The strangeness of Albion

Sometimes the everyday strikes you as extraordinary: the mundane seems strangely exotic. For reasons too complicated to explain, to do with an M.A. dissertation I'm in the midst of, I needed to drive home on the A38 trunk road rather than straight up the M5. It seemed everywhere we stopped was a bit weird.

First stop - Tewkesbury. A nice place, lovely ancient abbey church, interesting mix of timber-framed and Georgian vernacular architecture, innocuous enough, apart from its tendency to get submerged every time there is more than a light shower and the Severn floods.

Lovely mix of Tudor and Georgian architecture - the 'Poundwise' shop reminds you - not all  'shire-towns' are affluent.

Even the Jobcentre was up for sale...

Stunning Abbey church though.

For some reason though I became slightly disturbed by The Tesco Metro, and in particular the odd stripy figurines on a toddlers car ride outside the shop.

Look at it - isn't it truly strange?  Just think, someone actually sat down and designed this, Cadcam controlled  lathes and robotic injection moulding machines were intricately programmed to make it, hundreds of them are pouring off a production line in the depths of rural China, container loads are being shipped across the world to enable toddlers from San Paulo to Singapore to harass their overwrought mothers, laden with shopping, into shoving small  change into a slot so little Carlos or Wang Yong can sit and go brmmm brmmm, beep beep. Funny old world, just as well we usually wander about in our own little bubble, if we actually thought about ordinary stuff in any depth we'd probably go completely bonkers in just a couple of hours.

Next odd moment. One of the texts I've  been studying is a great book called The Making of the English Landscape by W. G. Hoskins. Since reading it I've become quite taken by English field and settlement patterns. What's great is whereas when it was first published in 1954 the only way you could study these patterns was by perusing large scale Ordinance Survey maps; now these have been supplemented by both aerial photographs on the O.S. site as well as Google Earth and Street View. So, in my quest for interesting settlement patterns, I'd homed in on places linked by the A38 trunk road. Tewkesbury, for example, is a good illustration of how physical features - the confluence of the rivers Severn and Avon combine with political and historical factors - the Abbey - to create the layout of a particular place.

Where I was heading was a village location - Severn Stoke - a few miles north. Sadly it was not to be. Partly I felt awkward parking up the motorhome in such a small place on a sleepy Easter Monday. The main reason, however, is that I felt intimidated in the presence of a local militia. What, might you ask, was the function of this uniformed, semi-official vigilante group? Driver 'education' I believe.... it's called Community Speed Watch and involves concerned members of the community being armed by the police with speed guns and zapping passing motorists. So terrifying was the hi-res garbed gruppenfuhrer that I drove-on and parked up in a layby just up the road. Even here the malign influence of petty authority was a wonder to behold.

The layby was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

This did not prevent an outbreak of covert surveillance on the part of the local council

and a somewhat perplexing ambiguity concerning litter, and what to do with it.

Squabbling Ducks and Lusty Swains

My sleep was disturbed by what seemed to be an extended domestic fracas involving the nearby mallard community. Apart from that, everything is great, I've just woken-up to one of those sparkling, clear sunny Spring mornings when you expect your path to be crossed by ruddy faced swains and buxom shepherdesses flushed from rolling in the April dew. Had there not been a couple of nearby caravans perhaps I would have stood by Maisy, stuck a finger in my ear and burst into a rendition of 'The Lark in the Morning'  in a thin, warbling tenor so loved by amateur folk singers and other victims of Cropeddy. As it was I just stood outside and sang the song to myself in my head, which was the socially responsible thing to do, given my voice is more rutting walrus than Mike Waterson.

"That's a noble abode, sir..and the castle's not bad either."

The day gets better by the moment. Gill is cooking up bacon sandwiches for breakfast., I always think bacon sandwiches are a quintessentially English thing. Perhaps I am the only person to have stood in front of Constable's Haywain and thought, "I bet they had great bacon sandwiches back then!"

Yum....

A fine April morning, birds singing and the waft of fried bacon on the breeze...

After breakfast we took ourselves off for a bit of a wander around the Eastnor Castle grounds - were entertained by the ducks, stared at the sparkling lakes, admired the spring flowers and promised ourselves that we'd definitely return here for a couple nights later in the Spring.

It being Easter week-end, then the place must have had close to 100 caravans and motorhomes dotted about. It is big enough not to feel crowded. Even the corralled vans in the adjacent field - some rally or other of a West Midlands camping club - failed to provoke my usual derisive comments and general bewilderment at groupie tribalism. Though you do have to wonder about the social attitudes and political leanings of quite so many Landrover owners gathered together beneath fluttering St. George flags, I mean it's not just a shared enthusiasm for slip differentials designed in Coventry that's bringing them together, is it?

