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westminsterandsalisbury-blog · 7 years

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The last few days

The last few days have been a bit of a blur. We’ve just finished our first week - London is going to fade into the distance, though the echoes of our music may still drift among the chambers and arches of the Abbey’s interior, and it may be a while before I forget the sound. I just finished a walk up and down past the Parliament building, which was resplendent in the late afternoon sunshine (not an especially common weather phenomenon here), taking some photos of the bicyclists on their race, which was happening all around the West End this week-end. (See what I did there?)

As I get older, my thoughts tend to gloss over things and my mind does not appreciate the moments as I used to. So I was trying to appreciate the small things of our time there. There was a verger, whose name is Benjamin, whose eyes point in opposite directions, who was very kind to us, and is a very jolly person. He is famous, apparently, for having been caught on camera after the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, doing a cartwheel after the ceremony, because he was happy things had gone well. I’m not sure how long he has been at the Abbey, but, at least since then. He was there almost every day instructing us on various formalities of the services (whom to bow to, in which direction, details about hymns and prayers and so on). It was a pleasure to work with him. There were also deans and canons whose names I never learned. They would pray with us both before and after the service, and they usually expressed gratitude and thanks for our services, which was genuine, but terse, as one would expect from those in their position (and nationality).

Today we sang a Mattins service, a Eucharist service, and an Evensong. I felt proud of how I sang today, and I do think the Evensong may have been our best all week.

I didn’t do anything else today, but that’s fine, because my legs and my brain are a bit worn out from this week.

I left off my blog after Wednesday night, so let me briefly talk about the intervening three days. On Thursday, I visited the British museum, and it was a colossal place. I never know how to pace myself in museums anyway. I spent a long time looking at sarcophaguses and death masks from Egypt; saw the Rosetta Stone, went pretty fast through the Assyrians, and then gazed at Greek sculptures for a while. Then somehow two hours had passed so I had to book it upstairs to see the Anglo-Saxon exhibits and was quite impressed with those.

As we did every day (except Wednesday), we sang at the Abbey that afternoon. After that I left my phone there, made it all the way to Soho and panicked because I didn’t know where it was, and tried to activate Find my iPhone but couldn’t remember any of my passwords, so I had to cancel going to dinner, and go back to Westminster and try to get in, but luckily the guards let me in (being a singer really does have its perks) and it was there. But it was too late for dinner, so I stupidly went into an overpriced pub and got a very greasy fish and chips meal which, I do not recommend by the way. They fry their fish in so much oil and fat and whatever that is, and there is not much meat.

After that I thought it would be nice to try and see some live music, but, for some reason my brain wasn’t working (probably the fish and chips) and so I walked all the way to Trafalgar Square and got on a bus, instead of taking the tube, which would have been faster, and then it started to rain, and traffic got really bad so I ended up on the bus for quite some time. I stopped in Camden and looked around, but it was nasty weather and there were crazies about, so I grabbed a free newspaper and just read that on my way back to the hotel. Did not sleep especially well.

On Friday, though, I managed to fill up on a nice breakfast and then had a great time touring the Tower of London on foot. I thought there would be a guided tour, but there wasn’t, but it turned out all right. The first stop was the building housing the Crown Jewels. If you didn’t know already, there is an entire set of bling which is used exclusively for coronations, the post-coronation banquets, and nothing else. A great majority of these date back to the reign of Charles II, the monarch who resumed England’s monarchy after Cromwell, who had destroyed the old Crown Jewels. Some of them are Victorian, but a lot of them are several hundred years old. Among the most impressive (to me) were all of the golden banqueting dishes. There must be at least ten giant salt containers, all made of gold, including the Exeter Salt, which is a salt container in the shape of a castle, which has its own special container that is used to carry it into Westminster Abbey when a coronation takes place. Then there is the scepter and the orb; the orb is very old, as I recall. These are used in coronations. Of course there is the crown that is used exclusively to crown the monarch, and then there is also the Imperial State Crown, which is used for special occasions (such as the opening of a Parliamentary season). These crowns, especially the latter, are studded with diamonds and sapphires. I just had to Google this again - this crown has on it the 2nd largest clear-cut diamond in the world as well as three pearls reputed to have been worn by Elizabeth I, and a sapphire which supposedly belonged to St. Edward the Confessor (king of England prior to the Norman Conquest, who also founded Westminster Abbey, and is enshrined there in a very special spot right behind the high altar).

