tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46665255941330645832024-03-13T03:22:09.841-07:00Travelling LightTravelling brings up so many new thoughts... I hope you find this an amusing blog and I would love to see your commentsGriselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.comBlogger370125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-10972939911905228932022-10-24T10:04:00.006-07:002022-10-24T10:04:53.837-07:00Cancer and chemo - and tomatoes<p>It is fifteen months since I posted in this blog. In July last year, after some investigations, the doctors told me that I had a widely-metastasised cancer. It was a breast cancer, though not detectable in my boobs. It was in my spine, hips, adrenal glands and liver. I was put onto a course of chemotherapy - fierce and gruelling and that lasted until Christmas. Things seemed to be going well. The tumour shrank and though I lost my hair and felt a bit weak, I was basically very well. Andrew took fantastically good care of me and we slowly came to terms with what might happen, or what was in fact happening. </p><p>I had scans from time to time, to keep a check on the tumours and in the late spring, it seemed the liver tumours started to grow again. This time, my oncologist Dr Jennie Glendinning, put me onto a different chemo therapy - a targetted treatment, whereby the antibodies in the cocktail make holes in the walls of the tumour cells, and then the chemo part zips through the holes and so have the biggest effects on the cancer. It's true I have had far less challenging side-effects, but I am definitely very tired. I am buoyed up by the fact that this treatment is very expensive. (I'm worth it, evidently). I don't know how long it will have to go on. I have kept my hair... whoopee! And I have achieved a lot of things while I have spent a large part of my time lying down in or on my bed. </p><p>Lately I had another scan, of my head. Dr Glendinning remembered she had not investigated my little grey cells... She gave the result. 'I am happy to say your brain is normal....' (No, it isn't !) </p><p>For instance, I have taken part in three art exhibitions now, or more. One was dedicated to my cancer and chemo experience - drawings I made in oil pastel last year, a kind of speech-less account or journal of the first treatment. It also had a series of selfie photos on my phone: these I amended and edited to make more lurid... charting the loss and regrowth of my hair. And a set of nine single-colour panels which illustrate how things don't always turn out as you expect or plan. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg38-ME7AOy8fMq5oQV11EokIr0Xv_xTasdbE2SBCZtSii9B_V4HZ9tD4insToIp2dEtwUqVlV40oepp4d8mfQHVNgMflFmObAKEvY0nfKEUWCKI-AbabwFkteRmiQDIub2RjIASLvrsz96jgBnncSh0FwJLlfTsaNlTJbkyvYsW1NyqRyWQ_BVrzlb/s3320/IMG_4298.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2306" data-original-width="3320" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg38-ME7AOy8fMq5oQV11EokIr0Xv_xTasdbE2SBCZtSii9B_V4HZ9tD4insToIp2dEtwUqVlV40oepp4d8mfQHVNgMflFmObAKEvY0nfKEUWCKI-AbabwFkteRmiQDIub2RjIASLvrsz96jgBnncSh0FwJLlfTsaNlTJbkyvYsW1NyqRyWQ_BVrzlb/w234-h162/IMG_4298.heic" width="234" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3TXYrO5YywVnZp2Sw96PKut_c95ouO0ktbvXJAG73KpdqxWYLiTr2s2umrgE1TDhdk5jAkcCjQq70ZlposcF8j0ec1_3rUhgE7qqt8dB2Hjp_ePJgggw95tjdQ0mlmW3C8P2rMe5J7N5Tg_n7a2WmsF0hF6XG_6pY7PmHWBxUXxcT-sRRMcymVZjV/s2885/IMG_4554%202.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2030" data-original-width="2885" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3TXYrO5YywVnZp2Sw96PKut_c95ouO0ktbvXJAG73KpdqxWYLiTr2s2umrgE1TDhdk5jAkcCjQq70ZlposcF8j0ec1_3rUhgE7qqt8dB2Hjp_ePJgggw95tjdQ0mlmW3C8P2rMe5J7N5Tg_n7a2WmsF0hF6XG_6pY7PmHWBxUXxcT-sRRMcymVZjV/w223-h158/IMG_4554%202.heic" width="223" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhef9zAbawp77q3xfesIO6wUgR0-FITRfJqBsTlfUvyO__oJTmnPiNKF0PfeFbFnbUxvLO3hI_MPPU3PVaVk1d2B_D1_mxaVUR6I6U7QiSsCF2S-aOGjvHdEaYxujMXw2eAybQxK8R2fGXkXgu5fH7z89eOhBZesa2u2KxSg6BvhxI03BMOoK-VCcre/w194-h137/IMG_4478%204.heic" width="194" /><p></p></div><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"></blockquote><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"></div><p></p></blockquote><p><br />This show was on in the town centre (12 Marketplace) for a week free of rent courtesy of the Town Council because I used it raise funds for the Hospice and for Macmillan Cancer Support. I was invited to leave the show in place for a further week during which a friend was recruiting members for the re-formed NADFAS group.... I was not selling originals of any of the works on show, just prints. The maximum price was £25. We sold £1380 worth of these prints. I am more proud of this than I can say. People came in, went out again as they couldn't face it (the whole idea of cancer is never really discussed....), or they came and cried, or they told me about their own cancer, or how their loved ones have had the cancer... I am now seeking ways to put the show into other venues round the world. We are starting at St Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham, S London, courtesy of our friend and ex-neighbour from Brockwell Park, Prof Ian Judson late of the Royal Marsden Hospital. I hope to get sponsorship and exposure from Apple or iPhone for the photographic selfportraits. These form a narrative on their own. </p><p>I am here summarising a long period of time, a lot of events, experiences, visits, reactions ... Maybe I can come back to some of this later. Today I just wanted to break the omerta, the silence, my paralysis ... Just as the politics of the last few years have proved so depressing and alarming, this personal experience has also resulted in a kind of nothingness. I could scarcely read, let alone write. I have watched hours of crap television, retreated to a kind of contemplative stupor. I have managed to write fictional shorties for the Inklings (and indeed joined in a public reading at the last Faversham Literary Festival), and so it has not been entirely null. But the works have been lightweight, impersonal. Only gradually have I wanted to approach a more personal zone.</p><p>What triggered it today was to stop and look (as I do daily) at the tomatoes in my 4 hanging baskets at the front of the house. As usual I have in each basked a fuschia, a geranium and a Tumbling Tom tomato plant. We have carefully watered and fed these through the season and in recent months been harvesting a few every day. I bring them in to ripen on the kitchen table in the sun, and then halve them and dry them for winter stores. In the last 4 or 5 weeks, the leaves of the tomato plants have started to dry and wither, though the other plants have been as green as usual. Strangely and miraculously, the little globular fruits are still appearing on the dead-looking branches. Today I picked a huge handful of them; yesterday these were all green and this morning they had started to lighten to a golden or orange or blushing red. How is the plant doing this? It is also pretty extraordinary to learn how tomatoes ripen in general. I had always thought they had to go red on the vine. But no! You can pick them when they just start to turn colour - which they seem to do overnight, even if it's cold. Bring them in, put them with their fellows, and gradually (away from the probing fingers of passers-by) they darken and sweeten and turn from various shades of green to the welcome red. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU5ox0-VFTwJ8Yux3jMdq3OO0XBLJNCP4ErqYlNQ8V-O1WiyeghanBGkoJw82NDKYpJHptvkPAvFE1oSoyQlfBIiEMhEZu_-rV81w9d4Bp0KrFSiCkCEFrXnwX-rXC84X07bgxB3HmN5nWnsmb4y3rlimBB0ijOKNyG8Vpd-YHlTcm0ymU6vLMcwFk/s3034/IMG_4595.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3034" data-original-width="3023" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU5ox0-VFTwJ8Yux3jMdq3OO0XBLJNCP4ErqYlNQ8V-O1WiyeghanBGkoJw82NDKYpJHptvkPAvFE1oSoyQlfBIiEMhEZu_-rV81w9d4Bp0KrFSiCkCEFrXnwX-rXC84X07bgxB3HmN5nWnsmb4y3rlimBB0ijOKNyG8Vpd-YHlTcm0ymU6vLMcwFk/s320/IMG_4595.jpg" width="319" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqIbkh4YghiLMLM9nPICPFIcL63cpePhmAaH-QGJ3vwWoMheDV0CzP7Wu8U-Fouk4EsuouNazvgUqrTjk7UakL8seU-gaIA3oRRGdySRXJuutlT_3qwtiDVJ0-CfdAvs-XDZXG0Y-PsGcayHmOpyBIu8G1dg1eEOUy_cFfkKfHs3MifeEfX4EqasFk/s4032/IMG_4953.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqIbkh4YghiLMLM9nPICPFIcL63cpePhmAaH-QGJ3vwWoMheDV0CzP7Wu8U-Fouk4EsuouNazvgUqrTjk7UakL8seU-gaIA3oRRGdySRXJuutlT_3qwtiDVJ0-CfdAvs-XDZXG0Y-PsGcayHmOpyBIu8G1dg1eEOUy_cFfkKfHs3MifeEfX4EqasFk/s320/IMG_4953.JPG" width="240" /></a>. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>So - my thread here is about how death can come knocking, in a doctor's interview or down the branches of the plants - and we may not expect it and be worried about it, and expect the worst. But out of the new information we can also learn new things. That life goes on. That we always have resources. That things are not always what they look like. </p>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-31196870396131701362021-07-19T05:46:00.002-07:002021-07-20T09:04:30.280-07:00Story of a marriage, and of a diagnosis<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z5xYmyzFaH0/YPVkMvbnRRI/AAAAAAAADLA/K-aUpGvJvBoQiqmv6o5JhNN5Syp_bOhpQCLcBGAsYHQ/217405700_10158562188012869_1078852517113394298_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="948" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z5xYmyzFaH0/YPVkMvbnRRI/AAAAAAAADLA/K-aUpGvJvBoQiqmv6o5JhNN5Syp_bOhpQCLcBGAsYHQ/w304-h300/217405700_10158562188012869_1078852517113394298_n.jpg" width="304" /></a></div><p></p><p>This jolly picture was taken on the day Andrew and I married - July 18th, 1981. It was a lovely day and really was the start of a life together. We chose it. We had some idea, or thought we did. On the whole things have worked out really well for us. It was our fortieth wedding anniversary yesterday and we spent a grateful and relaxed weekend celebrating the good things. We both know how frail a life can be. How much it can swing from one direction to another. In truth, you just never know what's going to happen. Good or bad. Hopes and plans, strengths and weaknesses. You may feel more or less in control of what you're doing... But you never know. </p><p>Back in January ('21) I realised something was not right with my digestion. I will not bore you here with all the details of the events and non-events which followed. (Remember this has all been during the Covid stresses on the NHS). It has taken 6 long and anxious months to get a face-to-face meeting with the oncologists, and now - at last! - I have a diagnosis and a plan of action. Chemo therapy starts on Friday. Along the way I had blood tests ('You're diabetic'), a colonoscopy, an ultrasound, a CT scan, a gastroscopy + biopsy, an MRI scan, dental X-rays and examination, a diabetic eye test, more blood tests, a liver biopsy, and mostly a lot - really a lot - of waiting. My GP turned out to be useless, negative, unhelpful, totally disinterested. In fact, speaking to a cancer nurse last week on the phone, I mentioned he had been almost no help at all, and she immediately said 'Is it Dr T--?' That was a shocker in itself. </p><p>The Cancer Care Teams - nurses who tell you their names - have been uniformly wonderful, sympathetic, knowledgable, helpful, direct. Every single one of the people I have met or spoken to have been professional, kind, efficient, human, and all exhausted, working under the extreme pressures of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns, and the perennial underfunding. But the communication between departments has been really patchy. This does, in some part, explain my GP's lack of interest... It seems he did not actually know I was having these tests, rang me once sounding very surprised to say he had the histology report from the gastroscopy. He says he never got the scan reports, and was 'too busy' to ask. My anger and disappointment at his failure to support me in what has been a very frightening walk through a very dark forest, where I understand very little and really know nothing, and have no map, has been a major factor in my life all these months.</p><p>Along the way have been conversations with so many people - I wish I had recorded them all, but it's never too late to start... I learned so much, have been on a helterskelter of learning, sliding down into unknown territory with each interaction, holding on to this, having to let go of that.... My thoughts have been wide-ranging: sometimes deep, sometimes practical, sometimes dark. Usually 'rational'... I think. </p><p>One of my preoccupations already is how to tell everyone what is happening. My friend Ashley in Wales is well into brutal treatment for his own cancer in and out of hospital, and he and his wife Pat advise putting their news bulletins out in one place only (Facebook in their case) to avoid having to repeat the good or bad news all the time. They just don't answer random enquiries even from friends... it's all up there. I think I will do the same and this blog may be part of how I manage it. Many of my friends are not 'on Facebook' and in any case that is a very public forum with overlaps to many groups who are not remotely interested in my chemo or whatever. So maybe a blog, and then links to it from FB, Twitter and WhatsApp.</p><p>As of today I feel really well. I am mostly very positive in mood, no pain, flexible, able to walk a fair distance, garden, think, paint, write, shop, etc. It seems almost surreal to be thinking about flooding my body with toxins - forever, it seems. But everything has to change. We have had the house on the market for the last three months, a depressing experience in that the agents were pretty well useless. But we are taking it off the market. Just four viewings in 12 weeks! One offer, subsequently (we found out) withdrawn as the people couldn't raise enough on the sale of their own house though they loved this. The agent didn't tell us the offer was withdrawn till we pestered. Eventually I put a little poster in our front window giving v brief details and price - and someone wants to come and see the place - on Wednesday. Our last viewer. If she likes, makes a sensible offer and agrees not to deviate, and has an achievable date in mind, we might go for it, even though chemo starts this week. We have done a lot of decluttering... not enough, but (as I see from earlier blogs) there has been a lot of pleasure in getting rid of precious, garnered, things. Half a van-load went to auction and we'll get £600 or so. Not enough really for what we sold - but - we'll never need that stuff again, and it's great to have the space. </p><p>We have a cleaner - Lore - starting on the same day as our viewer. We have a WhatsApp group set up for people willing to help with whatever burdens weigh on us for the chemo... driving, cooking, shopping. Friends have been almost unbelievably kind. Leads to a little cry now and then. Thank you all! You know who you are. The doctors say this treatment is for the duration, it is not a cure, but 'just a treatment'. If it goes well, they may be able to consider other options - surgery? radio? who knows?</p><p>Despite the horrible diagnosis (I didn't say - a new breast cancer which has spread to spine, liver and adrenals) I feel very robust and in a good place. The oncologists both said they were surprised to see me so well... having seen the scans, they expected a very poorly person to come into the clinic. I ascribed this wellness to taking my JuicePlus+ capsules for 15 years which we know boosts the immune system... and that interested the Registrar, Joao Galante, very much. He said immunotherapy is really the only new cancer treatment which has been developed in the last few years. He said, keep doing it! So I start from a strong position. When the consultant came in, Jennifer Glendinning, she too said she hadn't expected me to be as well as I obviously am. So, I feel I have this extra support from the fruits and vegetables. And, as my lovely school friend Sandy Birchnell (retired psychiatrist) said in a text this morning, the treatment is brutal but it works. I have two wig appointments lined up. We had two really lovely lunches out this weekend to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary which was yesterday.... On Saturday, lunch at Posilippo with Kate and Andy Osmond (and she urged me to restart the blog), and yesterday in the courtyard garden at Henry's Bar and Chocolate Cafe in Hythe with Nicky Tolson (who lent me a wig), and John McConnell ... like the old days. In weeks to come, they say I have to avoid sunlight and beware of picking up infections, so these two sunny outings were especially precious. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ifAckMV-1I8/YPViNTLPssI/AAAAAAAADK4/V-8vQ2F2FCUbLgNMi7F5AdcAnZiPzGssQCLcBGAsYHQ/E6lnn6hXsAI6Ed0.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="474" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ifAckMV-1I8/YPViNTLPssI/AAAAAAAADK4/V-8vQ2F2FCUbLgNMi7F5AdcAnZiPzGssQCLcBGAsYHQ/w355-h474/E6lnn6hXsAI6Ed0.jpg" width="355" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photos by Chris Calnan</span></div><br />The optimism and hope of a wedding - especially when the partnership has already had to overcome some difficulties, as ours did - is a wonderful thing. You can see in the photos the lightness of heart, the huge numbers of friends and family who came along, the spirit of the whole venture. It led on to our two brilliant and beautiful children, and all their adventures, and the adventures we ourselves have had - travelling, cooking, arguing, making things, working, sharing ... all the ordinary things of life. We have been so lucky.. and all that was waiting inside us on the day we married. Now facing chemo and frightening scenarios - so much unknown - there is another whole set of futures waiting for us. Each phone call, each meeting, each decision unrolls new possibilities, new ideas. I have to be honest and say this illness - coming now - feels like a cutting-off of some of the things I had in mind to do - to move to Ireland maybe, to plant a new forest garden somewhere, to do more travelling. I have books to write, and paintings to make. And campaigns to run in the community. But, of course, I don't know if any of those will be taken away from me or not! It may all unroll as I hoped. Let's hope. <p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-59958157334144609732020-08-11T07:52:00.000-07:002020-08-11T07:52:42.217-07:00Connected again<p> The wifi and communication in general were really either non-existent or very poor where we have been in beautiful W Sussex. I would have posted while we were there but it proved to be so frustrating and difficult I just gave up.