Dorset

We’ve had a short break in Dorset. We came down to see friends. We had a very nice potter round Poole, gawping at the private yachts, built in Poole by Sunseeker. They aren’t quite Roman Abramovich size, but they are enormous by any other standard, and there are lots of them. So much for “We’re all in this together”.

Then we had a smashing walk starting at the Square and Compasses in Worth Matravers. If you know Dorset, it’s the pub with pasties and good cider, and a fossil museum, and a room with such a huge wood burning stove that the room it’s in is at sauna temperatures. I think the landlord reclaimed the boiler of an old steam locomotive.

We walked down to the sea and back, and the waves were breaking over the rocks, so it was all very satisfying.  We like living in Nottingham, but we do miss the sea. 

It’s an interesting stretch of coast, because, as well as caves and fossils,  there are lots of World War Two Radar and Royal Observers Corps installations still visible. Actually, there was what seemed to be an original landing craft in Poole Harbour. I shouldn’t fancy going all the way across the Channel in one.  But probably the journey to Normandy was the least of the soldiers’ worries.

We moved on to Dorchester and have spent the day doing the town trails and the museum, and visiting Maiden Castle.  I had never been and I was staggered. It’s absolutely vast (the signs quoted an area of fifty football pitches for the enclosure) and the earthworks are stupendous and hugely elaborate, especially around the entrances. There are horn works on top of horn works there, but the size of the ditches, and the height of the embankments everywhere, are completely daunting. Archaeologists believe that there were wooden palisades and towers at least at the entrances, too. The whole enterprise must have required enormous labour, and more importantly, sophisticated planning and organisation. The views are wonderful, and although it was cold and not sunny, it wasn’t Novemberish  dark and depressing, either.

If you want to see the whole thing, you need an aerial image so:

http://www.dorchesterdorset.com/maiden-castle.php

There’s a small Romano-British temple in the middle, which may have been built over an earlier sanctuary. At first I thought it was built as a victory roll, but it was much later. Archaeologists did find burials, where many of the dead had died violently. One had a Roman ballista arrow head in his spine.

The whole landscape is just stuffed full of all sorts of forts, barrows and henges, and there’s lots of Roman stuff as well, including a very well preserved Roman house, with mosaic floors.  Then there’s all the Thomas Hardy and Casterbridge stuff, and fossils. They’ve got the skull (with teeth) of the most enormous pliosaur, otherwise known as predator X. It could swallow me at one gulp, I should think.

Pliosaur, or, predator X

We had a look at Prince Charles’ Poundsbury project, and didn’t like it one bit. The buildings are not just influenced by older architectural styles, but are pastiches of them. Just for example, there’s a Butter Cross, modelled on somewhere like Oakham, but it’s fake. There was never a real butter cross there, and no one sells butter there nowadays, and it’s like a Disney castle.

Also, the idea was said to be to make cars less important. So the roads are narrow and choked with parked cars, whereas giving in, and building underground car parking, would have got the cars out of the way. At present, they dominate the view.

We are staying in a different new development based round the old brewery, which is a mixture of the old brewery buildings and unashamedly modern flats and shops, and we like it. It feels real, and it has life.  There’s a small central amphitheatre with a big screen showing old silent films; in the summer there are fountains to play in, and just now it’s being turned into a small ice rink.

The last day of our trip we went to see Chesil Beach, supplier of ammunition to the sling shots of Maiden Castle.  It was well worth it. The day was gorgeous – really warm sun and clear blue skies, and the views along the beach and the lagoon behind it, the Fleet, were fantastic. We went onto the beach at a couple of different points to verify the truth of the statement that you can tell where you are on the beach from the size of the pebbles. They are pea sized at the western end, cherry sized in the middle, and plum sized as you near Portland. The sea was very calm, but even so, the noise of the pebbles as the little waves went out was lovely to listen to.

We also had a look round Abbotsbury. It’s a very long village with lots of lovely thatched cottages. it was the site of a Benedictine abbey, founded by Orc, King Cnut's steward. There are bits of the abbey spread around, the best bit being an enormous stone barn with a thatched roof. Half of it is ruined, so at one point it must have dwarfed the abbey church.

