An English Thanksgiving then on to Advent

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all of you. I hope the day was marvelous as ever with all of that turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. It was an odd experience to be here for this holiday since it was a workday. I taught my two classes and we all soldiered on as ever. The College did host a formal thanksgiving dinner for the students and faculty in the evening however. Amazingly enough it was a proper holiday meal! While the turkey wasn't just off the bird and there was no dark meat in sight (I was hoping for maybe a pheasant option since it is in season), it was juicy and offered in generous portions. There was sage and onion dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, very tasty cranberry sauce, and for those who wanted them, sweet potatoes. Dessert included an overly sweet apple crumble and very tasty pumpkin tartlets made with that rare thing over here: tinned pumpkin for pies. Rumour has it that Harrod's was the only place they could find it this year. There was white and red wine poured round along with hot cider, coffee, and tea. The students were all dressed quite smartly as were we all...appropriate considering we were dining in the Long Gallery. It was a lovely evening. Once everyone adjourned, the faculty had planned to move to the senior common room for drinks and conversation when I observed that the fire in the Great Hall was still blazing and wouldn't it be perfect to enjoy our holiday seated around it, sipping our favorite after dinner drinks. I did joke about going upstairs to fetch the wind-backed chairs to complete the scene but we settled for the ordinary chairs left over from the earlier Thanksgiving service that was held before dinner. It was a wonderfully relaxing evening. We turned off all the lights and just enjoyed each others company. I was among the last to leave around midnight though the fire was kept burning through the night in preparation for the tree-trimming party on Friday.

As so, with only ten days left at Harlaxton, we shift our holidays immediately to Christmas. I came to the tree trimming early when I found out the fire was still going and held court comfortably fireside, keeping the blaze stoked and sipping hot chocolate. There were quite a few students there (those who hadn't left on the last weekend of traveling) and they made quick work of the decorating.

The tree is quite tall and perfect for hanging lots of small ornaments. Andrew, the head groundskeeper and his two gents had all the upper parts of the tree done before the students came in so they didn't have to deal with standing on ladders. The students of course had a great time. There was a tinsel fight and the odd ornament lost to the marble floor but it was a perfect way to spend the chilly afternoon.

The weekend was complete with Sunday's trek to Cambridge to attend the Advent Procession at St. John's College. This is the service that I had heard was an even bigger deal than Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve and was meant principally for the College community. St. John's did offer a means to apply for a ticket which I did...almost two months ago...and I managed to get one. King's College also has a big service on this first Sunday of Advent but it is so full they tell people not to bother to queue and of course they don't offer tickets to the commoners.

So off I went on Sunday morning, dodging rain showers, to the lovely city of Cambridge. I wandered through the Fitzwilliam Museum, a lovely small art museum near the Botanical Gardens. They were having the last of their Sunday musical recitals while I was there so I pulled up a chair in one of the lovely galleries of British painting to listen to a baritone sing cycles from Brahms, Faure, and Warlock. There was a pianist accompanying him and all in all a lovely way to spend an hour, especially when the heavens decided to open again.

I wandered my way further up into the city centre, exploring the Christmas market that was set up in the market square. I still had about 45 minutes before I really needed to be seated in the chapel so I found a lovely Chinese restaurant and enjoed some of the best hot and sour soup I have ever had. The szechuan prawns were delicious too. Since the place was full of Chinese diners I figured it was a good choice.

But then I saw people beginning to go in to the chapel, which was right across the street, in every larger numbers so I had them put the remainder of my prawns in a container and headed into the College and into St. John's Chapel which is what you see here in the picture. Of course it is not as grand as King's but the choir is every bit as good and the service was being broadcast on the BBC that night. Consequently, we were rehearsed through opening verses of hymns like O Come, O Come Emmanuel and Come Thou Long Expected Jesus to make sure we pronounced our consonants clearly. We also rehearsed saying the "amens" and other responses before being encouraged to hold back coughs and another noises especially during the silences. The service, which turned out to be a version of Lessons and Carols with much more emphasis on readings from the Prophets and focusing on the coming Kingdom than the more familiar service, was breathtaking. They used the "O" Antiphons which made you stop breathing when they were chanted. There were some contemporary pieces and some familiar hymns like those above. It was certianly a wonderful way to begin Advent here.

This last picture was taken just as I wandered out from the College gates and headed back to the rail station: Cambridge at night and dressed for Christmas! As I write this, the village church bell-ringers are having a rehearsal. I've opened my window despite the cold because it sounds so wonderful coming up the hill to the manor. A perfect way to get one in the spirit of Advent!

