Totally X-Treme Cathedral Mega-Weekend, Part Three: London

"Go to London. I guarantee you'll either be mugged or unappreciated."
--Alan Partridge

I have to skip ahead in time a bit to comment on DCI this year, because I know you've been angrily muttering, "What did he think of Finals?" I only got to see shows over the Internet, streaming live from the regional in Atlanta and Semis in Madison, but from what I saw I'm pretty happy with how things turned out, especially Cavaliers winning and Bluecoats ending an amazing season in 4th (their highest finish ever). I wish Vanguard could'e finished higher, but there was no way they were going to top Cadets, as much as it might've seemed possible in Semis, and I'm split on Crown and Blue Knights. I guess a tie would've been a good cop-out there. The problem this year with wanting one corps to move up was not wanting the corps ahead of them to move down. I think that's the sign of a good season.

Sunday was the last of my three consecutive early mornings. Jed Ireland, whom some of you may know, emailed me to say that he and a friend would be passing through London on their way back from Prague, so we arranged to meet at Paddington Station for lunch and a quick visit. Jed and I have known each other since... what, second grade? Kindergarten is probable, but I think my first memories of him are from Mrs. Hedrick's class at Lupin Hill. He suggested we meet at 10:00. I would've liked it a little later, but they didn't have much time and I have all the time in the world, so 10:00 it was. I got up at 7:00 again, caught the train at Falmer at 8:00, and discovered upon my arrival at Brighton that I'd have to wait 45 minutes or so for the train to London. This had the potential to screw up all my plans. It did, however, give me a chance to walk around Brighton a bit on an early Sunday morning. Nothing was open, of course, but the quiet was nice.



I didn't end up getting to Paddington until about 10:20, but we'd anticipated some confusion (due to a modern reliance on the cell phone, which I don't have here) and after some cautious circling the three of us -- me, Jed, and Ryan -- met up. We headed up the street to a little cafe called Mimo, where I convinced Jed to get the full English.



They had a ton of stories about Prague, but ever since the Praguese stopped trading cars for blue jeans, I have to say the city has lost something of its luster for me (and the fact that it was the primary filming location for the D&D movie doesn't help). However, I'd also go there in a heartbeat if I could. I can contain paradoxes. I think my favorite story of theirs was about the time they ate dog meat, or were concerned they might've been eating it. That's Prague for you!

After our meal (nobody at the cafe, by the way, was actually English: our waitress was Polish, another table of patrons was French, and everyone else was... I dunno... European), we tried to make the best of our limited time by going to Hyde Park. There's a bit of a drought going on here, so Hyde Park isn't quite as green and lush as it ought to be. We were in Kensington Gardens, at the north end of the Serpentine. Historically speaking, Kensington Gardens is best known as the site of the Great Exhibition in 1851 (which I now know all about thanks to my Victorian class last session) and as a location in Peter Pan (ditto). Hyde Park itself, of course, is named after Edward Hyde, the fun-loving, psychopathic alter ego of Dr. Jekyll, in honor of his death while fighting invaders from Mars. We didn't make it far into the park before we had to head back, but at least we got lots of pictures.





By 12:30, though, they had to be back on their express train to Heathrow, so I accompanied them back to Paddington and saw them off. It was good to see Jed again, and to meet Ryan. Hopefully I can visit them in Washington soon.

After I left them behind, the Totally X-Treme Cathedral Mega-Weekend was back on.


Saint Paul's. Of course, I'd passed by here with Lori, Charles, and Raff, but we didn't get a closer look that day. The last time I was in England, four years ago, I attended a performance of Handel's "Messiah" here, and it was fantastic -- one of those all-things-aligned experiences. I was looking forward to going up into the cupola, but since it was a Sunday nearly everything was closed. On the plus side, admission was free, and there were hand-made flyers about a "danced memorial" for Hiroshima Day from 1:30 to 2:30, which sounded interesting, so I walked around a bit inside the cathedral until it started. Photography isn't allowed in the cathedral itself (although that didn't stop a few die-hards from disrespecting the cathedral anyway), but outisde, and beneath, in the crypt, yes.




By the time I'd made my lap the memorial was about to begin, so I settled down on the steps of the transept with an Apple Tango. Ah, Apple Tango. Not much of a crowd had gathered, but then again there didn't seem to be any publicity besides the flyers I'd seen taped to the gate. The dance itself was... modern. Very, very modern. "Dance" is probably too loose a term for it, actualy. There was movement, and impressive bodily control, and it certainly had expressive power. There was also music, but no real sense of time or rhythm. I suppose we really don't have another word for it but "dance."