These crown jewels made a very big impression on me. Not only is everything very old, but also very much in a state of perfection, and yet much of it is also still used.

I would go on, but I have more to say. The jewels took a while to see, but then I wanted to see the White Tower. This is where the bones of the two princes were discovered under the staircase, who may have been murdered by Richard III or Henry VII. (These bones were recovered and moved to Westminster Abbey, to an urn in Westminster Abbey, in the same room where Elizabeth I and Mary I, “Bloody Mary”, are buried, all of which I had seen on Tuesday.) In the White Tower also is the “Line of Kings,” which is a set of enormous rooms were the armour of many famous kings of England (not queens) is all displayed. The White Tower was used over the centuries for the armoury and also for housing for monarchs (it seems there have been quite a number of places over the years for their dwellings - Buckinham Palace is just the latest). (Also Henry III, who is responsible along with St. Edward the Confessor, for most of the building of Westminster Abbey, also had his own dwelling at the Tower of London, but just off the battlements, not in the White Tower.) So anyway, I saw a ton of armor, and also guns, cannons, shields, and so forth. Outside the window was the Thames and the Tower Bridge, a nice view.

It took a while to go through the White Tower, and learn about the history, and look at all the old Norman architecture - this building is amazingly 1000 years old, and is still standing, despite centuries of age and then of course, WWII bombings, which affected so much of the rest of London.

There was just enough time to look at the dungeon with instruments of torture such as the rack (inside the “Bloody Tower”), Traitors’ Gate (where traitors were brought in boats from the Thames, through a water gate and up to the steps to the Bloody Tower, to be imprisoned), and the famous ravens who dwell there and are fed meat every day by the Beefeaters, the uniformed regiment of men and women who guard the Tower every day and night, and have for many centuries (I don’t know how many). These ravens are formidable, though their wings are all partially clipped so they won’t fly away and trigger the ominous prophecy that, if the ravens fly from the Tower of London, the Tower will crumble and London itself will fall.

It was a lot of history for one morning, and maybe my favorite thing that I did all week. I would love to go back.

The rest of Thursday was good - Evensong went well, and then I went off to the National Gallery which is a giant art museum on Trafalgar Square. I spent a bit over an hour with the Impressionists who I very much like, and then just wandered around getting lost in history, so to speak. I was so lost I almost couldn’t find my way out. Then I was starving so I wandered around trying to find a place to eat, and finally went in some place and felt very weak from hunger, and ordered an entire pizza and ate the whole thing, which in retrospect I regret a little bit, since it took me two days to work off.

On Saturday morning, I was very tired (probably because of the pizza) and the whole day was a bit off, I had a bit of a mishap with trying to get to rehearsal in the morning, on the tube, and after rehearsal I just sort of tuckered out and could not finish standing in line for the Sherlock Holmes Museum, unfortunately - I mean it would have been an hour and half wait just to get inside, and the whole place was wall to wall with tourists so it just would not have been that enjoyable I think. I did visit the Royal Academy of Music then, though, and saw part of the original manuscript for the Mikado, and some pianofortes, harpsichords (and a virginal) from the 1600s through 1800s. That was all before the Evensong.

Last night I walked around Whitechapel on this Jack the Ripper tour, and saw some of the original buildings - most of them are gone, but some remain - near where these events would have taken place, such as the Ten Bells pub, and the church where all these hundreds of poor people would have been crammed into beds that they would only sleep in for the night, before going out to make the money the next day to afford again the next night (for the equivalent of 1-2 pounds today - as our guide said, life was cheap); prostitutes and butchers and people fallen on hard luck all lived around there, on the East End. He showed us the buildings, and told the tale of each grisly murder, and showed us some photographs to give us an idea of what things would be like back then. I did enjoy this tour and wanted to learn more.

Today, we had our final services, and I have just packed, after we were fed by the hotel and then I hung out talking.

Now I have to get to bed - we bus to Salisbury tomorrow for our 2nd whole week!