</p><p>I wrote this yesterday (Monday) hoping to post at a friend's house but it didn't work out, so I will do it today now we are home. </p><p>---</p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A few days have passed without my posting anything, mostly due to the difficulties of getting online. This part of the country has poor connections, and the campsite has no wifi in particular.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The campsite is pretty stressy, or was during the weekend. It used to be a rated/certificated site - with minimal facilities, but the new owner took over at the start of the year, not having run a campsite before, and of course with no idea that the lockdown would bring people in their droves.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What works perfectly well with 10 or 20 groups does not work with 150. One ladies’ toilet, for instance, is not enough…… <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We were jammed in, so close and crowded we could hear everything and no doubt our neighbours heard us too. Dogs were roaming and barking and howling and pooing…. The showers quickly ran out of hot water.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bonfires and music and clattering …. agh!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That was from Friday till yesterday morning when (blessedly) most people left.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Now it’s just lightly populated and we can hear birds singing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">All this pressure was exacerbated by the extreme heat and humidity. We have been so grateful for the trees all around. They are lovely, blessed things. Their shade, their coolness, their beauty......</p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aNn4oBWW75U/XzKvQ--JXUI/AAAAAAAADBc/CIlp44aP6MUYZ_xGab4JOA7QP1TTqdV-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aNn4oBWW75U/XzKvQ--JXUI/AAAAAAAADBc/CIlp44aP6MUYZ_xGab4JOA7QP1TTqdV-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4240.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G82EaHKGQWM/XzKvRCQyxfI/AAAAAAAADBk/TgNJD4tu6aE2GBgSurb_GdKrnlKHd84OQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4256.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G82EaHKGQWM/XzKvRCQyxfI/AAAAAAAADBk/TgNJD4tu6aE2GBgSurb_GdKrnlKHd84OQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4256.jpg" /></a></div><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;">On Saturday we went to the Roman Villa at Bignor (wow!!!) and then to the painted church - St Botolphs's at Hardham.. the gracious little interior filled on every square inch with 12th century paintings… all the Bible stories. An amazing place, quite empty, so we had this treasure to ourselves. The wonderful lanky Adam and Eve are on the inside of the chancel arch, reminding the priest of the wickedness of man, I suppose, every time he faced he congregation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They would be looking (among many other images) at the Lamb of God, the Annunciation, the Presentation, the Flight into Egypt, the trials of St George, what’s thought to be a scene from the Battle of Antioch (previously thought to be a dragon-slaying scene), the Magi, etc etc.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>These paintings are glorious, humbling.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Coming straight after our walk around the mosaics at Bignor, it was quite a feast for the eyes all day. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qymefTwloY8/XzKv5BtiptI/AAAAAAAADCU/dhu_ZZSdvBgHWWYkthv-L7HC4ogQeg97QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4289.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qymefTwloY8/XzKv5BtiptI/AAAAAAAADCU/dhu_ZZSdvBgHWWYkthv-L7HC4ogQeg97QCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4289.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-segU35Pr_G0/XzKv5OVDQLI/AAAAAAAADCQ/DlGYZlrLSg8wD4yuClyh7v6Hre_LJARkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-segU35Pr_G0/XzKv5OVDQLI/AAAAAAAADCQ/DlGYZlrLSg8wD4yuClyh7v6Hre_LJARkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4300.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7XMiYPpXVzA/XzKv-4zM8DI/AAAAAAAADCY/F-QclrxKq5ARSWHcxW_auLWyOEZYqBFwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4308.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7XMiYPpXVzA/XzKv-4zM8DI/AAAAAAAADCY/F-QclrxKq5ARSWHcxW_auLWyOEZYqBFwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4308.jpg" /></a></div><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;">In the later afternoon we went up to Bignor Top, a clear space on the down… with fantastic far views. A cycling rally station was manned by a team ready to offer them water and oranges, but not many had made it up there in the heat and they were deciding how and when to pack up. This involved quite noisy phone conversations wth other organisers or team members…. it was a relief when they went and we had the place more or less to ourselves. I painted one scene - the ash die back …. the acrylics dried out really fast despite spraying but<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was quite pleased with the result. We did not walk to the very summit - it was really still very hot and that pathway had no shade.</p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aLOnN9KW27g/XzKwNc0zfAI/AAAAAAAADCo/foPdAsE28yQloYzVSJ6GA0nuzllEoaUQACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4370.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aLOnN9KW27g/XzKwNc0zfAI/AAAAAAAADCo/foPdAsE28yQloYzVSJ6GA0nuzllEoaUQACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4370.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2LRG6sOUZZ8/XzKwU4fqMNI/AAAAAAAADCs/TuacyfXTuokLkK-6PaT2F1Ffuo9Zs5ekQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4375.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2LRG6sOUZZ8/XzKwU4fqMNI/AAAAAAAADCs/TuacyfXTuokLkK-6PaT2F1Ffuo9Zs5ekQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4375.jpg" /></a></div><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Later we drove to Sainsbury’s at Chichester, to see if I could get a pair of cotton shorts. Yes. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We drove past he Lavender Farm where it seemed from the road way that families of African origin were wandering….</p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The shade from trees has been essential… we were lucky, in that respect, to get a pitch with more shade than some. And the countryside is so richly wooded, unexpectedly green and ancient… some of the woodland is being cleared out (to create stronger timber I suppose, removing the competitive undergrowths) but few of the roads through these lovely forests are fenced, so the feeling is very unspoiled. The villages are in the valleys (water) and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>unbelievably pretty and quaint. One poor old thatched house in West Burton looked very sad… </p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7sSMiTDtXA/XzKwgU32CcI/AAAAAAAADC4/8MkULZ24Rm0cnoP3tRl3BUBKYbI-C9puwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_4275.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7sSMiTDtXA/XzKwgU32CcI/AAAAAAAADC4/8MkULZ24Rm0cnoP3tRl3BUBKYbI-C9puwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/IMG_4275.jpg" /></a></div><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">everything else is spinked up and looks pretty plush.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I asked the campsite owner about it. He said it would be owned by Lord Mersey, Ned Mersey,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He called him a bigot. He said he’d once had words with him. Mersey had ticked him off for being too close to his horse, and William retorted that the horse was lame…. ‘How would you know?” sneered his lordship. ‘Because we have horses, race horses, always have done…. Take that to the vet or the farrier….’ <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And late Mersey said to him, ‘you were right. The horse had an access in its foot…’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>William don’t like him anyway. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>William says he’s a cockney, though he was actually born in Shoreham. His family is split between Hackney and Shoreditch and Sussex. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He’s very tall, bald, scary looking. Could have been a boxer. Is now a builder and man of property (Vale of Health included), and since the start of the year, a campsite owner.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He has a fair amount of work to do here to bring it up to scratch.</p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yesterday I managed to wangle enough sitting-and-doing-nothing time to make a painting.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>During the last few weeks, campaigning against that wretched man’s ambitions to build on Ordnance Wharf, my beloved and demanding art course has suffered… just not enough time to think or do….<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And here too, on the holiday - Andrew’s drive to be doing something all the time has been difficult….Off we go again!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Just sitting and looking, if I am doing that, must be very frustrating for him. It looks like nothing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But I have to do it to be able to paint.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have taken so many photos, of the trees, the glimpses of distant landscape (so tantalising as we sweep past), the light and shadows. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I can hear him now, saying ‘Right!’ which means he wants to be off.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We will do a bit of shopping about, and then head towards Chichester again, for lunch w my friend Sandy. </p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-40582556185234483742020-08-08T01:55:00.000-07:002020-08-08T01:55:06.469-07:00Getting our bearings<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">I am finding the very small awning on this rig frustrating and difficult. In fact I’ve decided I’m never going to use it again (much to A’s annoyance. He said - OK, you buy a new one then). The tent next-door has a connection to the van but has a proper size bedroom and then an open front part which is so much more sensible and practical. Here we are so cramped & with nowhere to store anything. We have too much stuff. There are no points to hang anything, and we keep losing things. We have to grovel through all the various bags looking for things.</span><p></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">Despite the fact we (A) brought a huge tray full of food from the house, tins, jars, packages, etc., we called into a farm shop and bought salads, cheese, hummus etc. That was a good move as they will be shut over the weekend. Extraordinary. </span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">Then we went into Pulborough, to explore. At the library, they wouldn’t let us in, but said we could use their wifi which was kind of them - it meant in a rudimentary way I could post yesterday’s blog and leave the computer back in the car. We met two very hot and red-faced traffic wardens ... We’d been lucky to bag a shady parking place.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">We strolled down Lower Street, calling into a couple of charity shops to look for a salad bowl because our friends Mary & Stewart are coming <a dir="ltr" href="x-apple-data-detectors://1" style="text-decoration-color: rgba(128, 128, 128, 0.38);" x-apple-data-detectors-result="1" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors="true">for lunch on Sunday</a> & the plan is to make a Salade Niçoise. We called into a brilliant delicatessen where the man advised us not to buy the mayonnaise because it wasn’t very nice, but we picked up various other delicacies. And then had a coffee at the Little Bean cafe where we had to give track-and-trace details, the first time for us. </span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">We picnicked up at Burton Lake, where we had once visited a few years ago. I’d completely forgotten about it but Andrew remembered straightaway. We hoicked our chairs & stuff through into the woods and had a lovely picnic in the quiet and cool. </span><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JNVyfBPDO6M/Xy5oPS1KY3I/AAAAAAAADBM/hVsvSnTtDv8TYZnCFrzZ9YH6W14bj_9NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/522539F5-DA55-487A-88C1-2BCB15BAFF46.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JNVyfBPDO6M/Xy5oPS1KY3I/AAAAAAAADBM/hVsvSnTtDv8TYZnCFrzZ9YH6W14bj_9NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/522539F5-DA55-487A-88C1-2BCB15BAFF46.jpeg" /></a></div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">Outside the sun was beating down almost savagely at about 33°. </span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">The afternoon’s entertainment was to hire a boat at Houghton on the river Arun. We arrived in good time as they asked us and then spent nearly an hour waiting while they got everything ready. Our boat was a bright orange plastic thing and our lifejackets neat and easy to wear. We set off through the pretty bridge and down towards Arundel. After about 20 minutes chugging along, a man in a grey inflatable rowing forwards rather awkwardly, with a little girl as passenger, asked if we would give them a tow. He had been rowing since 2.15 - it was by then <a dir="ltr" href="x-apple-data-detectors://2" style="text-decoration-color: rgba(128, 128, 128, 0.38);" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors="true">5:20</a>. He’d been against the tide most the way and had gone much further upstream than he planned. </span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PJmBv14vXws/Xy5nppIvQyI/AAAAAAAADA8/FSnMfNYc7GA8Jkx7t6JjHmBsbbDzDj9QgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/495853EB-BFF7-49F3-A65F-9A13B5BBB5FA.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PJmBv14vXws/Xy5nppIvQyI/AAAAAAAADA8/FSnMfNYc7GA8Jkx7t6JjHmBsbbDzDj9QgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/495853EB-BFF7-49F3-A65F-9A13B5BBB5FA.jpeg" /></a></div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">It took us 3/4 of an hour to get him down to the Black Rabbit, where we dropped him off at his request on some very dodgy looking steps. The little girl had been very distressed and he was very relieved not having to row against the swift and powerful waters of the river. However it made us late getting back because then we were against the tide - It was hard going even with a 6 hp engine. </span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">Luckily I had rung them to tell the boatyard what had happened. We did not have to pay an extra charge as we feared, and they said that this happened quite a lot. In fact they asked if was it a guy with an open shirt and a little girl, and we said yes- they had spotted them earlier on in the day. </span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">Back at the campsite we were amazed to see how many more tents and caravans and cars have been allowed in. It really is crowded now. Our neighbors in the yellow box box said ‘Don’t worry! they’ve built a whole new toilet block…’</span><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IsUhMqH71v4/Xy5nahge-iI/AAAAAAAADA4/8hTjUGC8Z9AK8-vAneFdA2JD990uyWQ3ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/B7FFC886-A180-42AC-AB88-933A7788B9EF.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IsUhMqH71v4/Xy5nahge-iI/AAAAAAAADA4/8hTjUGC8Z9AK8-vAneFdA2JD990uyWQ3ACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/B7FFC886-A180-42AC-AB88-933A7788B9EF.jpeg" /></a></div><div><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;">We had a delicious supper of spelt and spinach pasta with pesto and a fresh salad. We are both very tired but not as tired as the night before.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;"></span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px;" /><br /></div></div></div>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-58553000849583502902020-08-07T03:09:00.005-07:002020-08-07T03:12:38.620-07:00Happy hols<p> <span face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;">We went through London to drop Lucie back home to her flat, and then headed out through Crystal Palace, Croydon and on into Sussex.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;">The architecture of London fascinates me. South of the river, it’s never quite the same as my childhood roaming grounds, but still tells the stories of expansion and development, speculation and exploitation.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;">The Victorians were really so plumptious and proud of what the achieved and seemingly made attempts to include everyone in the feeling of wealth….</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;"> </span></p><p><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rjt5qZWL-U4/Xy0nPi1s1vI/AAAAAAAAC_o/ZNMwDW1EIqcPKjDl7_YfiOpm42wUPXE9ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/E646FEA9-A2C0-4776-8CD1-CAC44BF28B9B.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rjt5qZWL-U4/Xy0nPi1s1vI/AAAAAAAAC_o/ZNMwDW1EIqcPKjDl7_YfiOpm42wUPXE9ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/E646FEA9-A2C0-4776-8CD1-CAC44BF28B9B.jpeg" /></a></div><p></p><p><span face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;">The obsession with a glorious past is everywhere - the endlessly reiterated story of the Golden Elizabethan Age appears in almost every street… gable ends, black-and-white, Tudorbethan… It defines the 19th and 20th century suburbs and indeed is still reigning supreme in the newbuild estates throughout the south.</span> <span face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;">All mouth and no trousers, these days. The developers spend money on the facades and leave the house itself poorly furnished in terms of sustainability, flexibility, use. </span> <span face="" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px;">We look in vain for cellars, storage space, gardens, fireproofing… </span> </p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Still the Victorians knew what worked best and built - even in poorer districts - with confidence and quality. The brickwork and ornamentation is still really attractive. The contrast, when you hit Croydon is astonishing. Here every single domestic value has been junked in favour of glittering glass-faced towers with fantastic competitive styling and glitz.