The only gripe I had with the performance was a logistical one, but it was so distracting it made it difficult to really get into it. There's only one gate in or out of the grounds around St. Paul's, and the memorial was held right up against it. Moreover, there was absolutely no crowd control, which meant that this sort of thing was commonplace.


If you know me, you probably know this kind of thing irritates me to no end.

I took some video of the event, as well, but honestly, their movements were so slow and deliberate my 30-second clips look more or less like the photos. At one point, about half an hour in, they recruited a few confused students from the sparse audience, which led to the two of them ending back at their starting positions, at which time they repeated everything they'd just done, but this time with a rock on the big grey sheet. I was actually pretty proud of myself that I recognized it was the same dance, because really, it more or less looked like a series of painful, glacially slow movements in no particular order. Nonetheless, well done.


Afterwards, I went down into the crypt to visit the little priest's room and the giftshop, then up into the cathedral to take it all in for a bit.

Once outside, the bells started up, and they were so loud I had to record it. Click here to hear an mp3 of the bells of St. Paul's.

Once I left St. Paul's, I went on a brutal sightseeing spree, starting with Fleet Street.

I continue to be disappointed that Fleet Street, traditional home to one of my heroes, has no visible, public connection to Sweeney Todd. Why no barber shop called "Todd's" or something similar? Or a pie shop? Come on! Wouldn't you go there? I would. A barber shop next to a pie shop would clean up. Not only would do a ton of business, but tourists would flock to the place (if they marketed it correctly). I'd buy a T-shirt that said "I got cut at Sweeney Todd's" or "You are what you eat at Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop" in a heartbeat.

But no. All that's there now is a bunch of non-Todd-related retail stores and the law courts.

I did, however, discover a little church designed by Sir Christopher Wren just down from St. Paul's that I'd never noticed before. Wren was a 17th-century architect who was instrumental in rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666. His churches are all over the place in the city. In fact, he designed St. Paul's, too, and was the first person to be buried there. My interest in him began with From Hell and its wacky ideas about Wren's hidden agenda. As for this church in particular, its oddly tiered steeple was the inspiration for the first tiered wedding cake. True story!


There was also this pub, and I felt I had to take a picture of it, after having taken a class that was at least partially about Punch magazine. Wonder if Therie's been here -- she wrote her graduate thesis on Punch, if I recall correctly.


Further down is Temple Bar, where the law courts are. "Bar" here is a shortened form of "Barrier," and until the late 19th century there was a stone gate (designed by Wren, incidentally) that marked the dividing line between the City of London and Westminster. It's all very complicated.




Temple Bar is also the home of Robert Audley, the protagonist of Lady Audley's Secret. In the book, he's a lazy lawyer who's never actually had a case (this seems to have been a Victorian theme; there are two similar lawyers in Our Mutual Friend).

Across the street from the Courts is a bar, called the George, or the King George, I believe, which was frequented John Donne. It also has some rather odd decorations around the door.


From there, I made my way to the Thames. I didn't know where I was headed, but I kept walking anyway.


One thing I knew I wanted to see was Cleopatra's Needle. This obelisk was given by Egypt to Great Britain in 1819 to commemorate two military victories, but it stayed in Alexandria until 1877 when, after a series of disasters, it was finally brought to London. Alan Moore goes through the specific disasters in From Hell, which I found fascinating but can't recall now. Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that it was encased in a huge iron cylinder which was towed by a ship, but was lost in the Bay of Biscay during a storm, where it floated freely for a couple months. Altogether it's a brooding, magical, angry thing. I can only assume its twins in Paris and New York are equally brooding, magical, and angry (and I heard the one in Paris doesn't tip).





It's flanked by a pair of sphinxes, one of which was damaged during WWII.

Speaking of WWII, there's this cool WWII memorial right near the Needle. Specifically, it's a memorial to the Battle of Britain.



Once I'd gotten that far, I knew I was headed for the Aquarium, which isn't really an aquarium at all anymore. I'd seen a sign there when I'd been in London weeks ago on the river cruise, and I just had to confirm it said what I thought it said.


There's some other pretty weird stuff around there, too, like a Dali exhibition and perhaps the world's only Salvador Dali impersonator, as well as a Dali-inspired (or -created?) elephant statue.



(As an aside, whenever I see Dali I can't help but be reminded of a bit on SCTV where Salvador Dali had a "learning to paint" class on TV, a la Bob Ross. Hilarity ensued.)

