NORTH YORKSHIRE

We spent last weekend in North Yorkshire, part of the world that I have hitherto only passed through on the A1. My father loved the Dales and now I can see why.

We arrived in Ripon late on the Friday afternoon and had time to see the cathedral. It is one of those (relatively) small northern cathedrals, more picturesque from the outside than inside. Though there is a crypt reputed to have been built by St Wilfred around 680AD. (It is apparently very similar to the one in Hexham Abbey which is definitely his.) The crypt was for relics, and of course there was a church over it, but that and several successors have been destroyed, so that now it is under a rather larger edifice than Wilfred could have imagined. Like Hexham's it is accessed by stairs and a narrow passageway. The chambers at the centre are not as large as most suburban bathrooms. Alas the relics are long since gone, so it is rather bare.

The only other feature of the cathedral that took our attention inside was carving on the choir stalls and their misericords. There is a griffin which might have come right out of Tenniel's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland. People have wondered if Lewis Carroll was influenced by the carvings. He certainly knew the place - his father was a canon there - but since he didn't do the illustrations for the book himself this seems doubtful.


As it happened the Bed and Breakfast establishment that the Tourist Bureau found for us was in a building which in the nineteenth century was a boarding school attended by Charles Dodgson (to give Carroll his real name) when he was a boy. We were told that Henry Liddell, the father of Alice Liddell, the child to whom Carroll first told the story of Alice in Wonderland, had also (before Dodgson) been a pupil at the school.




Ripon has a tradition going back to medieval times that every evening at 9 o'clock the Watchman blows his horn in the town square. Unfortunately it took rather long to pay our bill in the restaurant so we arrived in the square in time to hear the last blast but not soon enough to actually see the man.

Next morning we went to the market again for the Continental Market, a jolly affair. We bought three tins of cassoulet, one of my favourite stews from Provence (pork sausage, duck and haricot beans) from a stallholder from Normandy, and some Sicilian cakes. Delicious.





Then it was off to Skelton-cum-Newby, a village three miles away, to see the church of Christ the Consoler. In around 1870 the son of local gentry was part of a party ambushed by brigands between Athens and Marathon. The kidnappers first demanded 50 000 pounds as ransom, which was collected, but then they decided that what they really wanted was an amnesty from the Greek government for their previous crimes. That wasn't forthcoming, so they killed the hostages, including young Frederick Vyner.


The family had this church designed and built by William Burges at enormous expense to remember him by. It is set in a field on the edge of the family estate, is very beautiful, and redundant in every sense of the word.






Then we visited Newby Hall itself. It has Adam interiors and Chippendale furniture and gardens going down to the River Ure along which there runs a miniature train line for the amusement of the children. The house and gardens were used in a recent production of Mansfield Park. Not sure if I saw that one. There's been a bit of a Jane Austen glut recently. The place was well worth visiting. Highlights - the gardens, the chamber pot museum and the views of the Ure Valley from the upstairs windows.



The day was bitter, but was clear. After lunch we drove north up the Ure Valley, stopping at random. Masham church proved to be quite ordinary apart from one window of St George. The dragon looks almost puppyish, like a Pekinese (or is it now called a Beijingese?) dog.




Then there came Middleham, a small village with the ruins of a large castle. Here Richard III grew up under the eye of Warwick the Kingmaker, who was big in these parts. Alas, since the Civil War of the 17th century when it was ordered to be slighted it has not been lived in since.














Wensley, the village after which the dale is named, has one of the most depressing churchyards we've ever seen. It is completely let over to rabbits, which brazenly cavorted in front of us. The ground is all humps and bumps like a warren, and several gravestones lie flat on their faces. Once can only hope the rabbits that undermined them got squashed underneath when they fell.

Inside the church is the most enormous curtained double family pew. Legend has it - and I don't believe a word of it - that a seventeenth century duke fell in love with an actress at Covent Garden and she agreed to marry him if he bought the box he had first seen her from. I'm surprised the rabbits haven't had it for a hutch.

We ended at Askrigg, high up Wensleydale, and quite near to Hawes, notorious for its nineteenth century inhabitant Branwell Bronte and his literary sisters. We didn't get as far as Hawes, but did walk the hills, ending up at the very scenic Mill Gill Force, pictured here.










My last two pictures are not of real places at all, but railway models, that we came across on our travels. Somehow they look more realistic than lots of real places.

Fincham Church, Norfolk

We stumbled on the church in the village of Fincham in Norfolk a couple of days ago. There was nothing really to say it was anything different from a thousand other medieval churches in England, though the book did mention a crude Norman font. So, as we were going through anyway we stopped to have a look.

And the font really is a treasure, and in not that bad condition, apart from the fact that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the serpent in this first illustration have had to be replaced. They have done it sensitively so that there is no question as to what is original and what is replacement. Both Adam and Eve are clutching themselves - even groping themselves it might be said. The recent legal decision in Italy that it is an offence for men to touch their private parts against the evil eye would mean that Adam would be carted off to jail there.