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Since this is the year of lockdown and zoom, we wonder if these towers will ever really be wanted. They look magnificently wicked but they may well be much less use than the Victorian streets which they replace.</p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oicY9omlJ30/Xy0ntLQYibI/AAAAAAAADAE/Jow5Em8JJUYq7mBREwGr13-CYgJ0JSnagCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/1E5C3E77-AD98-4754-8E3E-D3705219240F.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oicY9omlJ30/Xy0ntLQYibI/AAAAAAAADAE/Jow5Em8JJUYq7mBREwGr13-CYgJ0JSnagCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/1E5C3E77-AD98-4754-8E3E-D3705219240F.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GXxT_oMc1EE/Xy0nt4bCCgI/AAAAAAAADAI/Ok2taXMMFZMfP0ACXFxZX7JU_JZSFF8fwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/7E190843-79C1-4C84-AA68-FF46D71EB7BB.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GXxT_oMc1EE/Xy0nt4bCCgI/AAAAAAAADAI/Ok2taXMMFZMfP0ACXFxZX7JU_JZSFF8fwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/7E190843-79C1-4C84-AA68-FF46D71EB7BB.jpeg" /></a></div><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So much of England is hopelessly out of date. Main A-roads wind along narrow country lanes… with hedges and fields. There is some glory in seeing how ancient landuse still prevails according to the geology… so in a remote outer suburb where clearly building values would be very high, nonetheless, on a one-mile strip of road across sandy soil, there are nine or ten market-gardens, a lavender farm (with flocks of families of African descent wandering among the rows of purple).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The market gardens - some open to the public as garden centres, some with poly tunnels, some much more pre-war in appearance - must still be earning enough money to resist selling up for housing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You get this tenacious little patch of medieval landworking, in strips, with the Great Wen nearly surrounding it.</p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Our campsite is past Pulborough, not far from the Roman villa a Bignor.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The lanes approaching are pretty well free of traffic but the edges of the road are well-worn and beaten down, from constant parking over a long period of time. Not this year, presumably.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We drive in past a rising field with one or two caravans or tents tucked into the edges of an open sunny field, and up a driveway to a huddle of pretty ropey old huts and sheds.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We are asked - did you get the email?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Our card machine isn’t working…… Are you electric or…..? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We say we are electric (true!), and are directed to a long mown strip cut through some tall old woodland… pines and oaks. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There is a double electricity supply cable slung above it, all the way. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Cars and tents are lined up down one edge, very very very close together.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Despite our fears, it seems there is a toilet and a shower facility set up in those sheds. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We have never ever camped so close to other people. I am thinking of Glastonbury … Social distancing is nowhere near this. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The owner looks like the Landlord on telly - a bruiser, in a golf buggy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He’s affable but wants to know how and when we can pay.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">He says he used to come here w his grandad when he was little, to buy eggs. The grandad and the guy who owned the land had both been in the RAF, so they did business… He came back to visit and found the sons/family of the owner were selling it, so he bought it, though he is in reality a building in London.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Andrew said, we had often thought of running a campsite and quick as a flash he said ‘Wanna buy this?’ <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He’s only had it a few months, and seems to be regretting his decision.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He has a full-time business on his hands already.</p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It clearly has potential, but needs so much done to it… the whole thing is under-invested. The woods are lovely, but it needs opening up to offer more pitches, and it needs proper facilities such as water, rubbish disposal… etc etc.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In some ways it’s like a campsite in the 1970s - if you remember that Mike Leigh film Nuts in May…. which was filmed at the wonderful campsite near Corfe Castle, where we went to stay several times.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Trouble is, we are older now, and expect more. We have done our rough camping. We have been to France and Spain where the campsites are properly funded and are very civilised….. This is Britain in 2020. A wilful cheerful ignorance prevails. ‘We are inadequate and we like it like this. We don’t want to join in, or be up to date. We like bodges … We expect people to put up with things……<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yes, the pitches ARE that close together…….’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Our man has a lot to do. Will he do it? If someone wants a really good project, this could be it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Brits will not be flying off to Spain or Italy for a while. They will seek out home-grown holidays. Happy camping!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q49qRtn3AKY/Xy0oDvuk9AI/AAAAAAAADAU/PKhTKRJxHKM3PZSBl_PRZYxsH40CcczrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/00F78875-9FAB-4A10-B7FC-09E3F58A2B6C.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q49qRtn3AKY/Xy0oDvuk9AI/AAAAAAAADAU/PKhTKRJxHKM3PZSBl_PRZYxsH40CcczrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/00F78875-9FAB-4A10-B7FC-09E3F58A2B6C.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SNkuvTQw_Zg/Xy0oEThCBOI/AAAAAAAADAY/S9wpEbKHsoQ6vSQfY92Ub8ey51Qmom4VwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/11BF9521-3611-4143-9156-4117F9A40C5C.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1423" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SNkuvTQw_Zg/Xy0oEThCBOI/AAAAAAAADAY/S9wpEbKHsoQ6vSQfY92Ub8ey51Qmom4VwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/11BF9521-3611-4143-9156-4117F9A40C5C.jpeg" width="640" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SNkuvTQw_Zg/Xy0oEThCBOI/AAAAAAAADAY/S9wpEbKHsoQ6vSQfY92Ub8ey51Qmom4VwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/11BF9521-3611-4143-9156-4117F9A40C5C.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><span style="color: black;">It's lovely to be able to take time out to paint these trees, even though I feel very hemmed in...</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bG7Z0ZmIajU/Xy0oFTXspFI/AAAAAAAADAc/i3TiTbTnGs4icyaMB_vZV1Gkqo5sqR7-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/FB860F1C-21E2-41A7-8A52-F9E4FC60D004.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bG7Z0ZmIajU/Xy0oFTXspFI/AAAAAAAADAc/i3TiTbTnGs4icyaMB_vZV1Gkqo5sqR7-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/FB860F1C-21E2-41A7-8A52-F9E4FC60D004.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p class="p2" style="color: #454545; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-27474715797896867392020-08-06T02:41:00.000-07:002020-08-06T02:41:49.877-07:00All changeLeaving Malta, in March, where the lockdown was being effectively put into place, was strange enough. The main point was that most people seemed compliant. The supermarket queues looked so strange and irritating to us, but little did we know what chaos and confusion we would have to live through for the next several months in Britain. Our flight home was about half full. It was perhaps the last EasyJet plane out of Malta. <div><br /></div><div>Here our government seemed hopelessly out of touch. Common-sense precautions were delayed for months, if put into effect at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Planes are now mostly grounded. We hear the airlines have scrapped all the old ones. The skies have been clear and quiet. The occasional military flight, far higher than normal commercial flights, leaves a distinct trace in the perfect blue. </div><div><br /></div><div>The excellent summer weather - bordering on drought - has made life tolerable as we faced the worst fears imaginable, but carried on with gardening, cautious shopping, zoom-calling, missing our dear ones. People have died in their tens of thousands.</div><div><br /></div><div>We contemplate another huge depression as the disastrous effects of Brexit are forced onto us... plus the lockdown which has shut all hotels, shops, restaurants and pubs, parks, theatres, concert-halls, any place where people gather. Though the government has encouraged race meetings (where the directors are friends or family of cabinet members). As things were loosened, people went in their tens of thousands to the beaches, hugger mugger... leaving tons and tons of filth and litter as they dragged home. As the infection rates had been sinking, gradually, then they started to rise again. Schools must shut. Schools must open. Grannies cannot see their little ones, but cleaners and nannies may go in and out. All beauty parlours and hairdressers must shut, or perhaps open. People must stand 2m apart, or 1m. So companies have gone bankrupt. The travel industry is reduced to miniscule amounts... who wants to travel in a closed space with strangers for hours? I foresee a total economic collapse, as in the Great Depression - and that lasted 10 years. Eventually the banks themselves, and the insurance companies, will take hits.... who foresaw the collapse of Equitable Life, or Lehmann Brothers? I wonder if money will survive? Pensions? This may sound grim - but honestly, who, five years ago, would have predicted Britain crashing out of the best trade arrangements in history, the most peaceable... and on a voluntary basis, and fighting in the streets about who should or should not wear a mask?</div><div><br /></div><div>Maks? Hijab? Race riots in America and growling injustices here too... Race riots!!!!! A racist president in the White House openly inciting violence. And we, peaceable us, are (in a small way) stockpiling dried and tinned foods.... And JuicePlus+ too I think. Will the supply chains break down? It's entirely foreseeable that many many household items and food goods will become very very scarce. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s6SSVPNHU-U/XyvN8gyJSmI/AAAAAAAAC-c/gI9nW1GwvzUPE92G8SIHRiSZcptBGYjzgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/white%2Bhouse%2Briots%2Bpainting%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1322" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s6SSVPNHU-U/XyvN8gyJSmI/AAAAAAAAC-c/gI9nW1GwvzUPE92G8SIHRiSZcptBGYjzgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/white%2Bhouse%2Briots%2Bpainting%2Bcopy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div></div><div><br /></div><div>We are actually putting a box of some of these stored foods into the VW, along with amusements, awning, bedding etc, because we are going camping in Sussex for a few days. Lucie who came here on holiday for a week after 3 months solo in her flat, stayed on for six weeks, but we will drop her in Forest Hill and then go on to Pulborough. She has been working from here, a sea-swimming, and biking, and wild camping with her intrepid friend Miranda who biked round the world on her own not long ago. Various friends have been here to party in a quiet way.. the social distancing acting as a kind of safety net. John and Laura Pool, Tasha and Tom Day (who have moved to her folks' place at Luddenham while they househunt and wait for their baby to be born), Tom Sutton Roberts, Daisy Perkins, Hannah who's down from Edinburgh, so her social scene has not been just us crumblies. She likes it here (free hotel).</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2jGiGGhzt3o/XyvPRtWcPYI/AAAAAAAAC-o/cQMxMUPnE0QjrQv77mLC6PEE3uPc6TLGwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2016/IMG_3773.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2jGiGGhzt3o/XyvPRtWcPYI/AAAAAAAAC-o/cQMxMUPnE0QjrQv77mLC6PEE3uPc6TLGwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_3773.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>So much has happened. So many shocks and fears. It has been, or is, like being in the first act of a dark opera... so far, everything seems to be going along ok... but we know, we all know that catastrophe is about to strike. And again, and again. The second act will start during this winter. </div><div><br /></div><div>But today, after a hectic, frantic fortnight campaigning against a planning application on Ordnance Wharf, in which I succeeded in getting Jonathan Neame to put in an objection, we are off till Tuesday camping in Andrew's VW. I am not really looking forward to it. No facilities, no wifi. I have a lot of art work to catch up on.... loving my ten week deep course in feeling-art. Already seeing changes. Have a bag packed with art materials and somehow have to negotiate Andrew's urges to always be doing something. No rest. Though he walks much more slowly than me. Weird. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-58861776590106293162020-03-17T10:00:00.000-07:002020-03-17T10:01:16.378-07:00AirportAfter several days of anxiety and speculation about our flight home being cancelled, here we are at the airport. All looks fine.<br />
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We heard the Portuguese airports are 'rammed'. This is empty. Hardly anyone about. I think the whole place will have closed down completely by the weekend. Lockdown all around Europe.<br />
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The car hire check-in man was born in Canterbury, lived in Deal for years, moved to Malta a few months ago. Loves it. Wants to retire to Gozo. Has no regrets. He said our car had no new damage on it, which was great.... we had wondered, as every single panel had a scrape or a dint on it somewhere..... He said, 'No wonder the Maltese only drive old cars!' </div>
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The day today was cool, grey, very British. That made it less of a pain having to spend so many hours waiting at the airport .... which seemed sensible in case of any disruptions (plus so many places closed all around... nowhere else much to go!) The sun has come out now but we are upstairs in the Departure lounge. Small airports are so nice. Clean, quiet, comfortable even. We have access to sockets to charge up our phones. </div>
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We'll be boarding in about an hour. This bulletin is not very powerful, sorry! It's more a way of filling in time while we wait. </div>
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The internet is ALIVE with opinions, community groupings, advice, suggestions, rumours, warnings. Almost everything has been cancelled. People are worrying whether they will be allowed to go for a walk. Especially if they are 'old'. I do wonder what we are going back to! People have been posting photos of the empty shelves at the Faversham supermarkets. A kind of madness seems to have seized people.... anxiety, survival instinct, propriety. 'SMINE!!!' </div>
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What a world!</div>
Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-13776417432606237882020-03-16T11:08:00.000-07:002020-03-18T06:21:43.686-07:00Intimations of apocalyptic times<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
We had a quiet day, overshadowed by the effects of the reactions to the virus. How fast it has changed everything. The family are still urging us to get home quick - the airline is about to cancel flights, they say… but the website says all is ok.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> The flight is still on time. </span>We checked with the travel insurance: we’re both covered for up to £5k for disruption, if the airline cancels. There are now no flights earlier than the one we’re booked on tomorrow evening anyway. So we’re hoping for a smooth journey home…. and crossing fingers for no bad news by email from Easyjet.</div>
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Today we stayed in the local area - a walk, and a coffee. The cafe was very quiet... the owner was distracted by what's going on, delighted we had stopped. Then we went for a quiet stroll. In the deep gorge running down through the town we saw the only swimming pool we've seen this week...maybe belonging to a fancy hotel/spa nearby. No-one was in it, but the gardens all around were pretty and made a change from the dry, stony, structural nature of the whole place. Then we were looking for lunch, and amazingly we found a place which was open! Truth to tell we had an indifferent meal, but the building was amazing - we wouldn’t have gone in otherwise…. It was once a quarry, then a hostel with stables on the ground floor with rooms above, a bomb-shelter, a tunnel to the old church half a kilometre away, a school, a residence, and now a ‘traditional’ eating house. The waiter first looked after us with bare hands, but half-way through the meal appeared with blue surgical gloves on. </div>
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Later we drove round to the local bay - brilliant blue water, some wind-surfers and para-surfers taking advantage of the very brisk and chilly wind. Out on the far horizon, like a ghost, a huge tall sailing ship skudded across, with gleaming white sails. (This was apparently the Shtandart Swedish sailing vessel en route to Sicily then Sète in France). It looked quite apocalyptic. </div>