"There'll always be an England.." come on now...join in!

So far as owning a motorhome is concerned, then there definitely is a 'honeymoon period', and we are still in the starry eyed besotted phase. So I make no excuses for standing on a hill overlooking the camping area and saying to Gill, "OOh that's a nice looking van over there - it's OURS!!!"  We have planned this moment for years and the actuality does exceed the expectation. I can't wait to be able to tour Europe in it for weeks on end - the van is an LMC Liberty - and liberation is what it offers, and time just to stop and stare.

Maisy in the morning

This morning we had time to stare - at a small stream, little more than a ditch really, and just delight in the way morning sunshine lit-up its low bank - "green and golden" as Dylan Thomas said....

Or just be amazed at the glittering water, the reeds and the spring flowers on the edge of the small lake....

And that's before we get to become animated by the small swamp....

Talking of swamps, I was just reading last week Jonanthan Bate's take on John Clare as the poet of disregarded wetlands:

Lover of swamps
The quagmire overgrown
With hassock-tufts of sedge– where fear encamps
Around thy home alone

The trembling grass
Quakes from the human foot
Nor bears the weight of man to let him pass
Where he alone and mute

Sittest at rest
In safety ‘neath the climp
Of huge flag-forest that thy haunts invest
Or some old sallow stump

                  ****

Where uncheck’d the brambles spread
 Where the thistle meets the sight
With its down-head, cotton-white
And the nettle, keen to view
And hemlock with its gloomy hue
Where the henbane too finds room
For its sickly-stinking bloom
And full many a nameless weed
Neglected left to run to seed

Spring sunshine.....bacon sandwiches....John Clare...a perfect morning.

Scattered showers giving way to sudden monsoons

Next day, after Matthew wandered up to the campsite for a good morning coffee and after a brief 'put the world to rights' conversation we left Oxford to head for the Malverns.

Well, it dawned bright enough.....

It should have been a pretty drive, along the upper Thames valley, past Witney, then skirting the southern Cotwolds before heading north past Gloucester to the campground near Ledbury. Sadly it drizzled the whole way.

The place we are staying - Eastnor Castle - is a stately home which developed its Deer Park as a music festival venue. When its not hosting Jools Holland, or the odd Ibiza Trance fayre, ('Erefrd Trance doesn't quite have the same ring!) then His Grace opens the park to the camping proletariat for a very modest stipend. His Grace's baronial pile is a truly gruesome Gothic pastiche of a Medieval castle. The  Deer Park, however is magnificent, rolling across the lower, western slopes of the Malvern Hills, with many a sinuous picturesque pathway and thoughtfully plonked copse.

Just after we arrived the drizzle became a rainstorm alternating with periods of freezing cold wind, after a couple of flashes of lightening suddenly night fell, and we turned in early, but not before sampling a couple of bottles from the on-board cellar.

Bored Pete, "let's take a photo of Gill with my iphone...."

still bored... dum-de-dum CLICK1

Oxford Again

The last few weeks have been characterised by minor motorhome glitches. After Maisy returned from the repairers to the farm where she lives, she suffered,  along with many of the other vans, a minor mouse invasion. That took a bit of sorting, but at least we had just a few droppings and chewed soap powder packets. Some of the other owners sustained more serious damage with upholstery being chewed and so on.

Finally we got the van fully loaded and off we went back to the Oxford campsite to visit Matthew. The trip started with a panic or two over the Truma heater and water system which had emptied itself and drained the van of all water. We 're still rookies really, so it was only after consulting the handbook that we realised that the recent frosty nights had been cold enough for the automatic protection valve to kick in. What's a bit irritating is the system dumps the water when the temperature in the van reaches 3 degrees Celsius, but won't let you reset it unless the interior warms up to 8 degrees. How you do that in chilly weather is a bit of a mystery since once the safety device clicks on,the Truma heating system is de -activated. Answer - stay in sunny climes.

So once we sussed all of this, we re- filled the system and everything worked just fine. Except, on the M40 just north of Oxford I tested the cab air-con, as soon as I switched it on the gear box warning lights and engine management system alert on the dashboard all started flashing, the gearbox selected neutral, and I was forced to head for the hard shoulder as we gently coasted along. Then suddenly at about 20 mph. the gears clicked back in, and everything returned to normal. A mile or two further on I tried the air-con again, and it worked fine. I'm hoping this is some sort of electronic fluke, and not a symptom of a problem with the automatic gearbox; that could prove costly indeed, methinks.

