do a double take as they fingered it and recognised that it was indeed a plastic bag made out of the common or garden throwaway bags.

Last year, when I turned up to register, I thought the people running the produce show needed to be better organised. So this year I volunteered to give a hand. It was v. educational -- the paperwork needed to register entries for judging, then to match up the judges' decisions with names to go on the prize certificates is just mind-bogglingly complicated, and the pace of the process needs to be taken steadily and methodically, step by step. First stage is registering the entries: entry form with exhibitors name and entries with division and class numbers entered. Each entry then gets tagged with a raffle ticket, with different colour tickets according to division entered. Entrants name written on ticket stub, class number written on ticket attached to the item. Tick off each entry on the entry form as it is processed, put processed entry forms into a plastic folder. A team of kids acting as runners carry the items to the bench where that class number is to be displayed -- with popular classes (eg jams, home baked cakes) expanding beyond their alloted space, while others fail to enrol a single entry. When I arrived around 8.30am, the queue of entrants was a good dozen long, and registration went on until noon, with two registration tables running full-time, expanding to another two when school or club groups turned up bearing a car-load of entries from their members. Three hours of methodical concentration. Reel off exhausted with my co-registerer for cup of tea at the food co-op/cafe.

But that was just the end of phase 1; we headed back to phase 2. While the judges went about their business, it was time to sort the entry forms into alphabetical order -- simple enough. Then the judges forms started coming back, with the winning entry numbers for each class. Each winning number had to be checked against its ticket stub (in the approporate coloured raffle book), and the appropriate prize certificate written out with the entrants actual name on it, in nice flowing calligraphy. Since I can do flourishly flowing writing (albeit all but unreadable), I was put to that job. Second and third prize cards (with class number noted on each) got put out against their entries on the tables. But first prize certificates were held back, since there was more to do with them.

By this time, the marquee was overdue to be opened up for the public to view the show. But we were still sitting around our little table, sorting the 1st prize cards into alphabetical order, to identify the 'Best in Show' cup winner with most red cards, and the cup for family with most prizes, and children's cup for best young entrant... Finished just in time for the local MP to stand at the mike and start handing them all out, at 3.30pm.