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All around us, people are making deep dark changes to their planned life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Quite unprecedented in my lifetime, and maybe since the 17th century…. (plague). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Facebook is full of it, and Twitter. Events cancelled. Announcements of social isolation, self-imposed, or maybe (who knows) enforced by the authorities, or vigilantes?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Arguments about what we should all be doing. There is a lot of virtue-signalling. Also a lot of fear and anxiety.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I detect a sort of ghoulish gung-ho spirit: <i>this</i> is how we’re going to tackle the problem. Weird dissonant announcements and interpretations, based on - what, exactly? Guesses? The experience of other countries (where things may be different)? Already, the military have been ‘activated’ in Bern, in Switzerland…. for support and logistics…. so that’s martial law, isn’t it?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Who can walk where? What changes are made while we are all so preoccupied with this? May’s elections have been cancelled.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Lockdown. Cancellations. Travel bans. Shortages in shops. Rationing?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Who knows?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Who really is the expert?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The CEO of Sainsbury’s sent out an email today in which he said they have plenty of supplies in their warehouses. He just needs customers to be temperate in their purchases, stop bulk-buying, take only what’s necessary. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>His staff will work hard to make sure we all get what we need.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He signed off: ‘Best wishes, Mike’. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Mike! <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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An Italian guy (wind surfer) down by the bay said Britain ‘always’ wins. He admires how we’re leaving the EU. Adamant.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Around him, old and new boats on the quay were presumably waiting for buyers… some beautiful old fishing boats, with three props; a big old wooden trawler type, also with three props (and three engines?); some modern steel vessels, two of which had eyes on either side of the prow.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We bought two artichokes for our supper this evening from yet another tiny local grocers… the two gangways were so narrow and awkward we had to wait to get through. Although it was all very small and dark, like all these tiny shops it was crammed with every kind of tinned and packed food you could possibly want. Only the greengrocery looked a bit sad. </div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I meant to say earlier, so many of the houses here have names - St Andrew, St<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Rita, Stella Maris, Mater Dei, Good House… And so many have tiny plaques beside the front doors, dedicated to the Virgin and Child.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Really, we have seen dozens, maybe hundreds. </span>It’s as if the Fat Ladies of Malta have left the island in Her capable hands… the goddess is still waiting, everywhere you look. It’s a lovely place.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-91313662570627349502020-03-15T09:00:00.000-07:002020-03-15T09:23:43.266-07:00Fishing<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
During the night, urgent and well informed messages from family (one being a travel expert, another a health expert) were pushing for us to at least investigate getting home early.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, the airline was really very backward in coming forward with any information or guidance.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One auto-response said they’d get back to us in 28 days. Another said the helplines and chatlines are not open for a few hours yet and are in any case very busy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We were faced with our own powerlessness. Step One!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Being Sunday, it had always been our plan to go south to Marsaxlokk, the fishing village with a colourful market and harbour, so that’s what we did. The route skirting the inner suburbs of Valletta was exciting to say the least, with violent swoops and turns, short-notice changes of lane, and the satnav unable to keep up.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, of course, in the end we made it down to the quay, a wide and colourful place filled with bobbing boats, huge cranes on the skyline at the freeport, a massive gas-tanker-ship out at anchor, and a lot of hopeful market traders with masses of gleaming fish, veg, leather goods, dried foods, trinkets and the like.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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However, there were really hardly any visitors.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A glum atmosphere pervaded. There were some French visitors, but I think most were British, and as far as we could hear, everyone was talking about coronavirus and its dire consequences. We had a coffee, mooched around.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We need not have worried about avoiding crowds… there were hardly any.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The water was pretty clean, we could see baby fish in the depths. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space">The name Marsaxlokk comes from a wind, which blows from the south. The fish on sale were very varied, some obviously farmed (you can see the tanks out in the bays), but some so bright and shining and unusual that they must have just come out of the depths in a time honoured way. </span><br />
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We stopped for another refreshment and a Geordie lass leapt up to take our photo for us…. she had moved to Malta a few months ago. She loved it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Her cleavage was spectacular. Her skirt was very short and the snakeskin belt very tight. Her thick black tights had impressive ladders in them. She had the company of two guys for her coffee break and kept urging us to move to the island.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why go back? she asked.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why not stay?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>She had heard that the government was going to impose a lockdown from 19th-24th, and then stop it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We walked back and round to the eastern end, to a handy little beach, and into a tourist office. The instant and obligatory hand-sanitising meant we could talk to the lady sitting in there. She said she’d heard there might be action from the Maltese government, going on through April and May. She confirmed what we had already discovered - that all the churches and museums are now closed. The tourist industry will suffer.</div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Lunch was really very good indeed at a small place set back from the quay - Terrone. The Serbian waiter and his staff were attentive, brought us our one starter to share (stuffed courgette flowers, deep fried), and then a single plate of two Striped Mullet steaks with roasted vegetables, again to share. </div>
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Absolutely superb, and with a couple of desserts it came to 49€. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We have tootled back along the coast, not calling in to the temple sites or the famous Blue Grotto - just looking from a distance. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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We’ve checked again with EasyJet - they are waiving flight-change charges but we’d still have to pay for £68 each to get onto the midday flight home on Tuesday (first available seats)… that is just about 6 hours earlier than our original bookings, so we’re sticking with Plan A.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Back here in the flat, we hear the birdsong all around.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We have driven past miles and miles of beautiful drystone walls, some tumbling down, some so new and precise they almost hurt to look at. We stopped at a roadside veg shop and bought a little bag of chard to have for supper.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One more day (Monday), then pack up and go home on Tuesday evening DV.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-20161670552485094832020-03-15T00:29:00.002-07:002020-03-15T08:12:18.695-07:00Beauty v violence<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
The hilltops in Malta are adorned with spectacular mini-cities of the most beautiful golden stone buildings and tiny alleys, and with highly ornamented church domes, towers, pyramids etc on the skyline, and each with a gorgeous and always violent history. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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This tension - between beauty and danger - has pervaded our ill-timed little holiday. The tsunami of the new world plague (coronavirus) has overwhelmed everything. Each day has brought a rising tide of panicky news about regulations imposed by shops, councils, governments - and maybe airlines.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We have already witnessed the local shopping madness - supermarkets limiting how many people may go into their stores: you can only go in once some other person has come out. Luckily for us we are getting our meagre supplies of say, wine, milk, bread, salads, cheese, etc. from little local epiceries, which are pretty amazing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The internet is awash with rumours, contradictions, certainties and anguish.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The family is taking a strong line: that we should cut things short and get home immediately. Today is Sunday - trip to fishing market planned. Now considering whether to take all belongings with us and just decamp. Pros and cons: in favour of leaving early - the tourist experience has definitely diminished quite noticeably each day with closures of venues and services. It would be nice to know we can get home. I didn’t bring enough stuff to last more than a week - including my all-precious JuicePlus capsules! On the other hand, changing flights, relinquishing the apartment early, fixing it, may be time-consuming and stressful…. we both need a rest!</div>
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So today - we are trying to contact the airline, the landlord, decide what to do.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Not so carefree. Boo hoo. It's hard to say if the curtailment of our planned activities is a good thing or not...<br />
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Yesterday we went to Mosta to see the Dome - but it was closed on orders of the archbishop. I drew it instead. Andrew sneaked a peek by talking to a builder. </div>
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We had lunch in Mdina - where lots of things were closed. The silent city was actually quite quiet, apart from birdsong.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> These places are full of spectacular buildings, grand, egotistical, heroic, splendid. </span></div>
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As in so many islands we have visited, the northern areas are by far the most beautiful, being less scorched by the summer’s heat. Our pretty view from our lunch terrace was over small fields and greenery, quite comforting and restful. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> The owner of a gift shop was looking very melancholy indeed. The rumours of lockdown are everywhere. Her shop - which would on a normal Saturday be full of people - was empty. She was selling loads of things at halfprice. The security man we spoke to at Xhaghra had said there were no coach tours. No doubt the boat-based tourist trips will all have to stop. It's an economic disaster for this island. This may be the only thing holding the Maltese government back from issuing lockdown orders...... </span></div>
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We found the Victoria Lines - a bit of late 19thc British military engineering designed to thwart any dastardly enemies who might want to sneak in and seize the all-important naval ports in the south (especially after the opening of the Suez canal) by attacking from the north. So they built a 12km wall, not very high, but taking advantage of a natural outcrop or ridge of rock… It was never tested in battle, and is now a place of wild flowers, bees, peasant farms, hikers and and pretty views. </div>
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Once again we found that the food portions served in restaurants is far too large - we shared one starter and one main meal - couldn’t finish it - came home at last and picked at an artichoke for supper. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-80921198838991812322020-03-14T01:36:00.004-07:002020-03-15T00:14:46.447-07:00Gozo<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Over to Gozo. It's noticeable that the familiar 3-chambered temple/nuraghi design we have seen in Sardinia and at Skorba (and extended at Ta Hagrat) was further developed at Xhagra - here, the two buildings, side by side, have five and four room-sized niches. Some of these at least had shelves or tables, and parts of the floor are still equipped with splendid flooring, paved with smooth stones.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> No signs of any passages inside the walls, let alone staircases to take you up to a viewing point or rooftop. The roofs have completely gone.... speculation is that these were timber or plant-based. </span></div>
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The corbelling of the wall-to-ceiling is as good as any we’ve seen, though at Xhagra there is some corbelling on the outside of one of the buildings, which the authorities have taken to be a sign of instability… it’s propped up with scaffolding, but it looks pretty intentional to me. The question would be, was there another room out there? Seems unlikely. I don’t know!</div>
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Here they found such treasures, in the late 20th century digs - stone-age pottery with inscribed designs such as this bird - maybe a Northern Lapwing. And many fat ladies, and seated figures, and bowls, and beads and so on. (The earlier digs, throughout the 19th century were so badly done that most of what was found has been lost, destroyed, eroded, or somehow vanished. Some excellent drawings and watercolours remain, which they've used to reconstruct the extant displays). </div>
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Initial disappointment that the museum shop at Xhagra had been closed for health reasons (‘we’ve come all this way! I want to buy some replica goddesses!’) was later assuaged by finding the archaeology museum in Victoria’s amazing Cittadella open, and with similar figurines for sale. Phew! <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Sadly, I could not see a replica of the remarkable little temple-model which was found at Hagrat. That throws light on the whole culture of building huge expensive difficult structures in the stone age, before alphabets. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> How on earth did they do it? </span></div>
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I am feeling a bit twitchy about the curtailed nature of the explanations at all these places. No mention of birth-giving and its perils, in other words, life!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They focus on the burials and later cremations and say it was a centre for a death cult. No understanding of the spirals, which are cyclical symbols - about fertility and divine or magic femininity.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No overt mention of the lack of weapons. Barely a thought for the female half of society… even though there are these dozens and dozens of female figurines, and even then they say some of them could be male.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> No mention of astronomical alignments - solstices etc. </span>They talk about the landscape, the location being chosen for its usefulness - access to fresh water, good land - but without any sense of any interaction between the powers and rituals of the ‘temple’ and its influence in that landscape…. The site of Xhagra is pretty good, on a southish-facing slope, with a view of hills and valleys, and the sea and Malta.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A place for renewal and hope, extending benevolence over a whole visible district. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The tone of all the interpretations is dry, dull, obvious, practical, modern. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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One object in the visitor centre stood out to me: the skull of a young woman which was used by scholars at the University of Dundee for a reconstruction. She emerges as a beautiful - almost instantly recognisable person. It’s a triumph of anatomical creativity… but the main thing is her actual teeth! They are perfect, shining, unblemished.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Whatever she ate, she had no caries.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Would that mine were like that.</div>
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By the way, the Cittadella at Victoria (Gozo’s capital) is a mini-city on the hill top a bit like a sunny Gormenghast, with fantastic buildings of many eras, another place which UNESCO has its eye on.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In 1551 when the Turks overran the island, people only escaped enslavement by shimmying down a huge terrifying wall and cliff to escape. Agh! Lots of museum-y bits were closed, but it’s so extensive and attractive we didn’t mind.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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I will make a note about how we go about, in our little hired car. It is a blessing to us fuddy-duddies to be driving on the left. We stop for lunch out wherever we are, and find the menus tempting - quite Italian in influence with pasta and pizza as well as Maltese specialities such as rabbit and fish.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The portions are huge!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We come home to have (if anything) a picnic style light supper. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We failed to buy milk from a supermarket yesterday as there were long queues to get IN!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> You're o</span>nly allowed in if someone comes out.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The panic and generalised mob reaction to the coronavirus is unsettling.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Who knew that there was a world-wide preoccupation with bum-wiping? (I thought it was just me). The ferry to and from Gozo is quick and efficient - you only pay coming back to Malta.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-58675683916427253752020-03-13T01:21:00.000-07:002020-03-13T01:30:35.816-07:00Valletta - first visit<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Three strong impressions from the day….</div>
