14 January 2016
England swings like a pendulum do!
Down to breakfast, and chats with the two servers, Jean and Powla. Yes, that’s how she spells it, but it’s pronounced traditionally, like our “Paula’.
“Would you fancy some coffee, dear?” Absolutely! Lovely!
At dinner last night with the group, conversation veered into the area of utensil use. The English eat two-handed, knife in the dominant hand to load the backside of the fork, which is grasped pencil-like in the other. We Americans, of course, put our knives down after using them and work exclusively with our forks. I watched for a minute, and then gave it a clumsy try, but it was efficient. Piling various bite combinations on the back of the fork proves interesting and quite tasty. My dinner companions applauded my efforts.
I tell Jean about my experience and she smiles.
“We had one gentleman who ate everything off his place mat. He piled the food onto it from his plate,” she tells me with horror in her voice.
“What did you do with the place mat afterward?” I ask.
“Well, we washed it.”
I might have taken the train to Cambridge today, but it’s literally freezing outside, with threat of snow. A few flakes have already fallen. However, I can walk to the “Hand and Crown”, a pub just a mile or so down the road. I bundle up and head out, encountering signs that say “Dog fouling – don’t stand for it” and “Humped zebra crossing – 850 feet”. Not a dog or a zebra is in sight.
Beautiful old houses with pretty names like “Orchard House” and “Dovedale” line the road, many of them with thatched roofs. I am glad to arrive at the Hand and Crown. The cold is biting today, but the walk under the moody sky feels good. I squeeze into my assigned seat, next to other customers, and settle back into the cushions to survey the menu. It’s fruit crumble with cream that I’m after. I don’t care what kind of fruit. I have yet to meet an English dessert that I didn’t love, including banoffee pie, a sort of banana custard in a pecan crust. But today it’s crumble. I order at the bar and read the history of this place, which is handily printed on the menu.
The Hand and Crown dates from the middle ages when it was an inn built for the royal sport of falconry. Long ago, the village of High Wych was a breeding ground for falcons, reaching its zenith during the Elizabethan Period. Noblemen would come here for a day’s sport on this site. The farmer who lived here was a tenant of the Norman Mandeville family. There was also a coach stop on Hand Lane, which was the main road between London and Newmarket. Ale was brewed in two adjacent barns, and is still brewed at the Rising Sun just down the road. No food there, just ales. A dangerous concept, if you ask me. The ghost of a medieval knight in armor appears occasionally in front of the fireplace, and I look for him, but fortunately I cannot see him.
Here comes my rhubarb crumble in a ramekin, steaming hot, a tiny pitcher of cream by its side. My tea brews in its own little white pot atop the cup. Just perfect! I take my time and savor every bite, reading my book, trying to ignore the rather personal conversation of the couple beside me. But they seem unconcerned. I guess people are used to these squeezes. I wish I were hungrier – I would order the soup of the day, which involves pears and red onion and Stilton cheese. I can only imagine!
The wind whips up on my walk back and I hurry along. I stop to check out the charming old village church, St. James, complete with gray stone tower and clock. But it’s locked up until Sunday services. The surrounding graveyard yields no ancient surprises, but I do take time to record this epitaph on Emily Moffatt’s 100 year old gravestone:
Brief life is here our portion
Great sorrow, short lives, care,
The life that knows no ending
The tearless life, is there.
Maybe not of Shakespearean quality, but ever so true. The older I grow, the more real it becomes to me.
Winter damp is settling down on the afternoon. The sun is losing its valiant battle to break through the clouds, and soon January’s dusk will end its efforts. Darkness will fall. The wind picks up again and urges me to quicken my pace and head for shelter.
Back in the warmth of “Ware”, I open the curtains to the darkening sky and reminisce about my experience in the National Art Museum. Dozens of religious iconic paintings from the 14th. and 15th. centuries, stylized, heavy and starched with symbolism. Cardboard figures of two dimensions, austere and remote. No indication of flesh and blood here.
Then the dramatic change – real people. You can almost see them living and breathing, feel the warmth of their skin. Did this transformation flow out of the Renaissance and the glorification of man, or did it have something to do with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation? I think back to Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross”. For there he is, a real man, startlingly flesh and blood. Nothing iconic about him. Did artists of this time come to understand something of the meaning of “The Word became flesh”?
Early twilight is falling outside my window. But just before dark, the sun reemerges for a few moments, long enough to send light slanting across those green fields. Trees toss and sway back and forth, dancing in the wind against a backdrop of blue, golden clouds drifting by. The sun slips down behind them and out of sight. Birds, tiny black wedges, swoop into their branches to nest for the night.
Huge volumes of smoky clouds edged in brilliant pink pile up and move steadily southward across the blue. I saw these same colors in paintings yesterday. Little by little, color seeps from the trees and fields. Still, that cerulean blue, those rosey tinged edges, day stubbornly refusing to relinquish itself to night.
The wind stills, blue and pink begin to soften and fade to monotone. The birds gather, tiny fluttering shapes flit from branch to branch. The sky is washed clean of color and only pure iridescent light remains in the West, gray clouds hovering above.
Then darkness.
I must write it all down.