Carving of Christ, supposed to date
from the time of Orc.

The barn

We stopped to see the view from the Hardy Memorial, which is a very plain tower on the top of a hill. It’s not a memorial to Hardy the author, but to Thomas Masterman Hardy, Nelson’s flag captain, he of “Kiss me, Hardy”.  He lived round here. It’s obviously a popular local name, because the Dorchester  school is the Thomas Hardye school. This one was apparently a merchant venturer (privateer?) who, in 1579, endowed a school to educate the boys of Dorchester.

We ended the day (after a really good homemade steak and kidney pie with proper vegetables) by visiting Portland. This wasn’t at all what we had expected. It’s heavily populated, sometimes by rows of terrace houses which look a bit like pit villages and were presumably for the quarry men; but new houses are being built and there’s a very modern complex of flats, which may have been for the Olympic sailing.  There are still naval ships at the naval base, and there are two prisons, and I suppose some quarrying still goes on, if only for repairs to buildings like St Paul’s.

We went right out to Portland Bill, to the lighthouse, and it feels much more like land’s end than Landsend in Cornwall.  It’s rather bleak and treeless, I suppose because of the quarrying, but also perhaps because of the winds, which must be pretty powerful, stuck out into the Channel, almost the Atlantic. In fact, it all felt rather remote and insular, although, as I said, it’s heavily populated and has regular buses from Weymouth.  It’s well worth a visit. 

Portland Bill lighthouse

Sunset from Portland Bill

As a little treat before we drove home we went to see the Cerne Abbas giant. In all honesty, it was a bit disappointing. We've seen so many photographs, and it really was a gloomy morning, whereas the photos are always taken in full sunlight. But it is always satisfying to see things in real life, so to speak, and the area around is deepest rural Dorset, so well worth the drive. The leaves are not yet down and there were some glorious scenes with flaming beech trees.

Dorset is one of our favourite places , so we'll definitely be back.  

The anti-bucket list – or things I’m quite happy to die without doing.

I have never camped at any sort of festival, and I’m not sorry.  Maybe I could contemplate a day at Bestival or Latitude, but I was never young enough to have enjoyed the crowds, noise and mud you see on TV coverage of Glastonbury, and I certainly wouldn’t pay the huge ticket prices to watch antediluvian “stars” make prats of themselves. I do think that the Rolling stones ought to retire immediately. If they watched themselves on TV, I think even they would agree. Mick Jagger, never the most physically attractive man, is simply repulsive now. His weird lizard’s neck and skinny shanks are just awful, and the way he moves (he was never much of a dancer) is genuinely odd. And it’s quite obvious that Keith Richards isn’t playing a note. As for his appearance – well, you could have an anti-drugs poster with his picture and the line “Don’t do drugs. You might end up looking like this.” If it was a full length picture showing his ominously swollen belly, it would be even more effective.

Television shows I will never watch include:  East Enders; Britain’s Got Talent;  The X Factor;  Inspector Morse or any of its spinoffs; Poirot;  Murder She Wrote;  Midsomer Murders; The Wire ; and 24.

I have to admit that I did waste some time on Downton Abbey, Homeland and Lost, but realised pretty quickly they were crap.  I can’t deny that I have watched some pretty poor TV and films, but stories must have an end, and shouldn’t just ramble on until the ratings finally drop.

I never want to do a bungee jump. It isn’t the throwing oneself off a height that bothers me, it’s the way the jumper gets yanked up again. That looks simply horrible, although I suppose it’s better than not  being yanked back up.

I have never eaten eels or tripe. I once read a recipe for preparing eels and decided then and there that I couldn’t eat them. I wasn’t eager even before that – their repulsive dog- type faces put me off. Tripe was the one food rejected by our dog. As he would eat maggoty fish heads at the sea side with every sign of enjoyment, refusing tripe was a pretty powerful statement.

I’m quite content never to see Australia. There are so many places I really want to see that don’t involve days on a plane.

I have never had a manicure, pedicure, facial, bikini wax or “pampering day”. I have never had my hair or face “done” for a wedding, although three of my children have got married. I’m genuinely proud of that.