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One, that we misread the mapping from the phones, compounded by the very unfamiliar place names. We had planned to get the little ferry into Valletta from suburb/outlier of the community of Sliema - just for the fun of it. <span style="text-align: center;">Inadvertently we drove into Valletta itself, found a parking place far far along the rough track by the sea under the fortifications, and jumped on the ferry only to find ourselves on the wrong side of the water and not in Valletta at all! I report this because it shows how easily one can believe one’s own assumptions: I thought we were in Sliema, when the mapping clearly showed the directions (N/S) were all the wrong way round and still I didn’t twig. Not till the lady in the Tourist Info at Sliema told us, did we understand. She said there was nothing to see in Sliema - just shopping malls and commercial buildings. We saw Mothercare (closed now in the UK), M&S, Accessorize, HSBC, Matalan, etc etc, none of which were of any interest to us. The quayside is clean and tidy, and being upgraded to provide smoother and swifter passenger experience for those embarking on the various tourist and ferry boats.</span></div>
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Two: that Valletta is a really lovely place to be. The grid-pattern of streets up and down over the great ridge is surrounded by massive fortifications around the sea wall, and with at least a few quaint place-names reassuring to a Brit abroad - Old Bakery Street, Merchants Street, Windmill, etc. </div>
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The architecture is really interesting, with great examples from all the preceding centuries, and lots of swagger. There are humble artisan dwellings, palazzos, statuary, balconies, churches, greater and lesser squares, dark alleys, a comfortable international atmosphere, lots of cafes with all the benefits of the Italian cuisine, and (oh dear) that comforting British smattering of signs and telephone boxes. We felt at home. I particularly liked the tradition of the decoration on the corners of buildings, looking like piles of sandwiches.</div>
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We strolled about, found lunch (Maltese rabbit stew for milord, and meagre fish for me).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had forgotten that Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to live here (1804/5) and later a friend prompted me to seek out the Carravaggio<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>paintings. We will go back before we leave Malta to find them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The whole city - like the whole island - represents the full history of Europe, and the present crisis (coronavirus, supremacy of fascism/banking culture, digital take-over of old ways of doing things). And, this could be one of the most fortified cities in Europe too, with fortresses and barracks and towers and huge walls dominating every part of the scenery, especially at the waterfront.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Collecting our car, we laughed at the huge rocky potholes which create a kind of terrible game for any drivers who’ve crept down there, past the old fishermen’s dock, and round the headland facing into the easterly winds.</div>
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Three: I wanted to get into the National Museum of Archaeology to better understand the Neolithic and maybe Bronze Age history of Malta, and I found it so overwhelming that I can scarcely begin to describe its treasures. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had heard of the Fat Ladies of Malta, but had no idea of how many there are, or how fat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Over the past few years, I have built up a small collection of replica ‘goddesses’ from Greece, the Cyclades, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Spain, France, Germany, the Balkans, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, etc etc., and developed a sense of how widespread and ‘ordinary’ or humdrum these little figures often were.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To me they were at least partly some kind of talisman against the perils of childbirth, and a celebration of sex and fertility, and the idea of the earth as a female thing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Adorned with or accompanied by spirals, archways, sometimes stars and those ‘hooked diamonds’, they had a universality, and their placement in locations such as Newgrange with its solstice alignments showed how informed the people of the late Ice Age were. They all come from a time long before writing of any kind, and indeed before weapons were even thought of. Along with scrapers and hooks and needles, they were just part of the toolkits needed to survive, spiritual spanners, personal portraits.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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But the Maltese ‘Ladies’ are so remarkable even in their fragmentary condition, they outshine most of the rest.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They celebrate a colossal corpulence. They do seem to be female (though one note says they may also include males… I didn’t see that, but still….).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For some reason, vast oozing fatness was an important aspect - at least for some time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some of the figurines are just female and not fat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One at least has nine little marks on its back, perhaps counting the months of pregnancy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Many have the triangular delineations of the pubic area.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some are headless, or seem to be made to have different heads attached to them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some were found beside or on top of blocks of stone decorated with spirals or interlacing circular C-shaped whorls.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But mostly, staggeringly, they were fat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Were these fat women depictions of Mother Earth? Of a goddess? Of priestesses? We don’t know. So much of the archaeology was done in the 1920s - clumsy and inadequate we think now, in the face of more recent technical methods of analysis.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But it was all pre-writing - so there are no records, or even myths or legends. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The people who made the temples and carvings and clay figurines seem to have come to Malta from Sicily, and they were farmers. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There was a long gap before the Bronze Age people arrived - and nothing to explain why the Stone Age people disappeared…. they don’t seem to have been the same people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Bronze Age brought weapons, and male deities… the old mothering earth cults just faded away into nothing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> I felt overwhelmed by all this, what it could all mean, and calmed myself by doing some drawings - very quick - of some of the exhibits. </span></div>
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In the Museum, they have banned cash exchanges (cards only), and no audio guides, because of the virus. So I may have missed a lot of information which has been gleaned since the quite wordy information boards beside the exhibits. I bought three more replica ‘goddesses’, of poor quality but at least attempting to describe the shapes of the females found in the stony fields between the wars.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There is also a repro model of the cart-ruts which have baffled historians, and which we failed to find on Day 1, with a very good video made by British archaeologist Dr David Trump who seems to have devoted his life to the treasures of the island. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Seeing him wipes away a lot of the pain and misery inflicted by his namesake. There are good Trumps, too.</div>
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At the supermarket back at Mellieha, there was pandemonium. Whereas the day before it had all been quiet and orderly, we found it heaving with people with trollies and baskets overflowing. The queues stretched right through the store. Apparently the government has announced the closure of all schools, so that set everyone off into sensible/panic mode. It took us nearly 25 minutes of queueing to buy a loaf and a bar of chocolate. Eheu!</div>
Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-69588628943218348502020-03-12T02:03:00.000-07:002020-03-12T12:31:01.828-07:00Who invented steps?<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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We come to rely on systems, and then when they fail we go back into the old ways of doing things. Arriving here on Tuesday, my mobile phone wouldn’t connect properly - no mapping. So we used Andrew’s which was working ok in that respect although I am wretchedly unfamiliar with its controls and habits… Still it got us to our destinations, and meanwhile I started to look at the road map I had had to buy at the airport. Three euros.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(They give you a very good free one when you pick up your hire care in Ireland. Same company, different generosity).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This 3€ map is printed on glossy thin paper and after being opened and folded a few times started to give way on the folds, and a remarkable amount of information on it is printed in such minuscule font that you can barely see it. It’s so bad, it’s almost worth starting a collection of bad maps to show up its uselessness. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Anyway, with a week in front of us and no particularly pressing priorities, I asked if we could call in to see two temple complexes not far from where we are staying: Skorba and Ta’ Hagrat. These lie off the road we had taken to get to Mellieha, so with Andrew’s phone and my silly map it was easy-peasy. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I should say, getting familiar with place-names is not so straightforward because they are mostly rather Arabic, though spelled in Roman alphabet.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We had just about picked up that ‘Triq’ = road, or street, and that’s all.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We found Skorba really easily and wandered in, through an open wire gate, but a man in a shed said we needed tickets and sent us back to ‘the bar on the corner’. The bar (at 11am) was chockablock with local people, almost all of whom were eating huge meals - spaghetti, lasagne, stewed rabbit, vast hamburgers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The owner was frantically serving coffee from a large urn at the back of the bar, which was heated with a blazing gas burner.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He shouted out ‘Tickets?’ to us in a cheerful voice and then told us to wait while he dished up more coffees to people clustered at the counter.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We ordered coffees too, and he gave us our tickets and we went back to the the temple.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The site is a small area, fenced off, about the size of a tennis court, and filled with a jumble and cluster of rocks and boulders; some are standing. It was apparently only excavated in the 1960s, and so had the benefit of modern analysis for the finds - they had discovered carbon-dating by then, whereas most other sites had been dug into in the 1920s or earlier, and so those places remain mysterious in some (almost all) respects. Skorba provided more solid dating evidence, which illuminated the rest of the island’s treasures. The published dates on the information boards are contradictory and awkward, nonetheless. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What’s clear is that there was first some kind of settlement, then a ‘temple’ which had the now-familiar triple-chamber layout, and that was much later adapted and changed, and then - who knows?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Here they found a beautiful goddess figurine, with breasts and a pubic triangle. The man did not know where this is now - presumably in the National Museum. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He had cut the grass around the stones, and it lay withering in the sun.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We went on to the next temple - Ta' Hagrat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Again, a wire fence, a man in a hut. He was Russian.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He asked to see our tickets, wanted to know when and where we had bought them. On inspection it seemed our tickets were dated 5th December last year, and expired on 4th March but he let us in anyway. We were the only people there. He said, moodily, people complain the temple is very small. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Actually it is not small, though it is cramped by its modern boundaries, and is placed on the side of a valley with nice views. This site is about twice the size of Skorba.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Here again is a jumble of stones, hard to make out at first.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This was just a farmer’s field until 1916 - he had moved a couple of great stones out of the way, and the archaeologists put them back where they thought they should go in the 1920s….The caption says "They increased the verticality of the entrance". That's a strange expression. It 'might' have been very low, like the doorways in the Sardinian nuraghi, or the great mounds at Newgrange in Ireland. It’s hard to say if their reconstruction is right, and we will never know.</div>
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But - my goodness! Here is something!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What they made was a really large impressive doorway, approached by a flight of massive steps. These are thought to be the earliest steps found, or something. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Now, this is a bit of a thrill for me, because I do wonder who invented steps.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I asked on Facebook and Twitter last year, and no-one answered. I know, I know, this is one of those questions which everyone thinks is so bleeding obvious that it’s ridiculous… but like all useful things, steps had to start somewhere. Any rocky slope may have inspired the idea, but someone, at some point, got other people to lug blooming great rocks into place to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>create an even and easy walkway up or down.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This little flight of stones at Ta’ Hagrat may be the first one, or one of the first.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No goddess figurine found here, but at Ta’ Hagrat they found a remarkable little model temple carved in stone.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>These structures and artefacts have their origins about 5000BC… the late Stone Age. Thus, they predate the Copper Age and the Bronze Age, when tools were changed into weapons, and the goddess gave way to a series of increasingly violent and assertive egoistical gods. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have to be very wary of leaping to these conclusions, and they are not really conclusions but questions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The layout at Ta’ Hagrat is even more strikingly 3-chambered… once symmetrical, then altered with a different alignment so that the right-hand chamber was elongated and became the entrance for three more smaller chambers… <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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This is all very reminiscent of the nuraghi in Sardinia - but there, of course, the entrances for these Stone Age structures are really small, vaginal. And they (like the Newgrange mounds) have small window over the doors, to let the winter solstice sun into the interiors. This great doorway at Hagrat is now utterly different - but it was made in the 1920s, so who knows what it was like originally? The moody Russian in the hut did not know about the nuraghi, but was interested. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> He too had cut the grass which was drying in the sun. But some spectacular wildflowers were sprouting up, as everywhere... so beautiful. </span></div>
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We headed back north, to view the spectacularly beautiful bay at Ghajn Tuffieha, which has a Gaia Peace Grove at the top of the cliff (complete with graphic warning signs of how dangerous it is on the crumbling edge). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We walked down the long long flight of steps (renewed at the lower end) to the beach and had lunch in a pretty little terrace bar under the terrifying cliffs. The tables have rough patterns carved into them, so reminiscent of the Hooked Diamond shape I love (the ancient textile design which goes back to the Stone Age) that I took it to be a sign of encouragement from my Goddess .... and then I found more on some decorative treetrunk sculptures near the pay desk.... though these came from Bali and have absolutely no connection with Malta other than fashionable stylishness.....</div>
