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.
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