I’ve never had the slightest interest in motor racing or golf, and I know I haven’t missed anything. Even swimming galas aren’t as tedious as those as spectator sports.

There’s also some things which I feel I’ve tried hard enough at, and now I’m old enough to give up on.  Such as dance. I have tried, really I have. I’ve seen the Bolshoi, and the Mariinsky, and Fonteyn and Nureyev dance together at the Royal Ballet, and it’s no good. I can admire the athleticism, but it leaves me completely cold. And if you didn’t already know the story, you’d never, never, work it out from the dance.  As for modern dance - it is just laughable, to me.

I’ve also given up on modern art, except for sculpture. I don’t know why that’s the exception, but I can often get something from it, whereas most modern painting, and all installations and videos, leave me wondering what on earth is the point of them. And then the artist writes a long explanation of what s/he intends to convey, which I don’t think should be necessary, and when you read the explanation you think, well, is that all? 

It’s quite reassuring to list the things I’m happy never to do – it leaves more time for the things I still want to do!

A cultural life update

I’m still trying to increase my knowledge of a more modern music repertoire, so I’ve borrowed a CD of songs and a tone poem by Antony Payne, and one of music by Szymanowski, which included his third symphony.

When number one son graduated from Birmingham, Antony Payne was given an honorary doctorate, and in his acceptance speech he said how nice it was to receive some recognition, as he’d just been investigated by the Inland Revenue, who couldn’t believe that he earned so little. When they established that he was genuine, just to add insult to injury, they then couldn’t believe he bothered, if he couldn’t make more money out of composing. So I did listen to his completion of Elgar’s third symphony, and I did enjoy that. But I’m sorry to say I didn’t much enjoy this selection of pieces. I didn’t hate it, I just was left pretty cold.  Sorry, Dr Payne.

Szymanowski apparently changed his style during his career, and the music I got seemed to be earlier rather than later, so perhaps I ought to give him another go. But the third symphony was all lush, squishy,lyrical romanticism, reminding me rather of Delius. This is not a compliment. I’m with Bernard Levin, who described Delius as “the musical equivalent of blancmange.”

I have had two excellent theatrical experiences, though. I went to see a National Theatre film of the Danny Boyle Frankenstein. The version I saw was Jonny Lee Miller as the monster and Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein. It was tremendous, even on screen instead of live. Obviously one would much prefer to see it live, but it was the next best thing.  I admired the way the book (which in my opinion is pretty lousy, as influential as its ideas have been) had been adapted. It was a much more powerful experience than reading the novel.

Then we went to Stratford to see Richard II. David Tennant made him quite unlikeable and unsympathetic, right until his death, which was really moving. The rest of the cast were uniformly excellent, but I must single out the young man who played Aumerle. Bolingbroke and Northumberland were great, too. 

The Christmas Pudding

Last year, around this time, wrote about making the Christmas cake. So this year, I’m going to write about the pudding.  I just made it, and it’s safely stored ready to be set on fire with copious quantities of rum on Christmas day.

The pudding recipe, like the cake recipe, is handed down from my mother’s mother’s mother, my great granny Nock. She died before my mother was born, and my mother was named Mary for her. I only do one quarter of the quantities given in the recipe, and that fills a pudding basin, making a pudding  big enough for fourteen people, with a little left over. So presumably my great grandmother was making four puddings of that size, which is quite a thought.

The pudding is easier to make than the cake, because there’s no creaming butter and sugar. In fact there’s very little sugar in it, but loads of currants and raisins (there are no raisins in the cake). There are lots of almonds, not cut too small, mixed peel, and spices. There’s some flour and breadcrumbs, with suet and eggs. I use vegetable suet nowadays, not beef suet, although I’m actually not sure whether vegetable suet involves less saturated fat, and I don’t want to investigate in case it turns out as I suspect, to be just as bad for you.

 I know very little about my great grandfather Nock, but I do know that he suffered from gout, and died aged fifty ish. The pudding recipe may explain this. It is, and I’m not boasting, because it’s nothing to do with me, I just follow the recipe, the best pudding ever. He wouldn’t have been able to refuse it, even with four on offer over the Christmas holidays.