Enough wingeing!  Oxford - well we pitched up, then headed straight into the centre to meet Matthew in 'The Grand Cafe' on High Street. Samuel Pepys says it was the first coffee house in Oxford, opening in 1650 . The interior IS grand, sporting tall, pale blue Corinthian columns, gold  -framed floor to ceiling mirrors and slightly surreal wall lamp holders fashioned into the form of slender arms protruding from the walls. There is a quiet buzz about the place, nice coffee, and tempting, if pricey, patisserie. I love it. It's interesting to think of all the fascinating  conversations that might have happened here over the years. At midnight, at a lunar eclipse, I imagine the fabric of time parting and the ghosts of former customers  slowly appearing - Robert Boyle and Einstien at one table, Auden, Wordsworth and Graham Greene nearby. At adjacent tables sit Harold Wilson and George Canning, conspicuously  ignoring each other. ... Whimsical perhaps, but it is impossible to wander around the Oxford college area without sensing that whatever Marx' views were to the contrary, economics is not the sole engine of history;  ideas shape the world as well as capital. 

Later we had dinner in a French owned family restaurant called 'Pierre Victoire. The ' pre-theatre' menu of two courses for £11.00 was really good value given the quality of the cooking. Gill and I had  a Moroccan styled lamb dish for our main course; it was more subtlety spiced than you get in an actual Moroccan place,but good nevertheless.  The house red was excellent value,  an honest simple wine which we polished off swiftly.  Matthew, who' d had Steak frites as his main ; (well reduced red wine jus!), finished  with a creme brûlée which achieved an appropriate combination of crunch and gloop. Bon appetite all round.

Next day  we were back in Oxford by mid- morning. Given it was Easter Saturday then it was busy, but not impossibly so. We headed for Blackwell's; despite the onslaught of Kindle and Amazon it remains a great bookshop. That being said, I did not buy anything, which a few years ago I probably would have; the simple truth is if we merely browse, bookshops, even renowned ones like Blackwell's  will disappear, and the world will be poorer for it. 

We had lunch in a great little place opposite the Radcliffe Camera. It's situated in the original University Council  Chamber in a low vaulted hall which dateds from 1360. 

Afterwards we walked around the corner to the Museum of Science. Really it should be called a museum of scientific instruments, as that what it contains mainly. By modern standards it looks very traditional,  all glass cabinets packed with brass contraptions or curly glass vessels straight out of Dr Frankenstein's laboratory; "a museum which should be in a museum" as Dylan Thomas quipped. That being said, with a bit of imaginative effort, then the equipment shown does become  fascinating. The various measuring devices- astrolobes, sextants, dividers, all kinds of slide rules and clocks - these  make you reflect on just how important measurement, and precision instrument makers were to the invention of the modern world. Some exhibits were salutary. You do feel old when a slide rule similar to the one you struggled with in Mr. Nixon's remedial  'O' level  Maths class re-appears before your eyes as a museum piece.

Bits of Balliol, I think.

Afterwards we wandered around the beautiful old streets which surround the colleges before walking southwards along the Thames path from the Head of the River pub. The river, though not exactly crowded, was suffering from  'user conflict: - the university rowing club 'fours' and 'eights', tourists in tiny electric launches, tourists on large river cruise boats, kayakers and hormonally charged swans all attempting, with mixed success, to avoid each other. The path itself was little better, as joggers, striding walkers and day-dreaming saunterers all conspired to annoy the Bradley Wiggins wannabes who hurtled along in snazzy Lycra and even snazzier shades, arse-high on shiny racing bikes.

Hardly a relaxing stroll. I was pleased to reach Iffley Road, where the only thing which disturbed the peace was the constant traffic noise. Matthew headed home; we walked back to the van, where, given enough layers it was almost pleasant sitting outside in the Spring sunshine. I was going to say ' nose in a book' but in truth since we've gone 'e-reader'  colloquially I think the jury is still out on the questions of noses and Kindles. Back into Oxford for a curry on Cowley Rd., but not before the sunset cast a warm glow on the ancient facades and the tall, Perpendicular tower of  Magdalen  College. I paused to take a couple of photos of the Oxford Botanical gardens - lens pushed through the locked iron gates. Gill had stopped a few yards further on, at Magdalen Bridge, to admire the reflection of the sunset on the Cherwell. The cherry and magnolia blossom and the gently arching white wooden footbridge upstream took on a distinctly Japanese look in the fading light.

Magdelen Tower

The Botanical Gardens

The Cherwell looking Japanese

Yummy curry on Cowley Rd..

A rare photo of Matthew...

Oxford is growing on me. At first it can seen frenetic and traffic choked, and at times it is, but sometimes you sense its serene beauty, the sheer weight of history and learning becomes palpable. Its power is not merely tradition, even yet, by every measure it remains one of the top five universities in the world. As a nation we should be able to be proud of it, unequivocally ... but then there's the Bullington Club, and Boris and David, and all the others for whom  Oxford is a hereditary right. If you are English, is it possible to have unequivocal national pride in anything?