Dove descending breaks the air

Mompesson House, a National Trust property in Salisbury's Cathedral Close

Mompesson House
In Salisbury’s Cathedral Close, a National Trust Queen Anne townhouse is accessible and imaginatively presented. The plasterwork inside Mompesson House is exquisite and I became obsessed with a set of Mezzotints by Thomas Frye – the faces seemed to be real people with real lives and real things to say about Eighteenth Century living. The house has been inhabited since 1701 (until 1975) and the walled garden is tranquil and welcoming.

Into the medieval period
It took nearly 38 years to build, it has the tallest spire in Britain, Constable’s famous painting of it is worth millions and we went there. Salisbury Cathedral, begun in 1220, five years after the sealing of the Magna Carta, and rising from a grassy estate in the town of Salisbury. It’s currently home to a soaring installation by artist Michael Pendry; this depicts a flight of doves (Les Colombes) made from individually folded doves, the majority by local community groups. As a symbol of peace, hope and new beginnings it was truly breathtaking.

Interior Salisbury Cathedral - spot the flight of doves.... Michael Pendry's Les Colombes

Highlights
The extraordinary internal walls, the bowed columns, the decorated ceilings, the infinity font, the lovely cloisters, the weird medieval clock, the Prisoners of Conscience window, the intricate quire stalls, the tiny sculptures of Vices and Virtues, the medieval friezes in the Chapter House, the Magna Carta exhibition (yes, one of the surviving copies is there), the model with masons, blacksmiths and artisans at work building the cathedral (with nary a harness or hard hat in sight!) Proper Ken Follett Pillars of the Earth stuff (and, yes, Kingsbridge in the novels was inspired by Salisbury.)

Little Gidding panels, the infinity font and Les Colombes

Little Gidding
The title of this post comes from Little Gidding, T S Eliot’s final poem in The Four Quartets, a masterpiece of yearning. In my (tentative) reading the poem speaks of love; pilgrimage and travelling, real and metaphorical; escaping earth-bound concerns for a better self; confronting regrets, fears and doubt and striving for hope, renewal and authenticity. Only Connect. We need to reflect on who we were, examine who we are and believe who we can be. Somehow the glass panels in Salisbury Cathedral and the soaring doves of Michael Pendry (and the ridiculous optimism of the Magna Carta – what it was, what it is and what it may yet be – somehow synthesised for me on our visit.
We die with the dying: 
See, they depart, and we go with them. 
We are born with the dead: 
See, they return, and bring us with them. 
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration…..
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.

When old people plant trees

En route South, "is Shakespeare coming out to play?"

Ripley Castle, near Harrogate
May and June are great months to wander round gardens with Spring definitely springing and Summer peeping out every now and again. A recent re-visit to Ripley Castle (home of the Inglebys, Trooper Jane and Civil War shenanigans) featured a lovely walk around the walled areas, lakes and weirs in the deer park and grounds. Blooms, bushes, trees and views across the lake – great soup for the soul.

Ripley Castle

New Place
The picture at the top of this post is of one of my favourite spots in the world, New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s family house, which I’ve blogged about before. It was a stop-off on a recent venture South – yes, the South, the land below the North. My next blog will show where we went. In the meantime New Place was as tranquil as ever; great to visit early in the morning on a working day and happily just before any school parties or tourist buses arrived. And did those feet in ancient time (Shakespeare’s, that is) tread the ground of New Place and did those hands write some his works there? I have no doubt.

The centre of Shakesperare's world for the final stretch of his life

Greek Proverb
A society grows great when old people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. As I hit the home stretch of my first novel, Sally is spending as much time as the weather allows in the garden, tending, feeding, pruning, designing. Waiting for things to grow is a wonderful pass-time for humanity, seeing the incremental budding and bursting. If we all spent more time gardening, the world would doubtless blossom.

Kenilworth Castle

Robert Laneham
An eyewitness account by Robert Laneham has allowed English Heritage to recreate an Elizabethan privy garden at Kenilworth Castle. The whole site is well-managed with excellent audio-guides (in my opinion) and it was easy to picture Elizabeth I stopping there with Robert Dudley on her tour and lingering longer than planned. Robert Laneham writes that he sneaked into the garden one day when the queen was “out hunting” and noted the fountain could “at the twist of a stopcock” shoot spouts of water over anyone in the grounds who was “found hot in desire.” (Having been in the Civil War at Ripley, Jacobean times at New Place and Elizabethan times at Kenilworth, we then went further back in time for our next stop….)

Kenilworth Castle

Athens of the North

Drizzly in Saltaire, cold in Edinburgh
“Cast ne’er a clout, till May be out….” my Mum used to say. And a feature of Retirement seems to be paying closer attention to the weather than I ever have before. Is Spring over? Have we jumped Summer? Is the Jekyll & Hyde weather connected to global warming? Be still, my beating heart, because another aspect of Retirement is taking a mid-week (term-time) break in Edinburgh, Scotland’s fine capital.

New Town, Old Town, Princes Street, the Athens of the North

Food, drink and a room with a view
The gargantuan dark edifices of Old Town and the benevolent strand of Princes Street Gardens anchor the city for all eternity, but we also spent time parading round New Town’s Georgian elegance, visiting the squares and churches built to lift the volcanic city out of its Burke&Hare reputation. As ever, food and drink were on the menu and I can recommend Veeno’s (where we had a lovely lunch on Day One) and Wedgewood (where we had a fancy dinner on Day Two) but, better than both, was eating in the home of old friends from university, one of whom was the subject of a book launch (mine in 2022?)

Literary Edinburgh: Dorward, Spark, Boswell & Johnson....

The Human Kind
was the book, launched in Edinburgh at Waterstone’s on Princes Street. The author was Edinburgh GP, Dr Peter Dorward, and the subtitle says it all: A Doctor’s Stories from the Heart of Medicine. I always felt Peter, like Sally, was a cultured and literary medic, a man who discussed patients not conditions and who, back in the heady days of learning at the University of Manchester in the 1980s, didn’t fit into the debauched world of medical training (I’m sure it’s all much more civilised these days.) His book is part-memoir, part-reflection on a career dealing with ethical, moral, economic and humanitarian issues whilst simultaneously attempting to keep in mind the individual human consulting about their…. disease…. injury…. distress…. ShitLifeSyndrome…. A masterpiece of philosophical rumination on the current state of the NHS – very personal, highly recommended.

Hotel Indigo on Princes Street, the lovely room 203....

Literary Edinburgh
The Athens of the North is a fitting place to think about books with monuments to Burns, Scott and Stevenson everywhere, including in our hotel where our room was plastered with facsimiles of the original edition of Kenneth Graham’s Wind in the Willows. Happily our literary experience was not all male as we stumbled into the Library of Scotland where there was an entertaining exhibition about the comically sinister and waspishly poetic Muriel Spark whose words in her most famous book are an apt place to end:

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

A Room with a View and, among highlights, Gladstone's Land with its secret-filled ceiling....