Jeff

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westminsterandsalisbury-blog · 7 years

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Oxford

I finally got the website to work - it looks like my laptop was not technically logged into the wifi here, though some sites work even without it, somehow, which is odd. Today the choir sang at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, which is part of the College of Christ Church at the University of Oxford. As we learned on the tour, there are many different colleges there, each a part of the University, none specializing in any one discipline, but each has its own flavor, as it were, and a student will choose (or more likely, the University will choose for them) one college where they will live and work - it’s like a housing arrangement, but with more to it than just housing. It makes no difference what subject they are in for. Anyway, the first thing we did when we got there was rehearse in the space. We sounded good. We sang a medley of various American and British pieces. We only had a short amount of time between rehearsal and the recital, but I wanted to see a museum, so I used my phone’s GPS and (after grabbing a curried chicken sandwich and a blackcurrant flapjack for takeaway), ended up leaving the shopping district, going up a hilly, winding cobblestone side street, eating my sandwich and trying not to spill, and then I suddenly emerged back into the shopping district again, but in a different section. I ran up to the Ashmolean Museum, thanked the stars it was free, went in, tried to find a locker to store my bag, tried to figure out how to open it, saw people wandering around with bags and figured to heck with that, so I just went back upstairs and looked around. In twenty minutes there wasn’t much to do so I just looked at some ancient Greek sculptures from thousands of years BC, and some Chinese jade, and some neolithic figurines, and took some photos because they don’t mind as long as you don’t use flash. Then unfortunately I had to go back to the cathedral, so I went back and got ready for the concert. Had the concert, sang well, and then we had a walking tour of parts of the University. It was far too short, really, but nice enough. It started to rain halfway through, then after about ten minutes it stopped again but things remained damp. This is typically English, apparently. A highlight is the lamppost in the alley where supposedly C.S. Lewis was inspired to begin work on the Chronicles of Narnia. When the tour was over I could not return to the museums. I forgot that I’d wanted to go back to Christ Church but I did climb the Carfax Tower, and took a photo of the skyline (the “dreaming spires”) from up there before my phone battery died. Then I convinced a German tourist to take my picture and I gave her my email address so she could send it. Then I made my way up to Magdalen College and had a peek inside, but not before sitting down at the Queen’s Lane Coffee House to sit down and rest my feet, discovering it’s the oldest continuously operating coffee house in Europe (founded 1654) (though the tea room across the street has some kind of competing claim as well, of course!) and ordering a Turkish coffee with a Turkish delight, this being Oxford and the home of Narnia, so to speak, and because they highlighted it on their menu. And now Wencke has sent me the photo of me from the tower overlooking Oxford. There just was no time for me to even begin to grasp the beauty, the liveliness, the spirit of this area, the historical significance. A few hours are not sufficient to do anything but begin to open my eyes. I will have to go back somehow. Things I could have done and didn’t have time for: first, the museums. The natural history museum. Next, Christ Church College. Magdalen College. The grave of J.R.R. Tolkien (!) The Eagle and Child, where the Inklings met. (Some members of the choir did eat there for lunch, while I was in the museum.) The libraries (they closed early). The stores having Lewis Carroll paraphernalia. Many more things, I’m sure. Tomorrow we are visiting the British Museum here in London, and we have plenty of time there. I want to look it up tonight before bed and plan it out a bit, see what to do there. Love Jeff

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westminsterandsalisbury-blog · 7 years