You have to look twice at the carvings to make out what they are trying to depict. This next one, of the Nativity, had us puzzling at first as to the grouping on the right. At the bottom is the baby in the manger, and at the top the chrysamthemum shaped object must be the star. The two objects between, looking a bit like feet, made us think at first that the whole carving on this face of the font was of the Ascension. But then it dawned. The scene is the Nativity, and the two strange objects are the heads of the ox and ass, just sticking into the picture.

Joseph is on the right, holding a staff, and Mary stands stiffly in the middle.










These are the Wise Men, all holding up their gifts in their right hands.

The last side depicts the Baptism of Jesus, though the Jordan he is standing in looks more like this square font than the river it is supposed to be. The dove which is divebombing his head looks rather like an oven-ready chicken. The figure on the right is probably John the Baptist in his animal skin garments; the figure on the right could be anyone.

I have seen a suggestion on one website that the font came from another church in the parish when it was demolished in the seventeen hundreds, and that it is in fact Saxon, rather than Norman. That would figure. I have not seen such crude Norman carving before.

The church is well worth a visit just for the font, but we will stop next time we pass anyway, as we apparently missed a wonderful collection of gargoyles on the outside of the church.

Optimistic Seller

Woman phones me up yesterday and says she has some books to sell. I ask the usual questions - why does she possess them, how old are they etc. She tells me that she was a schoolteacher preparing pupils for A-Levels and university entrance but is now long retired. She tells me what some of the books are.

I tell her that they are rather out of date.

"They are," she admits. "They are totally out of date. That's why I am selling them."

I try to explain that that is why I have no interest in buying them, but she can't take this in. She seems to think students will buy them. Eh?

I try and explain some more.

"So next time you are in my area" (on the other side of the country) "will you drop in and look at them?" she asks.

No, I am afraid I won't. The poor woman at last rings off obviously confused and somewhat disappointed. Oh dear.

It would be nice though if I did have the ability to buy in old and out of date books and miraculously transform them into saleable commodities. I'd make my fortune and please lots of owners of old rubbish. I'll let you know when I do.

Late again.

So much for my resolution to write this up more often!

It is Friday and the website should have been updated on Wednesday, and it isn't. Got down to the garage on Weds morning to find that the internet connexion wasn't working. It goes down briefly quite often, but this time it wouldn't come back, so I phoned the broadband company. A nice young man in Cardiff patiently talked me through all the bootings and rebootings and pulling out of connections, and I patiently followed his instructions even though I had done those some actions myself several times before phoning.

After twenty minutes he said he would have to phone me back, which he did, and after another ten minutes he admitted that there did appear to be a fault in their line and said he would book me an engineer. My heart sank, as last time this meant a wait of ten days, during which time my only access to my emails and orders was through the local public library. But on looking he found an engineer who could come round that morning. And what is more, the chap arrived within a quarter of an hour.

More tests, which in the end he said only proved that I had some undefined fault in my own system. He went and got his laptop to show me that it would work fine. He got it. He plugged it in. He fiddled. He fiddled some more. It did not work. He went off to attach it to the junction box down the road. After ten minutes he came back and said there must be some as yet unreported fault covering a large area of Cambridge. Off he went.

I then had to find something to do with my day. Life without broadband is like a deadly dull limbo. You can't read emails so can't process orders. You can't check the news, listen to the radio, suss out the page of lies that the BBC calls a weather forecast. I opted for cataloguing books, but even that isn't easy if there is no access to Amazon, the Library of Congress and the British Library. Even if a book is already on my database, its current price has to be checked out on Amazon. And if it isn't on my database I need to download the details (via Readerware) from either Amazon or one of the other two sites I've mentioned above. So even the cataloguing option wasn't a complete operation.

When the postman came I had nothing for him, but at 3.50 the Virgin engineer phoned to say that he had been told that the system was up and running. He said he'd phone back in ten minutes to check if I had managed to get back online. Well I didn't, and he didn't, so after an hour and a half I phoned Virgin again. They checked, and told me that though the system was now largely up and running locally, there were still some problems with individual routing stations. Finally, yesterday morning at around 11am we went back online and I set to and processed the orders that had accumulated over the previous two days. And later this morning I will actually get to updating the website.

In the meantime Cambridge continues dull, breezy, and not all that warm. However, my internet connexion works, so all is bright in the world!

Late start to 2008

We've just posted the catalogue update that should have been published the day after New Year. Things have been a little chaotic as a new computer arrived on Thursday morning and the last few days have been spent setting it up. As a computer incompetent I always put off buying new equipment as long as I can, but the time had come when I could delay no more. All the work has actually been by my younger son, Harry, a deft and patient solver of computer problems, who kindly put off his return to university by a day so as to be able to sort me out.

So apologies if you have been waiting for the latest books on our lists. To be honest, not much has been catalogued over the holidays, but we shall be back in production over the next week as I catalogue further boxes of the early church archaeologist and historian William Frend's books.

Last year, 2007, was a good one for us. I chronicled our visit to Sicily in an earlier blog. What I never did get round to recording was a weekend in Lille, Northern France, at the end of November, to see the Christmas Market and generally enjoy being in France for a few days. Now that the Eurostar trains start their journey at St Pancras, right next to King's Cross, the station where trains from Cambridge come into London, we are in a position to be whisked effortlessly across the Channel without a tedious cross-London trek.