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So, eschewing the long flight of steps, we strolled back up the old pathway which is evidently a river in the wet season.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We then went in search of the famous cart-ruts at the top of the Dingli cliffs, which have mystified historians… again dating from the Stone Age, they are ground into a rocky surface and may have been made by wheeled vehicles near some quarries, but their pathways are pretty random. We found the main area, but did not find the ruts, which was intensely disappointing…. (will have to go back).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The rocky surface looks pretty organic to me, with variations of surface looking entirely natural (memories of O-Level Geography, limestone pavements).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> At some point in the afternoon, my phone started providing mapping but neither that nor the failing folding 3€ map showed us where the ruts are. All I have is a small photo in a guide book. </span></div>
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We dawdled home, calling into various little shops - bought some broad beans - came home, flumped.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-72027845450339693502020-03-11T02:16:00.002-07:002020-03-11T02:16:25.927-07:00Modern travel... changes. Flying to Malta<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
I remember “London Airport” (Heathrow) in the 1950s because my dad worked for BOAC, and occasionally we went there. It wasn’t huge. It seemed like what we used to call ‘an airfield’, something still relatable to the ancient land-use, to be measured in fields.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>fact the buildings and fencing are all still there, a remnant of planning and development from the mid-20th century, or even pre-war. The floor of the public reception area had some sort of wind-rose design in it, I think.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Look at the airports now! Several of them round London, occupying vast spaces which were (within my memory) good farmland, covered now with rolling acres of scabby concrete, and the buildings go on and on and on. These buildings give me a kind of dread, as they are all about crowd control - with thick plateglass walls which allow you to see filades of other people trooping along in another direction from your own, or herded into patient groups. There are signs and ramps and escalators and lifts and corridors which stretch into the vanishing point.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To me, it all seems to be a preliminary for some kind of fascist operation. They could horde hundreds of thousands of us into these spaces, if they needed to imprison us. It’s ready waiting, the airport landscape, with fencing, drains, pens, spaces, even catering… and all conveniently placed sufficiently remotely from the centre of the city.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Now</span> this idea is in my head, I can't expunge it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Sorry. </span></div>
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The process of flying has become one of enumeration - we are no longer people, individuals, but digits in the computer age. We are scanned, photographed, tagged, bundled up and dispatched along various routeways.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yesterday, despite the anxieties and doubts generated by coronavirus (Should we be flying? Will I catch this plague on my journey? Will we get back?) it all went smoothly enough. We parked, we survived the astonishingly bitter cold wet wind attacking the carpark while we waited for the shuttle-bus to the terminus, we checked into our hotel, we woke up in time, we went through the screening and checked in, and we found an indifferent breakfast … all without a hitch. Strangely, we had to do that thing of taking out all liquids and putting them into tiny plastic bags beside our luggage to go through the scanning machines…<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When we flew to Ireland just a month ago, that requirement was not in place. The make-up and toothpaste could stay inside the luggage. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Maybe the North and South Terminals at Gatwick have different procedures. Such ponderings are little diversions from the ghastliness of it all.</div>
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The flight was perfect. The announcements on board have changed slightly - you are not to move seats without permission as it might disturb the balance of the aircraft. We flew at 39,000 feet - I think that’s over 7 miles up! <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Makes having a poo on the flight somehow even more miraculous. Seven miles! <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was almost as cold on arrival at Valletta as it had been leaving Gatwick… cloudy, stormy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We queued to be allowed in (still in the Schengen EU line), we picked up the key for the hire car. That was a shortish stroll from the terminus, but not in the allocated bay. It turned out to be herded in by a great swathe of other hire cars, about 4 rows back. </div>
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The hard-working car-hire lad had to move all these out of the way before we could get ours out, and he was preoccupied because somehow he had lost his mobile phone (work link), and someone had driven off with it…. He was agitated. But we agreed all the (many) bumps and dints in the edges of our Ford Ka, and set off. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Here is Malta - the road from the airport past Valletta is like like some sort of urban nightmare - a winding tract of car showrooms, builders' yards, tumble-down masonry, greasy engineering plants, anonymous commercial buildings, minute survivors of ancient farmsteads with a few rows of potatoes or gnarled vines, beautiful chunky square-edged balustraded balconies, lovely bits of 18th and even 19th century buildings, views down past the sprawling city to the sea, and eventually some sense of the countryside.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We diverted into Rabat (whose meaning, in Arabic, is ‘suburb’), one of the many many hilltop settlements with spectacular churchy buildings at the very top, and fortifications guarding higgledy-piggledy lanes and alleys…. There we had lunch in a courtyard (Piazza della Chiesa Parrocchial) beside the museum celebrating the short stay on the island of St Paul, on his way to Rome and martyrdom. Our lunch was absolutely perfect - a salad of pears and Italian cheese, and then seafood. I managed a quick sketch.... </div>
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Then on we went, towards the north, with some agriculture now more prevalent, across a lovely flat little valley full of horticultural farms, and up into Mellihia and our apartment. </div>
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This is 4 years old, with a lift to our 3rd floor eyrie. We have 2, or even 3, flat roof terraces, with distant sea views, and a quiet stony urban outlook.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There is nothing green in sight anywhere (apart from really distant hilltops far away).</div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We walked down into the old town…. narrow pavements, tat shops, nail bars, cafes, two grocery shops packed with everything including lots of fresh broad beans and other summery vegetables, and brands of (ie) jam which are no longer found in Britain (Foster Clark).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We were amused by the local car numberplates.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We went into the two churches which are (according to a guide book) built ‘atop one another’ (eh?). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One is very old, built into a cave in the cliff and all squint… with an icon or mural of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. This is reputed to have been painted by St Luke himself in AD60.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I seriously doubt it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The church is smallish, packed with votive junk and decorations and is really wonderful.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A nun is on watch.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Outside, and on top of the cliff is an airy spacious baroque ‘parish church’ (cathedral sized), with a lovely white stone interior and red stone outside. The statuary adorning the inside of the dome is risible.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-14601433058876023802020-02-06T12:49:00.001-08:002020-02-06T12:49:34.369-08:00Airports<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Airlines have to treat you as a special individual when they’re encouraging you to book your seats. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But the minute you get to the airport you are one of 30 million others. You are no longer a potential customer, but just a small parcel in the constant flow of objects through these depressing and hard-working buildings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">So how they treat you is quite different.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In fact the technology has moved on huge amount. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">You no longer have to pull things out of your suitcase to go through the security scanners. Something about what I was wearing made the X-ray archway beep so they searched me. The woman said 'What have you got in your back pocket?' I produced a small piece of tissue paper that I had with me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">The scanner could detect a piece of tissue paper - right through my body.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Then in the loo I was glad to see that the sanitary-towel disposal system has been improved. It’s now a small black tower with a dome top. It stands in the corner behind the pan, right out of the way. To open it you wave your hand over the top of the dome, which slowly rises, leaving an aperture for you to deposit whatever it is you want to leave there. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">You don’t have to touch anything to open it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">However the hand-washing facilities leave something to be desired. The water comes dosed with soap, and the dryers (one per basin) don’t work. So you walk away from the loo with sticky fingers, still wet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-642922759367011112019-12-24T07:36:00.002-08:002019-12-24T07:40:32.377-08:00Two ruined places... how rich the churches were<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We came to Kilkenny via Wales ready for Christmas. And we've visited Lamphey and Kells, two quite different church sites, both ruined, and different in so many ways, but provoking some ideas about how the rich spend their money and use their power.....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In Lamphey in Pembrokeshire you can visit the ruins of a once-gorgeous Bishop’s Palace. Created in the early 14th century by Henry de Gower (whose name indicates Norman origins nearly 300 years after the Conquest) who was Bishop at the cathedral of St David’s, not far away. Lamphey Palace or Court had rich and splendid buildings - a chapel and gatehouse of course, a wide perimeter wall, a huge barn for storing grain, and a hall with a truly show-off roof, having an arcaded parapet where guests could walk around and view the lovely valley. This parapet rising above the clerestory of arched windows lighting the hall beneath, is still there. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are outbuildings, cellars, towers, gates and stairways, in surprisingly good repair. They had kitchen gardens, herb gardens, orchards and a deer park, so food was never going to be a problem. The bishop’s place of retreat was sited - like the cathedral - beside a useful working stream, so they had a watermill to grind grain, and the buildings were so fine and true they have survived centuries of ruination and despoliation. After the dissolution of the monasteries it was sold on, and eventually descended into use as a farmhouse. It remains as a tidily-kept and rather theatrical monument, like a stage-set, waiting for something to happen.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Across the water in Ireland we went to visit another ruined place, the Priory of Kells near Kilkenny. This is not the famous Kells Abbey, home of that radiant Book which now lives in the Library at Trinity College, Dublin, but an Augustinian house, built by Cornish monks in the twelfth century. Thus it predates Lamphey by about 140 years, and was not a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>pleasure palace but a monastery. The oddity of this</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> place is its high standard of fortification.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The founder was called Geoffrey Fitzrobert de Monte Marisco - whose name also reveals his aristocratic/Normal status - in fact he was an Anglo-Norman knight.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There had been an earlier, pre-Norman church there, dedicated to an Irish saint, Kieran, but the new stone priory was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here the remaining ruins look slightly less steady than those at Lamphey, and some are propped up with new buttresses, but they are utterly magnificent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There are many towers - clearly defensive. The nave, transept, cloister, the footings of many rooms and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>outbuildings all remain, like a labyrinth.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The children running round with us stayed close, as it would be easy to get lost.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>At the back, there is of course a river racing through, known as the Kings River, and with an island and bridge - so here, too, there was a watermill.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>All these great houses had mills as a means of sustenance, and of taxation, as they could charge the peasants to grind their corn into flour.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The ecclesiastical magnificence cannot be denied. It was a splendid place… and later attracted predatory attacks, because in due course the monks felt they had to build a huge curtain wall on the uphill side of their priory - with six towers complete with arrow slits and garderobes. Here they could graze their beasts more safely. And it made the whole place look like a military outpost rather than a house of prayer. Even today as you walk down from the road you see first of all this huge wall, with its spy-holes and slits, and you know the men inside were feeling defensive….<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What struck me about these two ruined and more or less empty places was how expensive they were, how lavishly furnished according to their times, with carvings, huge windows, high walls and splendid adornments. Their builders - both scions of the Norman-French conquerors who in the turn of one single day in 1066 took the whole Anglo-Saxon kingdom (which I suppose then included Ireland) as their playground - used their power and wealth to build the pleasure-palace and the priory without a care in the world, or so it seems to me now. They chose plum sites, summoned their workforces, consulted the best architects, and set to work. Hundreds of years later we can admire what they did... how spectacularly they lived, how they could display all this to their friends. They lived like lords, which is what they were despite their church status. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And today, after the stunning victory of the bankers’ men in Westminster, and the alienation of so many people who fought for Britain to stay as part of Europe and for the real survival of our NHS, these two places have for me a sinister message. They show that the rich and mighty like to impose their wishes because they can, and their desire for comfortable survival over all the others, heedless of the pains of the poor, can all too easily be put into practice. </span></div>
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Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-2880785112944642742019-10-14T00:38:00.000-07:002019-10-14T00:38:04.377-07:00Ice creamI meant to say, while we were in Sardinia, that it's deeply disappointing to find how much 'ice cream' has changed, even in Italian territory. As with bread, the memories of what we could buy when I was a child are clearly irretrievable.<br />
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Italian ice-cream was world famous for its rich fruit content, bright colours, delicious taste and loyalty to an old tradition... there's even a music-hall song about an Italian ice-cream seller. They knew what they were doing. There was an family-run ice-cream business in Chalk Farm, a mile or so down the road from where we lived, and sometimes an uncle or somebody would go down there to bring some home - wrapped (weirdly to me then) in a towel to stop it from melting.<br />
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It was different from the Walls ice-cream otherwise available in shops, which came as Vanilla, Vanilla-Strawberry-Chocolate, or Neapolitan which had a strange green stripe in it. Marine Ices ice-cream had a zing and punch of taste which was just worlds away.<br />
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What we've noticed in travels in France, Spain, Corsica, the Canaries, Madeira and now Sardinia is that 'something' has happened to ice-cream. The shops are glamorous, with glass-fronted covers over displays of several steel dishes of luridly coloured product. The names are the same - the Stracciatella, the Pistachio, the Doppo Cioccolata, the Fragola.... but the flavours and content have gone. The texture is always the same - smooth, with no crystals, consistent.<br />