Durham Revisited

On a whim, I decided to use up one of my remaining Britrail pass days and accompany my colleague Beth to visit Durham. Needless to say, from the minute I stepped off the train and started wandering down to the bridge that crosses the river I was immediately taken back to that lovely late July day in 2005 when I arrived there to join the Trinity Episcopal Church choir who were beginning their week as the choir-in-residence at the Cathedral. Fresh from a conference in Croatia, I wander into the Cathedral close only to meet Jim coming out of the building where the laundry facilities were. I didn't think I could have been happier to see him and then all the rest of the choir members that day. Well choir-friends, I went back thinking of you today!

As you can see, the weather (at least initially) was much the same as that week in July: cloudy, windy, and misty. You all will be glad to know the Edinburgh Woolens shop where we all invested in a variety of sweaters, scarves, and cold weather sundries, is still there and still having a sale. Thankfully I was prepared with a thick sweater, scarf, and coat today.

The wind was blowing at gale force with grey clouds looming again. Inside the Cathedral, the force of the wind gusts shook the windows and scaffolding that had been put up in various places. I was just about to go up the tower to get my peak out on the roof when they closed it due to the inclement weather. Foiled again!

Then, a miracle! The wind quieted down (somewhat) and the sun came out! I guess my prayers at Bede's tomb and St. Cuthbert's Shrine must have had some effect! As you can see in the picture, there was glorious sunshine streaming through the cloister walk.

And even the towers were shown in all their glory with sun and blue sky behind them.

The academic year is in full swing so we couldn't go wander the castle but as you can see from the photo, it is the same as ever. I just kept expecting to see some choristers or Michael come wandering up the walk.

I was awash with happy memories of our week there. I took Beth down the path below the towers and showed her where we picked black raspberries all along the Cathedral's foundations. For lunch we went to the Market Tavern which still served lovely lunches. Beth had an excellent lamb burger and I had a sausage platter and chips. Yum! After that, it was down to the indoor market where thankfully the lovely cheese lady is still in business. I will never forget the fun of sharing port and the day's novelty cheeses with the Crabbs and anyone else who wandered down to the pub in the crypt below the Great Hall in Durham Castle. As we speak I am enjoying a Durham Blue, which is like St Andre with blue veins through it, a Northumberland Doddington (akin to a cheddar), and another Northumberland cheese that is semi-soft with a washed rind. All delicious!

I made my pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Cuthbert, St. Oswald, and the Venerable Bede and gave thanks on this Thanksgiving Eve for all of you my friends back at Trinity and home and enjoyed the chance to say hello to all those familiar places around Durham that continue to hold a special place in my memory.

Costume Ball

"S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y-Night! Keep on dancing to that rock and roll, on Saturday night...on Saturday night...dancing to the rhythm with our heart and soul...on Saturday night...on Saturday night!" Okay so sang the Bay City Rollers in 1976. Don't deny it...you remember it and could sing it virtually word for word if you had to. Well that could have been the theme song for Saturday evening's costume ball and charity auction at the Manor.

Close to 80 students stuck around for the weekend to be a part of the festivities. Amazingly, almost all of them were either in costumes or in evening attire.
We had a very nice dinner in the refectory. Sadly this was originally planned for the state dining room but due to the lift being out of order yet again, the catering staff couldn't get all the food and drinks up there so the decision was made to just have dinner in the usual spot but with formal place settings and wine for a change. Afterward, the party moved up to the Great Hall for dancing and the silent auction. The auction was fairly simple...a date auction with eight or so students who put themselves on the auction block and a mystery date that turned out to be two of the British Studies faculty (Phil and David who's picture is in the Guy Fawkes Night blog entry) and one of the American faculty. It was one of my students who took the prize for fetching 95 pounds!

Everyone had a lovely evening. Here I am with a gang of my students. As you can see, I finally was able to wear my hunting kit that I lugged all this way. At least it came in handy this night.

Cal and Jo Cink did their best to represent Baker College from Kansas. Jo was a lovely bag lady and Cal was Oley...or was it Swen...from Lake Wobegon.

We also had plenty of pirates including Joanne and Edward Bujak (the Vice Principal). It is amazing what all those charity shops in Grantham can produce when it comes to putting together great costumes. Jerrilee (who went with me beagling and to the Belvoir Hunt's opening meet) decided to go in the perfect costume for the countryside...an edgy cow with a pierced utter just out of frame in the picture.

The Parr's were a terrific pair: Judith as pirate (even her parrot was in costume coming to the ball dressed as a duck!) and John as Obi-Wan Kenobi complete with light sabre.

All in all, we had a terrific night. The faculty relinquished the Hall and the dance floor to the students and we adjourned to the Senior Common Room for port and cheese (again).

