Rainbows, Koi, White Doves, Music Festival
Yesterday I pulled out of West Lea Road with my google maps all set and promptly took a right turn instead of a left and had to do a wide circle through the side streets to get back on track. It’s the one challenge for me with google maps - that the voice says chippily “head southwest on xxx road” or some other direction, and I have no idea what north or south is when I’m in the car. As soon as one starts in a direction, the blue arrow shows you if you’ve made the wrong choice. Luckily, these small errors are much less of a deal than when I first rented the car and headed the wrong way on the motorway and had to do a large detour.
Once I was off, I dutifully followed the little voice and the blue arrow through numerous roundabouts of different complexities and stress levels, along roads with hard curves on the left which was like threading a needle when an oncoming truck would pass, alongside incredibly beautiful vistas but with no turnoffs to stop, and many adorable road names and village names. I’ve learned that you can choose to let google maps track where you go and then turn it off and erase it at any point. I thought this might be interesting to download at the end of the trip. After driving on the motorway for 2.5 hours with the first rain I had really encountered this entire time, I had the spontaneous urge to ignore google maps’ bossy voice and to head towards Coventry thinking I could find a late lunch or tea near Coventry Cathedral which I assumed would be a quaint area full of history.
En route I stopped to fill the car with more petrol and pick up some chocolate digestives from the store there and then leave the drive-through Starbucks where I had parked to get my bearings. I don’t think I’ve seen a drive thru Starbucks in the U.S.? And then I found my way to the cathedral which was a huge disappointment because Coventry didn’t seem to have an old part of town. Instead it was all new construction with a huge railway station and highways criss-crossing near the cathedral. Now that I have had a chance to google and understand, I am so sad to realize that Coventry was nearly obliterated by the Nazis in WWII.
Here are some of the 20 facts from https://www.coventry.gov.uk/coventry-blitz/20-facts-might-not-know-coventry-blitz
The air raid on Coventry on the night of 14 November 1940 was the single most concentrated attack on a British city in the Second World War.
Following the raid, Nazi propagandists coined a new word in German - coventrieren - to raze a city to the ground.
Codenamed 'Moonlight Sonata', the raid lasted for 11 hours and involved nearly 500 Luftwaffe bombers, gathered from airfields all over occupied Europe.
The aim was to knock out Coventry as a major centre for war production. It was said too, that Hitler ordered the raid as revenge on an RAF attack on Munich.
14 November was a brilliant moonlit night, so bright that the traffic could move around on the road without light.
The Luftwaffe dropped 500 tons of high explosive, 30,000 incendiaries and 50 landmines. It was also trying out a new weapon, the exploding incendiary.
Coventry lost not only its great medieval church of St Michael's, the only English Cathedral to be destroyed in the Second World War, but its central library and market hall, hundreds of shops and public building and 16th century Palace Yard, where James II had once held court.
The smell and heat of the burning city reached into the cockpits of the German bombers, 6,000 feet above.
This was a large detour for me but a lesson learned about the way history can be wiped out in an instant. It makes me grateful for all the cities that didn’t get completely destroyed and for the cathedral still intact in Bath, with its spectacular stained glass windows. It was also interesting to see that Coventry seemed like such a melting pot of many ethnicities and has a university so there were many college-aged students walking around. It was a huge contrast to the lack of much ethnic diversity (to say the least) which I saw in the Cotswolds.
I am looking forward to visiting the Southwell Minster maybe tomorrow and hopefully hearing Evensong at 5:30. I’ve learned that working class people pronounce Southwell the way it looks and that more upper class people refer to Southwell as Suthel. Both seem acceptable but interesting that there is some class difference.
I finally arrived at my Airbnb here in Thurgarton. It is as exquisite as promised in the photos and description and yet even more so because there are white doves in a dovecote in the garden with its long lawn, there are chickens and rooks, a few of which are sunning themselves in the middle of the lawn which I’d never seen before, a pond with many large koi and flowering lilies and lily pads. There is even a washing machine here and a button to turn on warming of the towel racks. I did some laundry and met my very friendly hosts who told me that their dogs were friendly and it was fine with them for me to feed the fish and let the dogs into the renovated barn where I was staying.
After decompressing from the drive, I drove into Southwell, about ten minutes away and had an uneventful dinner at one of the pubs and then took side roads to get back to the airbnb since it was still pretty light out. The rain had stopped, and as I was driving I noticed a huge and deeply saturated rainbow. I was in “light-chasing” mode, ready with my good camera in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t find a good place to pull over. After turning down another street and finding a pull-off spot, the rainbow had disappeared. Not to be captured. Only vivid in the memory. I did enjoy photographing the group of sheep near a hedge and under an oak tree, though. The trees in the English countryside seem to have much larger expression than many trees I see in Massachusetts. They seem much larger, and stick out as individuals in the fields. I know this can’t be accurate, but it seems this way probably due to there being many fields around England marked by hedgerows which sometimes have trees growing out of them. The number of beech trees is also noticeable, especially the copper beeches with their rich eggplant color. I hope the blight from the U.S. never reaches them here.
