Unicorn Tapestry

In the middle of the old city of Leon we came across a small shop selling all things medieval. Not originals (I hope) but replicas and reproductions, art and literature and music. Marvellous.

At the back of the shop I noted a unicorn tapestry - see above. I recognised it - I thought - from our trip to Stirling Castle the year before.

So I asked the man why they had a Scottish tapestry behind the counter.

And I found out all about the medieval tapestry factories - many around Cluny - that produced multiple copies of famous works and sent them all over Europe. The unicorn tapestry I'd spotted was a particularly famous one, part of a sequence (as in Stirling) and much discussed. Eg - from a Web site that sells reproductions today:

This is a tapestry reprodiction of the famous medieval Unicorn In Captivity tapestry. The unicorn represents the beloved tamed. He is tethered to a tree and constrained by a fence, but the chain is not secure and the fence is low enough to leap over: The unicorn could escape if he wished. However his confinement is a happy one, to which the ripe, seed-laden pomegranates in the tree—a medieval symbol of fertility and marriage—testify. Many of the other plants represented here, such as wild orchid, bistort, and thistle, echo this theme of marriage and procreation.

This history of tapestries was all completely new to me - and it was great to hear about it from such an enthusiast.

Poem of the Week

Untitled poem from 'Modern Nature'
Derek Jarman

Power hums along the lines
to keep the fish and chips a-frying.
In the sunset
across the shingle
I hear a voice:
Will the owner of car HXJ please...
It's been a quiet day.
I've brewed my nuclear tea,
mended the walls to keep the storms at bay.
At nine-thirty the sun sets behind Lydd church;
The night stock scents the air.
At ten I switch the lantern on;
a bright pink moth shimmers on the pale blue wall.
I quickly turn the pages of my book:
Small Elephant Hawk.

Spain Tour 15: Leon Cathedral

The centre of Leon is the protected old city, surrounded by city walls, and with heavy limits on cars and parking. We stayed in one of the Halls of Residence - clean, light and airy. Not far from us was the cathedral and the square.

The cathedral is magnificent. I even sketched it (very badly).

This is for context, the square by the cathedral.
Yes dad, it's a lovely church, now can I have an ice cream?
The carvings on the stone entrances, and the doors, are brilliantly detailed...








It also looks fantastic at night...

The other main face of the cathedral is under restoration - so only one photograph, just to give a sense of the complexity of the structure.

Last Dr Who: Right Said Fred

So that’s it then.

Last night saw the final episode of Dr Who with David Tennant as the 10th Doctor; and the last story from Russell T. Davies.

We know that Davies’ writing for the Doctor tends towards end-of-series spectaculars, tempered occasionally with a kind of mawkish self-indulgence. So what would he do this time?

Well the indulgent ending was there in spades, but I actually enjoyed the spectacle - mostly, I think because much of it was an explicit Star Wars riff. (Mark Lawson in the Guardian today seemed to think it borrowed liberally from Hamlet. But we know it didn’t; Lawson just got confused by the fact that Tennant played Hamlet elsewhere).

So we had: the mining vessel driven by the Doctor being chased by (a few of) Earth’s missiles, with Bernard Cribbins and the green cactusy alien shooting them down using flying joystick mount things, just like when the Millennium Falcon is being pursued in A New Hope.

Star Warsy music when the Doctor decides to fight the Gallifreyans (with a 1940s service revolver…).

You know the way in which the very elite Jedi get to shoot bolts of plasma stuff from their finger tips and don’t really need light-sabers to win battles? Well it turns out Time Lords can do the same. They don’t need sonic tools really (although the chief TL may have had a sonic glove, come to think about it). So the Master and the boss Gallifreyan end up exchanging lightning bolts, just like Vader and the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.

And then later, after all the excitement, right in the middle of the mawkish bit where the Doctor is saying farewell to everyone he’s ever met – or so it seems – where does he go to find Captain Jack? An Alien Cantina. Straight out of a New Hope, with pretty much the same camera angles from what I could see. Marvellous.

Actually, there was one difference: all of the aliens were creatures we had met before in the series (eg Hath, Judoon, Slytheen). So we know about them – unlike the strange beings in SW, in this cantina we know who is who. A very different effect. One further thing – just to make it obvious, was there a woman in a Princes Leia headdress in the bar too?

Still, it is pushing it to see Gallifrey as the Death Star.

One other thing. In this episode, putting aside the companion’s cameos, we had Tennant fresh from Hamlet, ex-Bond Timothy Dalton (in part reprising his role as the manager of Somerfields from Hot Fuzz), John Simm, Claire Bloom in the background, even, I note, Brian Cox as an Ood (and what the hell was June Whitfield doing there?). All acting noisily (less so Bloom & Whitfield), and all, for me, upstaged by Bernard Cribbins, doing not very much and doing it superbly. Drawing our eyes to the quiet old geezer in the background.