Paris, je t'aime!

Ah...is there anything better than wandering through the streets of Paris taking in the marvelous sights as the sun slowly sinks in the late afternoon turning everything golden? That was my thought last Saturday afternoon, my last full day in Paris, as I wandered across the Place de la Concorde, over the Seine, and on the few blocks to my hotel.

Well, maybe I should back up. My readers will wonder what has happened to me since Guys Fawkes Night. Well, my dear friend Cassie, came for a week's visit which included a weekend in London, two days here at Hogworts, I mean Harlaxton, and four and a half days in Paris. Since Cassie had something of an unfortunate trip to Paris last April where she was subjected to a friend's unfortunate teenage and college-age children, I promised that if she came to visit me this fall, we would go back to Paris and have a proper visit there...eating our way from the left bank to the right. And so we did!

I am including a rather odd assortment of pictures only because my camera battery died while I was there and so we took more pictures with Cassie's camera. I'll add an extra photo entry when I get copies from her.

We decided to hit one museum per day and aimed for those that neither of us had yet visited or those that were somewhat unique. The first morning was spent at the Musee d'Orsay which houses the massive collection of impressionist art in a former train station. The architecture of the building itself was definitely worth seeing as was the sculpture gallery. I know many of you enjoy the impressionists but they really aren't my cup of tea. One can only see so many water lillies after all. It was remarkable to see some of the many famous masterpieces by Renoir, Degas, Manet, Monet, etc. But I think I can pass on these guys for awhile now. Much more interesting was the Musee Carnavalet in the Marais. This museum is dedicated to the history of the city of Paris, beginning with prehistoric artifacts all the way to the present. Housed in two adjoining mansions, the exhibits here included roman carvings, medieval statues, furniture, paintings, watercolours, drums, banners from the Revolution of 1789, and on and on and on. It was remarkable and well worth time time to wander from room to room. The only down side to this museum was that it lacked a logical flow. The prehistoric and Gall0-roman rooms were at fartherest point in the museum from where you begin for instance. Also, because one of the mansions is built with four interior garden courtyards (you can see two of these in the pictures above), you can't easily follow one set path. Invariably you have to recross your steps or miss entire rooms. But all that aside, it was a marvelous museum...and blissfully empty of tourists.

In addition to les musees, Cassie and I were dedicated to eating every hour or so. Okay, not really but it did seem that way. I took her to the old Jewish quarter along the rue des Rossiers, which Jim and I had discovered on our visit in 2003. Pardon the half eaten food in the second picture but you can't believe the luschious apple and poppy seed strudels that were on offer in another of the Jewish bakeries. These pieces are about two to two and a half inches thick and to die for. At the bottom of the picture also in the box is a piece of a kind of cake, soaked in a honey syrup! YUM!

From the rue des Rossiers, we moved on to the strangest museum we had ever been in before: the Musee de la Chasse et la Nature-an entire museum dedicated to hunting and taxidermy! Now this wasn't a big museum but wow...what a strange set of exhibits. Each of the rooms was dedicated to a particular kind of quarry. There was the wild boar room, the stag room, the fox room, and also rooms for horses, hounds, birds of prey, and even a big game room. In each room was a small assortment of art and decorative objects relating to the animal in question. So as you can see, there is a stuffed wolf, a Flemish tapestry, pottery, and paintings. In each room there was also something akin to a 19th century library case, with small drawers that you would pull out to see poems about the animal, a plaster cast of the animal's tracks, and, get ready, a sample of it's poop! Who knew that owls had bigger turds than stags or rabbits? Cassie and I laughed so hard we could hardly stand up!

You can see Cassie having fun with the stuffed stag. When we walked into the horse room, Cassie wondered if they would include samples of horse poop. I said I didn't think so since these cabinets really were for quarry animals that could be tracked from their droppings. My mistake. There, on the floor (!) behind a four-foot tall replica of a horse, with saddle and bridle, was a pile of horse poop. And we paid money for this!
In the big game room, there were close to a hundred heads up on all four walls. Under them, also on all four walls, were cabinets full of hunting weapons and guns of various eras. Once again, this was not an overly visited museum though there were some interest objets d'art on display.