The old Aquarium is a bunch of nonsense now. Essentially, it's one big Namco-owned arcade. I spent some time trying to out-dance a computer -- impossible -- and then killed zombies with a boy in care. No, I didn't do that. I just sat down.


After that, I crossed back over the Thames to see Westminster Abbey and the statues in Parliament Square, then went back to the Thames to get a good look at the statue of Queen Boadicea.






Yeah, about that Lincoln statue. My sources tell me it's a replica of a statue in Chicago. More than that, I really can't say.


Queen Boadicea ruled over a large tribe of Celts in the first century AD and led some major resistance against the Romans. She's probably best known for burning Londinium to the ground and killing as many as 80,000 Romans at a Roman city where St. Albans stands today. Yeah. She's pretty bad-ass.

By now I was starving and walked off my feet, despite a lot of sitting around doing not much of anything in Parliament Square, so I walked all the way back along the Thames until I came upon a little park near Embankment Station -- the exact name escapes me now -- where I could eat and relax. There were a bunch of deck chairs arranged before a stage, calling my name.


I tried reading, but I was just way too tired and had to call it -- i.e., consciousness -- quits. It was the end of a long, long day at the end of a long, long weekend.

Totally X-Treme Cathedral Mega-Weekend, Part Two: Canterbury

Okay, falling just a bit behind here now.... This will be almost exclusively a photo essay, save for those parts that really require the (ahem) "narrative voice." Two reasons for this: one, it'll be faster, and two, pictures of Canterbury Cathedral speak for themselves (mostly).

It was another early morning for me. That's relative to the early mornings of many of you, I know, who commonly wake up as early as seven o'clock the previous night. As for myself, I enjoy my illusion that the sun comes up at nine. I meant to sleep on the bus, but I got to talking to this girl from UCI, Becca, and that kept me conscious throughout the drive. After this session is over, she's moving to Ireland where she'll be going to school for the next year, so... she's here for a good long while. Sinmi was also on this trip, as it happened, so the three of us ended up forming a unit, of which Becca (thankfully) was willing to take charge. The bus dropped us off at the coach park, from which we were led along a stream (and underneath "a very, very dangerous intersection") into town.

When we came to the entry gate to the cathedral grounds, which contain several buildings beside the cathedral, I heard a few people ask, "This is it? This is the cathedral?" Not exactly, no.

There's a ton of history in Canterbury Cathedral, as might be expected. The crypt was especially thick with it -- you can practically feel the weight of centuries pressing in on you -- but pictures aren't allowed in there. I was amazed at all the graffiti. I just can't believe anyone would think it's okay to write their initials on a stone column in such a place. That said, I will admit that it was pretty cool to find some markings that seemed nearly as old as the rest of the cathedral (carved into the stone, of course). There is also a treasure room of sorts down there, with glass cases full of silver chalices, alms plates, and so forth. I noticed that I was only interested in the old stuff. There was an interesting set of copper castings showing the major events of Christ's last days, but as soon as I saw they were made in the '60s they lost much of their appeal. I know that's not fair, but that's the kind of guy I am. Similarly, upstairs, I cruised past most of the "newer" memorials (i.e., anything after 1800) to get to the truly old ones. I mean, let's be honest, I can see things from the 1800s in the U.S., right? But to what extent has, say, 13th-century North American civilization left its mark on the world? Very little. I'm not saying that's good, but I am saying that I can't very well walk into a building and witness it.

Canterbury, on the other hand, oozes history. Most people know about it through Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which is notable not just because of its literary merit but because it is perhaps the first recorded weather report in history (these are the jokes, people!), but the reason the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Reeve, the Nun's Priest, and the rest were on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral in the first place was to pay their respects to Thomas Becket.


Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was martyred in an odd and almost accidental way. He'd been giving Henry II some resistance over a disagreement about the role of the Church, and Henry II, ranting about the whole thing, bellowed, "Will no one rid me of this termagant priest?" (It should be mentioned that there are several versions of Henry II's exact words, including "turbulent priest" and "lowborn priest"; me, I like "termagant.") What the king didn't know was that four knights overheard him, and because they were energetic self-starters, they went to Canterbury and killed Becket in the cathedral. These events have been the subject of a great deal of literature, most prominently (to me) T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, which I once had the pleasure of seeing performed by the Mercury 7 Astronauts.