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I imagine that scientists have got their hands on it, to maintain the texture. Its propped up by glycerine or somesuch. So these packs of product, on display, in varying temperatures, exposed to light and air, have to stay looking attractive... The 'look' has become more important than the taste, because that's what leads to the buying decision. Customers are unlikely to come back anyway, as they are wandering around on holiday. The colours, the choice, the names of the varieties are what drives the sale. The first few seconds, when customers stand in the shop for the first delicious lick - well, the taste will be good-enough for that, and the texture will be pleasing at that moment... <br />
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But when you have (over a period of time) tried several ice-creams, and found they all have exactly the same texture, and the taste is always slightly disappointing, then you have to concede that things have changed - for the worse. No granules of ice, but no real high. I don't <i>know</i> if it's glycerine, but it's something creating this texture. And I think the flavours have been industrialised too, based on syrups instead of real fruits. So, if you want real old-fashioned proper ice-cream, you will either have to find an artisan maker on your travels, or make it yourself.Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-61960069519319744782019-10-07T02:10:00.001-07:002019-10-07T02:12:22.431-07:00Rainy Ireland<style type="text/css">
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Here we are in Kilkenny, where it’s pretty cool, grey, and wet. Such a contrast with the heat and scorched browns and golds of the Sardinian lands. We flew in to Cork on the day that Hurricane Lorenzo crossed over Ireland, but everything stayed on schedule. The only real signs of the storm that we saw were great flocks of rooks up in the air, apparently surfing and playing in the wind. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them altogether.<br />
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There’s something about all the birds of the crow family - their power, intelligence and beauty. Though, this morning, I read about a mob of magpies flocking together - nine of them - to kill a hare.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The hares are<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>wondrous in their own right, demanding a special sort of attention. You don’t forget it if you see one. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We are in a quandary (like millions of others, of course)….what to do if Brexit goes ahead? We have these two delightful little grandsons growing up in Ireland and we only get to see the about 5 or 6 times a year. Maybe we should leave England and come and live here? </div>
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Faversham has its own problems - mostly do with suburban expansions around the town, undersupplied with services on the new estates and therefore inevitably bound to add to the traffic and parking problems in the narrow medieval streets, which are already difficult at times of day.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And the traffic in Kent will get worse, whether or not Brexit goes ahead. We frequently find the town has come to a standstill because of some road accident maybe 10 miles away, where everything has backed up. So - much as we have loved living there, we are wondering if it’s time to move on. After all, most of the time, there are just the two of us (+ our lodger) rattling around in our rambly old house. So we did a bit of online house-hunting yesterday, and found a huge old place in the bog with a ruined castle in the garden….. </div>
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Just my sort of thing, but it won’t happen. My dream would be for some sort of arts centre, or retreat, to help it pay its way.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Sigh!</div>
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We all wait to see what will happen at the end of this month. The ‘news’ and the politics of the last three years has been almost completely unbelievable - like some sort of mad melodrama, and we feel as if we’re watching the destruction of great chunks of our civilisation, and for what? To make a few billionaires richer?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No doubt the old smug post-colonial Little Britain attitudes needed to be challenged, but so far they seem to be in the ascendant - there’s a kind of myth propagated that that is the will of the people. It isn’t.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Coming away, to Sardinia and Ireland, and before that to France and Denmark, in the last few weeks has been a relief.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We have to go back to it all tomorrow. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-15203818307355038602019-10-01T00:25:00.001-07:002019-10-01T00:26:38.464-07:00Buying honey<style type="text/css">
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Some final thoughts on leaving Sardinia. It would obviously be a very nice place to live if we were to leave Britain, and didn’t have family ties in (e.g.) Ireland. It’s sunny, with a wonderful landscape and interesting history, etc. </div>
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The obvious comparison would be Corsica which we went to last year. That is also very Italian but nominally or officially French. I think on the basis of these two very short visits, I would choose Corsica at the moment, mostly because my French is better than my Italian. </div>
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Still, as ever, here on holiday, we have been uplifted by all the human contacts we’ve made. Last night, we went to the local supermarket to buy honey to take home, and two women joined in with great encouragement to help us choose which variety, explaining which parts of the body would benefit from which kind of flower the bees had eaten.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> This for the chest! This for the throat! </span>When we explained this was for presents to take back, they relaxed - smiled - said they’d all be fine!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was funny and kind of them. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Our walk round the back streets as dusk fell was very gentle. The light and the twilight were soft and the air was warm. The old streets with the few remaining ruins of old family farms are steep and clean. New buildings - villas, flats, holiday apartments - stand very firm and square with their concrete footings, whereas the old buildings made of rubble stone have less resilience.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We’ve had a great holiday. Home today.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-53634365377619269912019-09-30T02:14:00.001-07:002019-09-30T02:14:53.058-07:00Winding down
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I have a random question. How did Stone Age people cut their fingernails and toenails?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One of the tiny but really useful things in my lifetime has been the invention of, or widespread availability of, those nail-clipper things. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I can remember struggling with so-called nail-scissors for years, with their curved blades. But they can only have been around for a couple of hundred years or so, as a gadget. What came before that? Plain knife blades? Teeth?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bits of obsidian?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Muravera is a long thin town on the south side of a river which runs into an opening valley on the south east corner of Sardinia. It is curtailed by mountains behind it, and the river and green lands in front. There is a twin town - Villaputzu on the other side of the valley. The farms grow citrus fruits on the lower reaches, and the higher lands seem to be richly but randomly planted with olives, nuts, eucalyptus, oaks, wild woods.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The beaches are the main tourist attraction, and they have nothing except fine sparkly sand and a duckboard running along at the top.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We saw one little jellyfish - medusa! - drifting about.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Looked the same as the ones in the bay at Arbatax.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>My cunning wheeze - to take a bottle of tap water with us to the beach, to heat in the sun while we swim - is a great success in my opinion. You can simply wash the salt off before you dry and change back into your clothes - makes for a more comfortable day. However we should have taken an umbrella with us… it was ferociously hot.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The sand was really too hot to walk on.</div>
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We found a plasticky cafe by Spiaggio San Giovanni. Our macchiato coffee was unusual being mostly milk - a dialect misunderstanding. One hunky bloke was sunbathing...</div>
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We sort-of noticed that at some point all the locals drifted away. What they knew and we did not is that the glamorous and spinky resto - further along - would rapidly fill up for lunch. We got there too late!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Reservations only.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was Sunday after all!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So instead we drove back along the watercourse (not seeing any flamingoes in the spagno) and eventually found a local place at the back of the town, no glamour and not many punters but a decent little lunch - eel pie, pasta with smoked fish for one and little ravioli stuffed with swordfish, bottarga (fish roe) and tomatoes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>All for 38€.</div>
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Later we drove round to the intriguingly named Porto Corallo which is just a modern yacht basin with no-one there. One boat made us laugh. </div>
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A further note about Sardinian bread. We have - on this last but one day - found a brand of packaged focaccio bread, which comes in mini-packs. It’s pretty tasteless and dry but actually better than a lot of what we bought as ‘fresh’ in various shops.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Would recommend. Focaccelle.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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As you can tell, this was a lazy day. I did some drawings, we managed to get the manager of the apartments to unlock the washing machine (she was 40 mins late for the appointment), and did not much. Odd how long it takes to unwind.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Back at home, Brexit rolls along like a never-ending hurricane, and the threat of flooding in the creek caused some alarms, but the Environment Agency were on the case. (FB is a strong tie).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s so hot and bright here, it’s really hard to imagine cold dark days. But we are going home tomorrow.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Then on to Ireland for Alex’s 4th birthday party.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-77916557693089947202019-09-29T01:24:00.003-07:002019-09-29T01:50:14.872-07:00Why do Sardinians eat such horrible bread?<style type="text/css">
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This is our last stop in Sardinia for this trip. It’s a spacious modern apartment overlooking the valley town of Muravera, not far from the sea, and about 30 kms from Caglieri airport for our departure on Tuesday.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There is a swimming pool, up about 600 granite steps behind the building.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The pool is about twice as long as our bath at home, but is graced with an urn which spills water forever into the blueness of the teeny tiny pool.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(The photo on bookingdotcom is accurate but deceptive at the same time). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We opted to get here from up the coast by driving inland through the mountains - the geomineral national park - the drive was really spectacular.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The rocks of Sardinia (as mentioned the other day) are really old and complex in such a small space, so the landscape varies quite dramatically in short distances. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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At one point we drove through the road-junction village of Gairo - all unexpectedly modern. Then we found Gairo Vecchio just a few hundred feet further down the hillside, totally abandoned, every roof crashed in, only the church looking habitable (and glossy too).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For some reason everyone had fled this place, and not too long ago. A man in a little café across the valley told us it was all due to a flood in 1951… the ground had become unstable. The move to the new village was complete by about 1970.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Each village and town has a distinct character - some seem very open and hospitable, some seem sullen and closed. Some apparently have no cafés or restaurants despite being quite large places. We searched for lunch at Escalaplano but all the activity was in a small square with a very loud music festival going on, so we headed on, and eventually found a place called Mistral, in the middle of nowhere. I think they must have big parties there, discos etc, but we were the only customers at first. The guy showed us two old stone flour mills. The grain was poured in from a bottle or tank on the top, and a donkey did the work. I have no idea how old these were. He spoke too fast for me to get it!<br />
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The place was really spacious inside, huge in fact, but we sat outside on the terrace… no menu, we talked our way into a simple lunch of such exquisite taste and finesse, it will rank as one of the greats.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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He brought a variety of cold meats (‘prosciutto’) on a large plate of carasau bread, accompanied by a basket with what I would call real bread - the best we have had in Sardinia - sourdough, I think, artisanal, handmade, slow. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> In fact, this is the only decent bread we've had in nearly a fortnight. </span>There were two sorts of cheese, and then he brought some of the famous maggoty Sardinian cheese, with live maggots…. (we ate it too, v powerful salty strong taste). He brought the stomach of a goat with a different cheese packed into it… and then a little portion of fegatini (liver) cooked with chilli pepper and sage, and served with some delicious lentils, and then a salad.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>By this time three men had sat themselves at another table, and then a couple who arrived on a spectacular white Goldwing motorbike.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Meanwhile little cats prowled about, goats bleated in a pen nearby, and a small free range pony grazed the thin grass beside our terrace. A line of shrubs was alive with bees.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s hard to describe how wonderful it was, as this was not really ‘cooking’, but everything was just delicious and perfect. All this, with water, came to 27€. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It just goes to show, you CAN find excellent bread here. They do know how to make it. But for some reason they choose to buy really horrible tasteless dry dull stuff. Why? <span style="text-align: center;"> </span><span style="text-align: center;"> </span></div>
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I have been meaning to say, it is usual to hear people greeting each other in Latin: Salve!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>‘Buon giorno’ is more formal.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(This reminds me of how in Austria, earlier this year, we learned that people don’t say ‘Guten Tag!’ but ‘Grosse Gott!’)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Because Sardinia has a robust dialect of its own it’s not always easy to understand any of what is said, but French is a good useful go-between language. That tends to be the Langue d’Oc, of course, so ‘pain’ (bread) is ‘penn’. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The village or town of Muravera is one of those with dozens of winding back streets, especially up the hillsides… This is a screenshot from the satnav earlier in the day....</div>
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We walked into the main road (Via Roma) to find provisions. The church doors were open - lusty singing could be heard (and vibrant church bells this morning too). There were lots of young people about, children doing cartwheels in the shade, young girls smoking in bars, groups of youths laughing loudly…. We had a drink, watched a mass of bats wheeling over some trees in a small garden, and I drew the view up a tiny street leading to the mountain. </div>
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Luckily no mosquitoes invaded the flat in the night, but one very loud hornet came to explore - especially interested in my Juice Plus+ capsule jars - and then buzzed off again. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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And now, just a moment ago, this creature (what is it?) has come to sit on the bathroom terrace door... </div>
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<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-65508227105643034712019-09-27T23:09:00.003-07:002019-09-27T23:10:50.041-07:00Smoky girls, prickly fruits<style type="text/css">
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Over the last few years I’ve taken a little sketchbook and pens with me on all my travels, and often sit and draw what I see - whatever it is. That’s often a cafe or bar, so there are a lot of pages with tables and chairs, sometimes a few people appear. Some people don’t seem to notice what I’m doing, or ignore it. Some walk casually past to glance at what I’ve done.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For the first time ever, I was directly asked yesterday to show my work…. The scene was a street cafe in Tortoli. Two girls, who were in a group of five, appear in my drawing. I would say they were schoolgirls, all wearing black.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A man came to join them - maybe a teacher. They did not have enough courage to speak to me, but sent him and they came to see the drawing. They decided with squeals of laughter who it was I had drawn …. they took photos of my sketch, giggled, said they liked it. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>All of them had been smoking….</div>