“ ‘ave they gone then? Oh good-O”.

Of course, our Bernard knows the ropes. He's helped the Doctor before (42ish years ago in Daleks Invasion Earth 2150, or something like that). Back when the Tardis was cleaner.

Finally, the Doctor regenerates and everyone gets a gift - but one last question:

Where did the Master go?

Body bag

It would be churlish not to congratulate John Skinner, Director of Music at Haberdashers' Aske's, on his MBE in the New Year's Hounours List. One of only three teachers in the country to be so honoured.

Always eager to urge his charges to participate in music, he is renowned for his subtle and gentle encouragements.

Approaching a group of reluctant singers, he once said: "It's your choice: choir or body bag?".

New Year 2010

The house smells of hyacinths. A rich and cloying smell.

Six plants, brought back from Neil's wedding on the Wirral. Representing games and sports, playful joy (and rashness); also, sometimes, rebirth. Dedicated to Apollo, and named for the legend of Hyacinth.

The blue stands for constancy, the pink for recreation and playfulness, and the white loveliness ('I'll pray for you').

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.
(The Waste Land)

Outside it is the first day of a new year and a new decade, 2010. Cold and sunny; clear blue skies over the Rye.

A random set of words and phrases characterising 2009 might include: Credit Crunch, Recession, Michael Jackson, iPhone, Twitter, Obama, swine flu, Large Hadron Collider, Boyle, Callow, Climate Change, J.G. Ballard, Woolworths, Claude Levi-Strauss, Afghanistan, Iraq, Plinth, Lumley and Gurkas, BNP, Expenses and Duck House.

But these are only the big public things.

I could produce a list - and of course, a more meaningful one for me - around the smaller-scale things:- school exams, juggling notation, various books I've read, crosswords, braces, concerts, the Christmas Lectures, the Picos and Madness.

And for a similar view of the decade? Well, for the majority of the time, I worked at the British Museum, and it feels strange that at the start of 2000 the Great Court was still under construction, and Suzanna Taverne was MD.
It finally opened on December 7th 2000, with a big event - I ended up sharing a table with the Bottomleys, amongst others. She of 'I'm an evil Tory bigot' fame - and he was just creepy.

Also at the Museum, the Virtual Mummy was cool and Terracotta Army amazing.

But it was also a decade in which the children grew big (bigger), we acquired a new kitchen, the sheen on the Labour Government wore off and my 50th happened at me. Shucks. A slew of holidays and parties.

New year 2000 was spent in the upper part of Telegraph Hill park, watching Mayor Ken's "River of Fire" fireworks spread from Tower Bridge to the London Eye; from where we stood (and possibly from nowhere else) it looked good and seemed to work.
Looking wider and less personally - 9/11 in 2001 obviously, and the bombs in Madrid, and 7/7 in London, 2005. And Ken's moving speech from China, where he had been helping to win the Olympic Games for London (Paris? Pah!). The Google beta launched in early 2000. Foot and Mouth arrived in 2001. G W Bush elected in 2001 (hanging chads, remember?), Dr Who returned and was spiffy, the code for the human genome was cracked. Horrible Boris whiff-whaff became Mayor of London. Planets were discovered orbiting other stars, and Pluto was downgraded. The Tsunami in 2004, and hurricane Katrina. The Euro. Columbia disaster. Kyoto. The Lord of the Rings films were just about good enough

I can recall sitting down to watch the first of the trilogy with eldest at the cinema in Peckham; we'd just finished reading the books together. Just a few seconds in a large man leaned over and told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop making so much noise eating the popcorn we'd just bought. He clearly cared so much, and wanted the experience of the film ('...at last they've made it!') to be so perfect, that he couldn't take any little imperfection. Like me crunching popcorn in the background. This was Important.

I felt something similar about the Dr Who relaunch. But I didn't just want it to be great, I wanted the children to like it also - which they did of course, but I can remember being somewhat tense as the music started up ('Yes! they've kept the music! It's all going to be OK after all...') .

Too much perfection, or too much desire for it, is a very dangerous thing...

Balloons

The reason we were in the Wirral on such a cold weekend, when the Met office were urging everyone not to travel, was Neil and Laura's wedding. The journey took a while, and we missed the ceremony itself, but arrived in time for the start of the reception. It began with these glorious balloons...
You lit the paraffin (?) block in the base and waited for the air in the paper balloon to warm enough to provide lift.
This could be a bit tricky - I needed help!
... And then the lift was suddenly there, and the air-filled bag, which had been ungainly and in danger of toppling over and setting alight, suddenly took off into the dusk.
They soared upwards, singly and in groups, floating over Oxton and Birkenhead.
A super symbol, and a fun way to begin the do.