Did I mention we had glorious meals while we were in Paris? I enjoyed a wonderul dinner with Cassie and my Harlaxton comrade Beth, at a restaurant in the Marais. I had the best frogs legs I have ever eaten (tiny little things cooked perfectly on a bed of greens) as a starter, followed by medallions of veal, and a delicious petit chablis. On another occasion, I enjoyed a cream of scallop soup, served with slices of fresh scallops and small discs of potatoes that you slid into the creamy broth followed by crisp roast duck. But the piece de resistance was our last meal. We went to a bisto across the street from the hotel on rue de Bourgogne, called the Bistro du Palais. The young man who owned the place and the chef were from the Dordogne region in southwest France, near Bordeaux and so gave us that kind of cuisine. I started with a plate of foie gras d'oie, about the size of your fist, on a bed of greens, with eight toast points arranged around it. Even if you spread the foie gras an inch thick there was still more of it than the toast so I was forced to just pick up a fork and knife and eat the rest that way! They served a lovely sauterne-like wine, called Monbazillac, with it which just made me want to melt! The main course was a huge fillet of venison, served on a gratin of thinly sliced sweet potatoes, and covered in a rich red wine and cranberry sauce with chestnuts around the edge of the plate. Truely remarkable!

Of course there was plenty of less formal eating every day as well. We discovered the french macaroon...nothing to do with our coconut versions. These are two small discs of flavored meringue filled with a thick similarly flavored cream. They are soft to bite into and then the flavor just explodes in your mouth. We tried vanilla (think the taste and texture of the richest vanilla ice cream you've ever had), chocolate, pistachio, orange flower, raspberry, and probably one or three other flavors as well. We decided Pierre Hermes had the best though Laduree (both top of the line chocolateurs) was close.

We also enjoyed our share of baguettes, included ones stuffed with gyro meet, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions...croissants and pains au chocolate...a small crispy tart au pomme...a tart au champignons (sauteed mushrooms inside puff pastry), crepes, an apricot tart, and probably alot more that I can no longer remember! I include this picture below of a tank of sturgeon swimming happily outside a shop offering...guess what...caviar, though we didn't go in to have any sadly.

Well there you have it folks...a brief run through of the highlights of last weekend's Parisian adventure. It was a lovely time most of all because Cassie was there to share it all with!

As we crossed the street, I turned and saw this lovely church at the other end of the boulevard. I couldn't resist taking a picture of it. It is the Church of Saint Augustin. Again, isn't the light just breathtaking?

Au revoir, for now, mes amis!

Guy Fawkes Night

Remember, remember the 5th of November, the Gunpowder Treason and plot!

I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent to blow up the King and Parliament. Three score barrels of powder below. Poor old England to overthrow. By God's Providence he was catch'd, with a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!

Well it is Guy Fawkes Night here with bon fires and fireworks galore. We held our celebration last night as a chance to let the students relax after their second British Studies examination. Of course the rain came in around 5 o'clock but that couldn't dampen the festivities. The staff still managed to kindle a roaring fire out in the football pitch and everyone huddled in to keep warm. Thankfully just as the ceremonial portion of the night was to begin, the rain let up.

Our masters of ceremony, J.R. who is student government president for this semester called everyone to attention, while Sara (another student government person) showed off our very own Guy Fawkes effigy, designed to resemble a certain Harlaxton Principal though clearly one with hair.


J.R. then read the poem I've included above as tradition demands though he and I left out the second stanza which more clearly reflects the anti-Catholic feeling of the time. With the crowd shouting "God Save the King" three times, Sara and J.R. launched Guy Fawkes into the blaze and you can see him being consumed just about in the middle of the picture.

With that, the party continued with gingerbread men, (now soggy) popcorn, and a British attempt at smores. Despite the rain, you can plainly see these students were having a good time. We faculty members enjoyed the evening as well. Phil Taylor (on the left) and David Green (center) are two of the British Faculty here. Phil is a music historian specializing in the work of William Byrd while David is a medievalist. Both have been great colleagues and I will miss having them around when I leave! Immediately after this picture was taken, the rain came in again and I bolted back to the manor for hot cider and treacle toffee traditional for this night.

So raise a glass for England (though not those annoying, pesky puritans) sometime today and God Save the King!

All Souls Day

Greetings on this Feast of All Souls! I woke up this morning for my regular walk at 5:45 am only to have the privilege of seeing this most dramatic full moon right out of my window. Sadly the picture isn't perfectly clear but you get the idea. As I wandered up Swinehill out of Harlaxton village, the sky grew brighter and revealed a breathtaking dawn.

As this is the season of rememberances, I have spent time wandering the churchyard in the village and reading the poetic headstones there some of which date from the early 18th century though there are above-ground tombs closest to the church that are earlier but the dates have long sense worn away. As many of the graves here and elsewhere in my travels remind us, their readers, with their refrain, appropriate for this day and time of year, that "Tempus cursum, memoriae mors"...TIME FLIES, REMEMBER DEATH."

In remembering those of our loved ones who have died: "Rest eternal grant unto them O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon them."