Canterbury Cathedral is also the resting place of some other historical figures, including Edward Plantagenet, aka "The Black Prince," the eldest son of King Edward III and father of Richard II, who, if I recall correctly, once traded his kingdom for a horse (crazy but true!!!). I managed to steal some education from a passing tour group on this one. We don't know why they called him the Black Prince; it could be that he wore black armor, or that the French hated him so much they sought to tar him with this evil epithet. Either way, it stuck. He was seen as the flower of English chivalry by his peers, and as a right jerk by any peasantry he casually ran down on his horse. Not an especially nice guy, as it turns out -- let's call him Lawful Neutral with Evil tendencies -- but devout as all get-out. His will set out in no uncertain terms the manner of his interment in the crypt of the cathedral, but the monks, possibly considering him too great a man to keep hidden in the crypt (or possibly anticipating the increased pilgrimage his tomb would generate in a more public space), put him upstairs instead. The rest of his wishes, however, were respected. Over his tomb is displayed a sword, a crown, a pair of plate gauntlets, and a doublet with his heraldic device.



Notice that his coat of arms includes both the lions of England and the fleur de lis of France. His father ruled over more land in France than in England, thus the mixture.

Speaking of which, right across from him is the tomb of his cousin, Henry IV, the titular character of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Henry and his French wife, Joan of Navarre, rest in the same plexiglass-shielded, iron-barred, rather inaccessible tomb.


In between these two is the original resting place of Thomas Becket, which was removed by Henry VIII because it "interrupted the flow of the room." When he wasn't marrying or subsequently beheading women, Henry VIII was big into interior decorating.


That said, the "backyard" is nearly as elaborate as the inside.



We couldn't stay there all day, of course; there's more to see in Canterbury than the cathedral. Well, relatively speaking, there kind of isn't, but we thought we'd go check it out anyway. We passed through the gift shop on the way out, and I once again silently cursed all of you for not being spoon or thimble collectors. Do you have any idea how much easier it'd be to shop for you people if you had a thing for spoons and/or thimbles?

Canterbury's a pretty small town, all things considered, so it didn't take much to find our next stop: The Canterbury Tales. This is a literary themed attraction in which a few of the Canterbury Tales are "dramatized" through various means. I'm tempted to say through animatronics, but none of the people really move, so... what does that make them? Mannequins? If so, fair enough.


It's extremely dark in there, and no flash photography is allowed, so my pictures all look about this bad. It's just as well, though because the true cheesiness of it can't be adequately captured on digital film. First you're greeted by a creepy, Gandalf-looking Chaucer, who paraphrases the prologue and introduces you to an even more harrowing depiction of Harry, the innkeeper who proposes the storytelling contest in the first place (the winner gets a rake). Only a few of the characters are represented, and each tells his or her story in a different medium, and in between you trudge from one room to another. The Miller is assisted by a bunch of flip-up two-dimensional panels and some other mannequins, and no detail is omitted from the story (to their credit). The Wife of Bath's tale is next, on which I once wrote a paper, and her tale is told through a series of illuminated images on a screen. After that is the Nun's Priest, whose monomedia presentation -- basically, him standing there talking in the same pose for eight minutes -- is a little on the slow side. And so on. They throw a little history and context in, too; the walk takes you past St. Thomas's tomb in the cathedral (which is more than can be said for the unfinished Canterbury Tales), and there's a bit at the end in a typical marketplace, then a final bit in a typical gift shop.

From there we stopped at a chain bookstore (I'm not sure why, but I discovered the remains of an ancient Roman bathhouse in the basement), the Canterbury Roman Museum (which featured a vintage computerized rendering, circa 1990, of a Roman villa), and an impulse buying frenzy at a fruit stand on the main drag.




The only thing left that we all wanted to see (well, at least two of us) was the ruin of the Norman castle, which was a bit further than we'd anticipated, but worth it.




On the way back to the bus, Becca and Sinmi felt a deep-seated need to visit the Winnie the Pooh shop, which we did, and then I took my final picture of the day.


So much for being shorter, huh?

Oh, one last thing. When I got home, the garbage in the entryway was still there, but messier. I asked the girls coming in behind me, "Why am I the only one bothered by this? Is this how the rest of you live at home -- with rotting garbage strewn all over your foyer?" They seemed to think it impossible that anything could be done about it, so I dropped my backpack off in my room, went to York House, and got a porter to give me a shovel, a trash picker-upper-thing, and some garbage bags. Then I came back, pushed a dumpster up to our front door, and, using my tools like a good primate, shoveled the garbage into it. While I was doing this, one of the girls approached and asked, "Don't you have a broom?" This was about the last straw for me. "Why don't you see if you can find one?" I replied, and by the time I'd replaced the dumpster, returned the tools to York, and returned, she had done so and swept the last little bits (e.g., maggots) out the door. That was the last time I spoke to or even made eye contact with any of them. Here's to an awkward final two weeks!