I returned to the idyllic airbnb and took a walk with the camera to get images of the evening light reflecting off of the still wet roads and of the huge clouds and then I returned and watched a couple episodes of Bridgerton on Netflix before going to sleep.
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This morning it was a bit colder than yesterday and very windy. I decided after making breakfast to drive to a shopping plaza about twenty minutes away to find a folding chair which I could use during the music festival. I went the UK equivalent of Home Depot which felt like Home Depot shrunken down to narrower aisles, shorter shelves, and less stuff. It took me two minutes to find what I needed and to pay and leave. Then I opted to test my luck again and go to an art store (more of a hobby store) at another shopping plaza in the outskirts of Nottingham to find more waterproof black pens since the ones I had brought had somehow dried out. There, too. Success. I asked the person at the counter who was wearing a fabric mask and within two minutes I had the pens and was back in the parking lot. That’s the way I like to shop!
Then the challenge was to retrace my steps through the crazy roundabouts everywhere and get back to Thurgarton. I realized I needed lunch and passed by a place called the Magna Carta which the airbnb owners had recommended, so I did a turn around and stopped in to get lunch to go. In the meantime while waiting I had a conversation about British and U.S. politics with one of the waiters with many tattoos who seemed happy to talk for a few minutes about politics. His view was that the politicians are all the same whether Labour Party or Conservative. I asked him about the party system in the UK and he told me that there were several - the Lib. Dems, the Conservatives, the Labour Party and several others. I bemoaned the fact that we had only two parties and that the electoral college system is so inaccurate in representing the population, along with the gerrymandering that never seems to get fixed. He has a friend in Ohio whom he regularly visits and told me how much he loved the U.S. and that he would live there in a heartbeat if he could. I followed the votes as they came in and as predicted, Labour won in a landslide. This map from The Guardian shows how each of the districts voted.
I came back to the house and ate outside in the sunshine in a spot out of the wind. I noticed the black rook sitting in the middle of the lawn again like it was yesterday with its wings spread. I’ve discovered from Roger that it is a youngster that tries to keep a low profile from their dogs by flattening itself in the grass (his hypothesis). I also asked the Roger and Denise if I could give their chickens the bread and egg shells and they said absolutely, so I went out and dropped them into the chicken coop after feeding the koi. One of their dogs came running over and he came into the apartment and I gave him a small dog treat I had picked up at the Magna Carta. Free dog treats are just everywhere since people often bring their dogs to restaurants and pubs. Many places have a dog treat station with different kinds of treats for free in jars and water bowls!
I found it beautiful to watch the white doves perched in front of the dovecote.In my symbolic seeking mind, seeing pure white birds with blackbirds and rooks enjoying the same yard seemed significant but probably isn’t. I love finding symbolism in nature. Apparently the white doves just appeared and found the dovecot and made themselves at home.
I made some tea, ate some chocolate digestives, did dishes and basically enjoyed for the first time a sense of domesticity and stillness. I sat down and did a small watercolor from one of my photos of Minchinhampton and set out for the Southwell Minster to hear the 5:30 Evensong.
When I arrived and parked I was one of few people in the entire Cathedral and had time before the sung service to read many of the plaques and take photos of the windows. I lit a few candles for people and animals I have loved and collected some prayer cards (see below). The organist, Johnny Alsop, was just getting ready the service and I introduced myself and instantly we found that we knew someone in common since he had performed with his choir in Albany. He told me the main organ is going through a renovation which you can see by the scaffolding. Then I sat in a pew and waited for the service to start. No photos or video of the choristers was allowed (probably because many of them are under minors) so you’ll have to envision them with the help of sound in the videos of the gorgeous singing.
I was very surprised that instead of boy sopranos there were all girl sopranos, most of whom looked from age 6 to 8 years old. There were adults there, too but all the children were in the front rows facing one another. The choir master conducted the opening music and then sat down in a back pew while the choir sang two long psalms unconducted. During their singing, he had his head over his eyes, then just leaned back with his eyes closed, then slumped forward with his head in his hands. I wondered if he had a migraine.
Then we all stood and sang an hymn I didn’t know to a Gregorian Chant. All the hymns in the hymnal are in unison with no parts other than the tune and you have to scan the text back and forth to the tune in order to sing them. It’s challenging even for a trained musician, especially if you don’t know the tunes. Then there was another reading and the choir sang a Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis by William Byrd which was so beautiful. I couldn’t help but notice one girl in the front row rubbing her eyes much of the time and another girl who seemed completely oblivious that she was meant to be singing and put on chapstick over and over again for about a minute while the choir was singing and when finished seemed uninterested in finding her place while the girl next to her kept pointing to her music.
Then more readings and more beautiful music, a modern setting of the Lord’s Prayer, followed by prayers and an anthem by Thomas Tomkins, a setting of Psalm 23. Not easy at all for children to sing! Then everything wound down and I left. There were only 7 of us at the service not including the 20 or so singers and four clergy/readers. It must be strange to do this every day for so few people if this is the norm. By contrast, on the other side of the church from where we had the evensong, risers were set up with blue lights and a screen projected, drums, a piano and speakers and it turned out it was for a huge school concert. There were at least two hundred parents and kids converging and running from all directions towards the side doors to participate in the concert.
