9-11-10. 1620 Baker Street Internet. Back from Norwich, and a trip back to Portobello Road. Today was just soaking in the flavor of the crowds, of the stalls, of the real antiques, and the wannabe antiques and the nowayinhell antiques. Sunny. Milling crowds all the way from Notting Hill. And the food, so delicious, although I didnt actually eat any, just cruised the smells of the choriso stew, and the look of the bruchetta chibatta slices crunching into young mouths. The old mouths are mostly eating safer stuff, i suppose.
Actually, its not quite true i had no objective. I'd decided to try to find some inexpensive brooches with jewels in them, since its the one piece of jewlery I've ever been able to wear, on the lapel of a jacket. Its always good to have an objective. And there were some very nice stuff. Wouldnt it be great if I could say that at the bottom of a rummage bin i would a piece of genuine gold...but no, what i found were nice pieces of pot metal coated with yellow stuff...and maybe one actual gold plate piece. Plus im not really good with gold, whereas i used to think I could tell silver. Hah! The coating on the brass of a quite nice pin I bought for sala is definitely on the rub, and we both thought that one was what the dealer said it was. Or did she? Maybe she let us tell her it was. 'Summer silver' perhaps, as in the useage of the phrase written on the underside of the drawbridge in Woods Hole, so it appears to taunt the tourists; 'Summer People, some are not'.
We took the 0930 from Liverpool Station to Norwich to stay with Caroline and John.
They live in a couldn'tbeanywhereelseintheworld red brick common wall row house a stiff walk from downtown Norwich. But although it may be a small city, Norwich qualifies as a REAL city because it has a Cathedral, and a Norman cathedral at that. Plus a market place thats at least 1000 years old. So from 11:35 on (the train was 10 minutes late due to 'congestion') we were fully dipped, immersed actually, it the culture of Norwich. John said there were about 50 churches of various kinds (including at least one synagogue, an understated presence across from the Catholic cathedral sized church) and we went buy a bunch of them in our walk to town. Remember, those quaint narrow windy streets in the pictures are these days filled with cars hurtling by at amazingly fast rates of speed. Luckily, Norwich does still have some of those 'look left' signs without which I would be in hospital by now. Theres a pedestrianized shopping section, and C and J have lived here long enough to know most twistings and turnings, and the walk down led to at least 5conversations with friends. All quite upscale. The Cathedral is surrounded by buildings that are rented as private residences, although some at least are still church property. And of course there is a school worked into the whole scheme. John has in the past done the work to put on a show in the cathedral so he's knowledgeable about various of the little chapels, and the details of the vaulted ceiling. This is a great big heavy church. The support columns are huge things, apparently faced with stone from Normandy, and filled with flint rubble...'and probably a few priests' John says. A special touch is a labryinth inthe yard of the cloister, and the capstones of the vaulted ceilings are all carved in deep relief and painted...beasties, faces, whole scenes from biblical history, and some that look just plain animistic. That done, we hung out in a pub (yes I am trying various english beers, and re-developing a taste for it) then walked along the river to a opening show of a local sculptor. A little too archtectural to thrill my artistic soul, but great technical ceramic work. It was in a cave like space in the basement of an old building, and way too low ceilinged for me. Then we marched briskly back through town to a local Priory now privately owned and used as a music space, to hear a all man string quartet, playing strongly and beautifully and thus helping us to stay awake as well as to enjoy. After, ended up talking to a local doc and a plant geneticist researcher now at Cambridge about plans, soon to come out in a white paper, to put GP's more directly in control of the funding for primary care. There are strong doubts about this...suspicions that it amounts to another cut in funding...sounds familiar. Too bad, because in the past the english system,unlike ours, actually allocated funds to develop rural practices and to get students out into them...would hate to see that accidentally cut.
After all the culture, we came back home to kegeree and salad..all delicious. And a good nights sleep.
More tomorrow, now its time for a beer at the local and dinner somewhere.
best
alan
No comments:
Post a Comment