My other highlights of the year include my turning sixty, the wedding of our eldest, George, and acquiring two new bicycles. The first is a Brompton, a folder which can be taken on buses and trains and in the back of the car and is proving very useful, and the other a big solid Dutch bike with a huge front basket and panniers, just right for shopping and carrying things back and forth from my allotment (another new venture this year). On the cycling front it is disappointing to have to report that the rotten weather and certain weekend family commitments have meant that I did not do as much recreational riding this year as in the previous few years.

If I have one New Year resolution, it is to write this blog more often. We shall see. Happy New Year to my readers and customers.

Support a Great New Walking and Cycling Scheme

I'm not a lover of the idea of a national lottery, but we have one, and this December there is going to be a contest between four worthy causes on ITV. There will be a national vote, and the winning project will get 50 million pounds. The losers will get nothing.

All the projects which have reached the final are worthy. They are The Eden Project in Cornwall, the Black Country Urban Park, Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, and Connect2, a walking and cycling initiative. The special thing about Connect2 is that it is not limited to one small part of the country as the other three are - rather it involves 79 different schemes dotted around the whole land. As such I think it deserves our votes. I append a summary provided by its organisers.

Connect2 needs your vote!

Would you like to see fifty million pounds invested in walking and cycling across the UK?

Sustrans needs you to vote for Connect2, one of 4 projects competing on TV in the Big Lottery Fund's: The People's 50 Million Pound Contest this December. There will only be one winner - your help is vital to make sure it is Connect2.

If Connect wins, millions of people will be able to travel in a healthy and environmentally-friendly way because Connect2 will create new walking and cycling routes for the journeys we all make every day.

In 79 cities, towns and villages, new crossings and bridges will be created over busy roads, railway lines and rivers, linking into new networks of local paths to get you to the shops, school, work, the park or to see family and friends. Connect2 will take you directly and safely to where you want to go.

With Connect2 schemes planned in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England there's likely to be one near you. If you'd like to see Connect2 happen please register today so we can get in touch to let you know when and how to vote. Visit www.sustransconnect2.org.uk or text the word Connect2 to 80010. Alternatively, call 0845 058 13 73.

Cymbeline - Shakespeare's Melodrama/Soap

I suppose it is because I reckon myself something of a literary person that I insisted, when I saw it listed as one of the forthcoming plays at the Arts Theatre, on booking for Cymbeline. Degree in English and all that - can hardly miss out on a chance to see a Shakespeare play I have never read, let alone seen. Sense of duty and all that - must tick it off the list.

Reading up on the play beforehand did not lead me to believe we were in for anything but a dutiful evening. Samuel Johnson was very rude about it, and Bernard Shaw thought the last act was so awful that he wrote his own version of it. And the plot is so bad that it could be an opera.

As it was we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Cambridge University's Marlowe Society, a hundred years old this year, always produces a slick and well-acted play. This year they had Trevor Nunn, former director of the RSC and the National Theatre, as director. As a student he was in the 1960 Marlowe Society production of Cymbeline. And the talent was prodigious. Not a weak actor in any role.

Alright, the plot is ridiculous, but the language is lovely and you are carried along by good actors into the spirit of it. Cymbeline, the British king, is supposed to be a contemporary of Augustus Caesar, but those scenes which take place in Rome do so in a thorougly Renaissance atmosphere, so there is some dislocation there. I saw lots of inverted parallels with Hamlet in the plot and characters. The king, a widower, is married to a wicked queen who is plotting to have her son Cloten marry the king's daughter by his first marriage, Imogen, and so gain the throne for him. Unfortunately for him she has already married Posthumus an impoverished nobleman who has been exiled and gone to Rome for his presumption.

There is also a wicked Iago-like character (Iachimo) who pretends to have seduced Imogen and so puts her husband against her, a Roman invasion, and two lost brothers of Imogen who were stolen as toddlers by a disaffected nobleman. They, with their kidnapper and Posthumus (illegally come home to Britain) are the means by which the Romans are routed, and all live happily ever after eventually. I say eventually because it takes the whole of the last act that Shaw so disliked to sort everything out.

Of the actors, Lizzie Crarer as Imogen was both talented and beautiful. Patrick Warner, playing Cymbeline in a long wig was the spitting image of Peter Sellers, so one kept expecting Goon-type voices (which he was wise enough not to deploy). Rory Mullarkey played a thoroughly yobbish Cloten whose head one wanted to get on the stage and smack. Not that he didn't get is just deserts. By the end of the second act his head has been struck off and appears on stage bloodily carried around in a sort of string bag. A pity the printed programme was so rubbish. It didn't even have a list of the scenes, let alone an attempt at summarising the plot.

I would see this play again. No longer is Cymbeline on my list of Shakespeare plays to be seen once and then never again. I can't understand why someone like Verdi didn't base an opera on it. I see some lesser composers have done so, but I'm afraid they don't count.

Anyway, long live the Marlowe Society of Cambridge University!