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Tuesday night catch up

Okay, so in order to blog, I have to type this out on my laptop, send the text to email, then go on my phone, copy the text from the email, open tumblr on my phone and paste it there, then I can post it from the tumblr website on my phone. I can’t access the website from my laptop. Only from my phone. This is totally screwed up. Chrome is secure when I use TMobile and Chrome together, but not when I use Chrome by itself, though Facebook is fine on Chrome by itself, just not tumblr by itself. I want to tell you about the first few days I’ve had. The first day was decent - I ended up benefitting hugely from beginning to take melatonin… that and getting up very early in the U.S. to adjust to U.K. time prior to the trip. I also forewent electronics on the flight; used a sleep mask that I bought to darken my vision, and earplugs, and those with the melatonin put me out like a light (though I managed to get through an hour of a French film (with subtitles) about some crazy band of acrobats and artists who travel in a caravan and have very dramatic personal problems behind the scenes, in a French and Bohemian way. They are all ex lovers of each other and this is basically the plot, who is upset by having or not having new lovers. This was on Air France, by the way, and I want to post (but don’t know if I can) a very silly video which I took of the welcome “skit” they did - it has to be seen to be believed. Have any of you taken Air France before? Then you would know what I mean. In France I walked around Charles de Gaulle airport and looked for a restroom to change in, found one and saw they have hand sanitizer inside the toilet stalls, which is nice, never seen that anywhere else. I took a quiz in badly translated English about Charles de Gaulle, the man, and did not get a great score, but, oh well. I was amused by their typos. Our flight was supposed to leave then pretty soon after that, but we stood in line for about a half hour before they told us the plane was delayed. So everyone sat back down and I went and got a macaron from the bakery. I had a hard time deciding between that, a beignet and a piece of quiche Lorraine. I probably should have gone for the quiche, but the macaron was not bad. Let’s see, so then our flight finally arrived and we crammed like sardines into a little bus to take us to the plane, and it was ten minutes and I actually fell asleep on that. Then we walked onto the tarmac to climb a stairway into the small plane which was neat and someone mentioned Air Force One so I made little peace signs with each hand, just to myself, a la Nixon. On that flight I just slept. We got to Heathrow and customs was not bad at all. They did not lose any luggage and they were super polite and we were all done quickly. But, then we had to wait what seemed like 45 minutes for our coach. Maybe it was a half hour. That pretty much sucked. We went to Hatfield House then (which we had gone to in 2013) and I got a healthy lunch, and we tried to trap a bee that was trying to eat the clotted cream and that took a little while. We toured the House and were shown around to the varous things - portraits, portrait galleries, mind-bogglingly valuable furniture, vases, woodwork, gems, and so forth, which belong to the Marquis (or is it Earl?) and which have been in that branch for a long time going back to the Tudor period. It is really quite a wonderful and beautiful mansion and the gardens are as well, though we ran out of time for that because we had to get to our hotel, I guess. These tours are always on a tight schedule. That evening we checked in and got fed, and walked a little bit in Hyde Park, which is just south of the hotel. This is the largest park in London, or maybe it’s only the largest Royal Park in London? Anyway, it’s very big. We walked all the way through and saw this monument to Albert (Queen Victoria’s husband) which easily could have been to a saint. And down some steps from there is Royal Albert Hall. Took more melatonin and slept well. All of that was Sunday. On Monday after breakfast our tour guide led us (walking) from the hotel around Hyde Park, past 10 Downing Street to the Horse Guard area, and they did their “thing”, where one guard (consisting of uniformed mounted miliary horse guards) changes places with the other, complete with unintelligible bellowing. The second guard was all female. Then we walked past Buckinham Palace, and saw from a distance, the foot guards (with bearskin head hats, I forget what they are called?) accompanied by the brass band and fanfare, doing their own changing of the guard. Then into Westminster for lunch and instructions. After eating in a cafe, I just wandered around Westminster learning the names and places and reading historical markers. Then we rehearsed and sang Evensong. We rehearsed twice, once up in a room called Cheneygates and then, robed, in the quire lofts themselves, before the service. This service went very well. An ex choir member was present at Evensong, who had come there to see us, after his own, current choir from South Carolina, who had just been in residence in Durham, England, had finished their tour - so he could finish off his honeymoon. So he was there with his new wife and had tickets to the Proms, and we caught up, and it turned out one of the tickets he had was not going to be used, so I got a free ticket. Went in, saw the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and was very impressed. This was a long concert, and uncommonly began with God Save the Queen, due to its being a commemorative concert for Malcolm Sargent (Google him). It lasted until 10 but was worth every minute. At intermission they were selling little cups of ice cream out in the hallway so I got some and chatted with people who were all very friendly. Classical music lovers are all the same, very bright and interesting and polite, no matter where you go. But this did seem especially nice. Like Hill Auditorium but even better. When the Queen supports you, I think you have a lot of power to be creative. I walked home through Hyde Park last night and slept… just enough. This morning we rehearsed, extensively, I ate a burger at a pub, we rehearsed again, took a break, then rehearsed again and finally sang our second Evensong. Then I took the tube to Abbey Road Studios, signed my name on the wall (I guess everyone does that, it is covered with names and graffiti all up and down the wall) and went in the gift shop, since the recording studios are closed to the public. The gift shop is not much, but, it’s to be expected, a tourist destination. Key chains and the like. A man took my picture on the crosswalk and I stayed and watched all these tourists stop traffic for a while. It was rather amusing. I took a red city bus (not double decker) back to the hotel, changed, and went looking for something to do. I ended up going to Primark and buying some clothes. Now I’m here and about to go to bed again. Tomorrow is Oxford. Love you, Jeff

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