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Later we went up to Lanusei (too late, or too early) for the cannabis shop to be open, but had a splendid lunch in the Belvedere Hotel with a marvellous view down to the sea. Once again, a ‘pizzeria’ - at this end of season - was not in operation for making pizzas.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Menu choices only. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Pizzas then are just for evenings, or for crowded times.</div>
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I drew prickly pears, Andrew gathered some windfalls…. These magnificent cactus are everywhere - absolutely loaded with their slightly rude-looking fat-toe fruits… an unexploited food resource. If you can avoid touching the damned prickles the fruits are scrummy.</div>
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<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-47717489413195143422019-09-27T02:11:00.002-07:002019-09-27T02:13:41.560-07:00Bread of heaven<style type="text/css">
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When I was 16 I went to the United States on a scholarship for a year (AFS).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One of the things I remember very clearly from that visit (1965/6) was that the bread looked amazing but tasted horrible.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Hollywood had changed everything... looks more important than substance). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Coming from a part of north London where Rumbolds Bakery was a world-class phenomenon, but where there were also many wonderful Jewish bakeries, I had taken it for granted that bread was just wonderful - to see, smell, touch and eat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bread like that, of that quality, seems to have disappeared now, in England, France, Spain, Denmark, and Sardinia…. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The bread in Sardinia is particularly disappointing. The one highlight is the widespread availability of a kind of crisp wafer-bread called Carasau, which is made from leavened wheat, rolled flat, baked till it puffs up into a sort of pillow, and then split into two halves and rebaked.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Like all the other breads we’ve tried, it’s pretty tasteless but has the merit of having this interesting production technique. The others - well.......<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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There’s a big movement in labelling and packaging to promote artisan foods - breads, honey, cheeses, etc. - but the bread certainly lacks something. (I can see my children or grandchildren rolling their eyes and saying “She’s always going on about how things were better in the old days…”, but truth is, they were). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think it must be down to the sort of wheat which everyone is using.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I am not a chemist but maybe the modern strains have more gluten so they rise more easily/quickly.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The old bread probably took longer and developed richer flavours. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>By the way, I was told as a child that Mr Rumbold ran his remarkable chain of bread shops because he’d been a prisoner-of-war in Burma, enslaved by the Japanese and working, I think, on that infamous railway. He prayed to God and promised that if he survived he would devote his life to doing what he could as a good person, and that was baking. His bread was utterly superb.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Modern production and supply just cannot match it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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We have the same disappointments about the fruits and vegetables… Even here, in this rich land of farms and sunshine, the supermarkets are stacked with stuff which looks ok but tastes of nothing. Tomatoes are really naff. We brought a very few with us from our allotment, which we ate in the first few days here, and they were divine, a shocking contrast.</div>
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My nagging disappointment about this trip is crystallised by discovering that the places which have (quite reasonably) turned to tourism for their fortunes, are all rather like this bread… looking ok but unsatisfying. They lack something. The heat has gone out of the old world's economies, production, knowledge... it's all mass-market, designed and made by machines or something. Oh dear. </div>
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Our accommodation here was labelled as Tortoli but is actually in Arbatax, which is a much more interesting place - a working port and shipyard. At the far end of the road is a wide open space giving fantastic views of the most spectacular red rocks and other geology… </div>
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The bay opens out to the north, cliffs have been quarried, the variety of rock colours is amazing… coppered green, bright red, glinting grey granites, all squeezed together. You can walk for quite a long way around the beaches to see it all.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A mile or so away the main drag of Tortoli seems to be a normal sort of modern place, shops, families, alleyways, cafes. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-34990380981889369842019-09-26T00:29:00.001-07:002019-09-26T01:02:19.486-07:00Who were they?<style type="text/css">
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Heading south through the island towards our penultimate destination (Tortolí) we reluctantly abandoned plans to look at Corsica across the sea, and chose a day of mountain driving instead. Over and again we were amazed and uplifted by the beauty of the landscape, especially in this late summer light.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Although we had been completely satisfied with our visit to the nuraghe at Santa Barbara near Macomer, and had thought we would leave it at that, in the end we were tempted to visit one more…. said to be the most complete. (There are so many of them, and they are so central now to a particular kind of tourism, that each village will find a superlative quality to promote in its own local tower….).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This one hits the guidebooks as being worth a visit, so we found a coffee in Humberto’s Bar in Thiesi (observing how rapidly the customers come and go, knocking back a tiny exquisite shot of espresso and then leaving), and then headed to their nuraghe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is known now as Sant Antinu, and it sits on flattish land with distant mountains all around, in the so-called Valley of the Nuraghi.</div>
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We paid our €6 each for the visit, in a ranch-house style coffee-shop/ticket office with a largish car park, and ambled across the road towards the tower. It actually lost its top storey in the 19th century (agh!), but remains as a tall sturdy coffee-pot of a structure, much bigger and more massive, and supported by more outranges than Santa Barbara’s.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The stones are blackened and dirty on one side, and washed cleaner where the prevailing winds have scoured them. Here again we have the motif of the steep deep doorway with its overflying window, and those astonishing staircases built inside the walls themselves.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But here there are far more elaborate corridors leading round the ground-floor of the whole building, with passageways between them. It's hard not to imagine ceremonial use of all this, especially as a chamber at the back of the tower looks very cervical indeed. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The views from the top and from the ‘shoulders’ are lovely, and we could hear the bells on a flock of sheep nearby. It made me wonder how the people who built these things communicated with each other over inland distances - drums? smoke signals? pipes? On the flat lands of course they could run or walk or ride… but in the mountains and across the crevasses it would have been more difficult back in the stone age.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And how did they get down to building these things? Manoeuvring the huge stones - even just collecting enough of them? Explaining the layout to new builders? This was before any writing was known… so was it scrawls in the sand? charcoal on rock? Who were the architects? The engineers? Were they men or women?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have so many questions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s plain to me that Earth (God) was female but somehow this tower has a masculine feel to it, elaborated and all about power and carefully-revealed mysteries.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Perhaps we’ll never know.</div>
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After the disappointments of the museum in Sassari being closed, as also the local one in Thiesi, I was pleased to find a good selection of learned books in the ticket office, and bought one on Sardinia’s prehistory (I wish I had had this at the beginning of the trip), with excellent photos and information about artefacts (very early female figurine - 12,000 years old - from near Macomer, etc etc)….<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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And I bought a little female bronze figure - sadly with no kind of provenance and no info from the saleslady.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> This will add to my collection of 'goddesses'. </span></div>
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I must say, my understanding of some of the female figures has expanded - whereas I feel many of them are probably not goddesses at all but jujus made by women to preserve them through the perils of childbirth, nonetheless there are some figures which are so perfect, so radiant, that they must have a public or divine purpose....</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Middle Neolithic or Copper Age, one holding a swaddled child</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">They really are missing a huge opportunity here, the story-telling, the explanations….<span class="Apple-converted-space"> You have to really search to find any information like this. Where </span><span class="Apple-converted-space">you go, to the sites, is not really well explained if at all. And yet there's a heavy hand of public management about a lot of it, with railings, barriers, signs saying things like 'Archaeological area' which don't tell you much. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We arriv</span>ed finally at the east coast - down into modern nondescript Tortoli, and found our slightly depressing quarters inside a holiday development… I dislike in myself the disgruntlement which attacks me from time to time, the dissatisfaction, the complaints.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Of course, it’s all fine (and I am lucky), and we’ll get to know it better and settle in. But I am having a queasy kind of anti-tourism mood. Why do we do this? What damage do we do? I was cheered up by a little expedition to the local port which has such vibrant and interesting views - dockyards, cranes, railway line, business… and then the mountains to the west seen over the shining water…<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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We sat and had a drink taking it all in and will go back. And then I have been doing this blog, and making drawings and paintings which somehow have far more value to me than any photos (marvellous as the smartphone is).<br />
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This morning in bed I was reading about how Sardinia was settled in various unrelated stages during periods of glacial activity - the sea ‘migrated’ as they say, maybe as far down as 100m… leaving the island connected to Corsica at some period, and much closer to the Italian mainland. Tiny fragments of worked stone, or masticated bones, and similar evidence give us these clues.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The first to arrive were maybe <i>homo erectus</i>, 500,000 years ago. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The great ramp and ziggurat in the north at Monte d'Accoddi comes much much later - 4000 BCE.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And these nuraghe towers about 1700BC. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666525594133064583.post-21526074345711061202019-09-24T22:57:00.001-07:002019-09-25T00:00:46.013-07:00Monte d'Accoddi<style type="text/css">
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It was hard to find our archaeological venue yesterday morning, because for some reason, Google maps was really not working properly. It was genuinely trying to pervert us, giving us wildly wrong directions. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We spent nearly an hour trying to find the destination - wrong directions, lanes petering out in the middle of nowhere, dead-ends, privacy signs etc…. Very frustrating and very odd, but in the end, following good old-fashioned brown public signs (rusty or not) we found it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The access is down a concrete road which is marked in fake slabs so it’s like a rumble strip for the half-mile or so till you get to the soft brow of a hill overlooking Porto Torres and the sea to the north, and the hinterland to the south… with lovely mountains to the west.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This place is now called Monte d’Accoddi and is regarded as one of the most important sites in the western Mediterranean. It pre-dates the nuraghi by far…. originating about 4000BCE, built in phases, and remains an extraordinary thing to have survived for so long. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was ‘discovered’ in this field by the farmer in 1954…. (We shouldn’t laugh because Stonehenge wasn’t ‘discovered’ till the 16th century - no-one knew about it all through the Middle Ages, strange as that may seem).</div>
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The place is aligned n/s/e/w.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It must have taken various forms during its long life - a false-mountain perhaps giving even better views over this beautiful far-reaching landscape, a ziggurat, a sacrificial place (huge altar stone), a fertility machine with two menhirs - red and white, thought now to be male and female, large ramps leading to the top, and it once had a red wooden painted house or hall on the top - some kind of temple I suppose. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Two omphalos stones survive, a large one with what looks like a deliberate split in it, and a smaller one. Could this be sun-and-earth, or earth-and-moon?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It had once settlements clustered around it - first round houses and later rectangular ones.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Who knows?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is a very very interesting place, showing how ingenious and well-organised our predecessors were. They understood so much - astronomy, geology, construction, organisation… Yet they’ve all gone, and left this huge ‘thing’ behind them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The explanatory literature (A4 pages google-translated from Italian to ‘English’ and presented in a flimsy plastic-sleeve booklet) urged us to go to the museum in Sássari where a lot of this is explained, including a hologram model of how it was all built and various artefacts on display (including a female figurine!)….. so we finally made our way south to the city, and having had lunch (pasta), we went to the museum.<br />
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It’s a handsome building in its own garden, with fine stone steps leading up to the grand porticoed entrance….<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The gate was not locked, but stiff to open. We went up … to find the place empty and echoing… It is being totally refurbished. Nothing is available to see, at all. Various amazed and kindly ladies came out to tell us in Italian they had no idea how long the work would take. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Oh dear, what a shame. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> They directed us to another museum which turned out to be art gallery with a comprehensive collection of Sardinian art right up to the 20th century. There's a very macabre Christ (from a crucifix) now lying nonchalantly on his back inside a Sleeping Beauty glass box, which reminded me of the photos of </span>Jacob Rees-Mogg lounging on a parliamentary bench.<br />
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<span class="Apple-converted-space">We strolled round the city. </span>It's a very pleasant place, rather laid-back, with a lovely higgledy-piggledy centro storico. Google maps led us astray again because the address which we were assured had a cannabis store was just an empty doorway. We found the duomo with its fantastic facade on which numerous men are displayed. The Virgin and her Child get a rather shallow statue further out of sight, and there are some decorative females - nude - propping up the displays. But you are in no doubt that God talks just to men round here. It all seems rather biased and pompous, despite the flamboyant stonework and grandeur, compared to the nuraghi and Monte d'Accoddi.<br />
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So, we sauntered back toward the coast, swam in the delightful and perfect little bay at Spaggio de Balai, and came back to our apartment to watch the boats and ships in the harbour. It really is a delightful view.</div>
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<br />Griselda Mussetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16668271323011284490noreply@blogger.com0