All the girls were in tall white socks with blue dresses above the knee and cardigans, either maroon or blue, and the boys were straight out of 1940 with longish shorts, tall kneesocks, lace up shoes and button down shirts with little ties. It really felt like another era. Part of me wanted to stay and hear their concert, but I also wanted to get to the GTSW festival, so I left and drove through rolling pastures to the festival.
After several narrow winding roads and many turns, google maps took me to a gorgeous field with sheep and trees at the top of the hill. A man was there directing traffic and we had a brief conversation about if he was following the election. I pulled into the field and went into the festival. Pictures really tell the story. I’m about to go back and spend the day there again. It’s mainly people in their 50’s on up with three stages and lots of food trucks and artist vendors and colorful streamers and old fashioned white tents. I was in heaven as I found the folk tent and listened to heartfelt singing. One problem though was that the nearby stage was overpowering the singing in the folk tent with its pounding bass and it was frustrating to watch the lone singer performing Wayfaring Stranger a capella to the rhythmic pounding of the music nearby. I ended up getting up and talking to the sound guy (whose name turned out to be Neil) and trying my best to convince him to turn down the bass which he did somewhat reluctantly. Today maybe I’ll buy him a beer since it made a huge difference for the folk tent! Nobody else seemed interested in solving the problem. The whole feeling is one of extreme mellowness and every other person has at least one dog on a leash with them. All the dogs seem to easily get along and there’s no barking at all. People bring little wheelbarrows for them and blankets to create shade.
As it grew darker, it was absolutely freezing and many people had woolen hats and winter coats on. The wind made it feel much colder. I ended up leaving because I was too cold but not after being very happy to have heard these new musicians perform some of their set. I’m going to listen to a lot of their music now. The main singer Kathryn Roberts (of Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman) told a story about how when she was five she wanted to save the lions she saw perform in the circus and worked out an elaborate plan. She wrote a song about it which is terrific, here: https://open.spotify.com/track/7LitCubkHCwc8s7eArzoH8?si=496f61a02ba240ff
After stopping to take a photo of the sunset I arrived back at my idyllic airbnb and watched the end of North by Northwest and then another movie that was on with Eva Marie Saint, On The Waterfront. She is such subtle actress showing so much on her face with just the slightest shift of her eyes or her mouth. She won best supporting actress to Marlon Brando’s Oscar. Since Brando plays a man who sits on the roof with pigeons used for racing as part of a gang that exploits the workers at the docks, there was a lot of footage of pigeons and I was upset at the end of the movie when he was holding a couple dead pigeons which led me down a rabbit trail to see if they had really killed the pigeons during filming and drugged the cat which seemed totally comatose in one scene. Instead I found something more interesting - that director Elia Kazan.
This is what I learned:
from https://theamericanscholar.org/the-director-who-named-names/ (James Kavallines) “In 1952, when Elia Kazan gave the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the names of eight actors who had been members with him of a Communist Party unit in the Group Theatre, he committed an act that would cloud his reputation for the rest of his life. Condemnation of Kazan was both bitter and long-lived. Two days after his appearance, he published an ad in The New York Times defending his position and urging other liberals to “speak out” as he had. When Kazan’s On the Waterfront opened two years later, those whose careers had been destroyed by their refusal to cooperate with HUAC surely heard the director’s unrepentant voice in Terry Malloy’s defiant cry to the mobbed-up union boss he has exposed: “And I’m glad what I done to you, ya hear that?”
Blacklist victims privately criticized On the Waterfront as a disingenuous attempt to justify informing, but there were no public complaints when the movie swept the Academy Awards in 1955, winning eight Oscars, including one for Kazan as best director. In 1999, however, after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it was awarding Kazan an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, a full-page ad in Daily Variety, signed by such prominent actors as Sean Penn and Edward Asner, deplored the academy’s decision. On the night of the ceremony, hundreds of demonstrators protested outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Inside, some notable names sat out the traditional standing ovation for lifetime achievement honorees. Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw didn’t stand but did clap; Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, and Nick Nolte remained in their seats, grimly keeping their hands in their laps.”
Following On the Waterfront was a depressing documentary about Marlon Brando which I turned off soon into it. I couldn’t sleep so I ended up reading a NYT story about a woman who rescues and reunites mustangs that are rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management. She followed her childhood dream of freeing horses. Apparently when she was five she opened up all the doors to a neighbor’s stalls in their barn, letting the horses run. A restless night probably because I ate chocolate at 9 pm. The scented detergent in the sheets also kept me awake. I don’t understand why people use this stuff. It’s so full of toxins and hormone disruptors. The dishwashing liquid here is called Fairy and has all sorts of warning labels on it and that it is harmful to aquatic life with long-lasting effects. There are so many alternatives now that aren’t so toxic. People are a mystery in the choices we make. Inconsistency and irrationality seems almost built-in. The waffling of the democrats on whether to support Biden or not when he clearly is unfit for office even now seems like the stuff of Greek tragedy considering what is at stake. He had promised not to run for two terms. At any rate, I’m off to the music festival again. The lineup is a great one! https://www.gtsf.uk/