The other things I know about my great grandfather, oddly enough, made me lose interest in researching the family. His name was Benjamin, and his father, a furnaceman in the steel works, died when he was a few months old. His mother remarried very promptly and had a number of other children. So what I wanted to know was, how did he feel being the odd child out? How did his step father treat him? How did Benjamin, after going to work in the steel works at twelve, end up owning and running a large (for the time) hotel? He must have been well off – I have my great grandmother’s very nice three stone diamond engagement ring, and my grandmother had singing lessons and painting lessons.  The really interesting questions about him are the ones you can’t answer by researching family history.

At any rate, the pudding must be steamed for at least eight hours, then put away until Christmas day. Really it should be steamed again on the day, but I’m afraid to say I usually microwave it warm, because I start to run out of pans and gas rings.  Then it’s served with rum sauce, not (emphatically not!) brandy butter. Really, it’s practically a meal in itself, and not the ideal follow on to Christmas dinner, but we have to stick with tradition. And no one says no!

Mahler at the Royal Concert Hall

Last weekend was quite busy – we had the grandsons to mind, friends round to eat, out to Sunday lunch, and then to a concert Sunday evening.

When I booked the concert I didn’t realise how hectic the weekend would turn out to be, which is a good thing, as otherwise I might have chickened out, and missed a really great experience.

The concert was at Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall, built in 1982. When we first moved here, after London and even Sheffield, Nottingham was quite a step down – there was only one theatre, and classical concerts were in the Albert Hall, a huge Methodist church, with pretty poor acoustics. But then the Royal Theatre was restored and reopened, and shows excellent touring productions. Only I wish they hadn’t stuck with the Victorian seating – Victorian people seemed to have been a lot narrower, with legs about half the length of modern British people, with the result that anywhere but the stalls is cripplingly uncomfortable.  But the real triumph was that they added a concert hall behind the theatre, with superb acoustics. It was the forerunner and inspiration for some other modern concert halls, such as in Birmingham and Manchester.  And the seats are comfortable!

Since we now have a suitable venue, we get much better concerts, and last Sunday’s  was really special. There was a wonderful  performance of Mozart’s 5^th Violin Concerto,  but the prime event was Mahler’s Symphony No.6. There were more than a hundred musicians on stage, including six percussionists. I had not realised how literal the “hammer blows of fate” were – one percussionist was equipped with an actual sledge hammer, something I’ve never seen before. It is a great privilege to be able to walk out of our flat and hear something like this concert so easily. We often find ourselves quoting “The Quangle Wangle’s Hat” – when all these creatures move, what a  wonderful noise there’ll be.

The noise is amazing – although it is wonderful, I do slightly tend to find Mahler somewhat self indulgent, length for the sake of it, but all these people, working so hard, so skilled, for us – it’s a thrilling thought.  And we have Mahler’s Ninth Symphony to look forward to next year.

While I’m praising Nottingham’s main music venue, I must mention the Djanogly Recital Hall, on the University campus – again, it has superb acoustics, and so we get a wonderful programme of chamber music. I do worry that, apart from some music students, we seem to be young blood at string quartet concerts. Does it take many years to acquire a taste for them? Or are they going out of fashion?

Two Nottingham traditions

I’ve been doing traditional Nottingham things the last couple of weeks. Well, one is very traditional. I went to Goose Fair, which in case you don’t already know about it, has been going since 1284, it’s thought.

When we first came to Nottingham, the schools had a half day on the Friday of Goose Fair, so the children could go, and the nursery school children were taken to see the rides being put up, on (I think) the Wednesday. Nowadays, the rides are mostly just sort of folded out from huge lorry trailers, like a Transformer. It only ran from Thursday lunchtime to midnight on Saturday. Now it seems to open on the Wednesday and still be open on the Sunday. It really is enormous, and when we had much younger children, it was always a bit of an issue, because of the noise, dirt and crowds – but you couldn’t not take them – it would have been like Father Christmas not coming.

Then later on, of course they wanted to go with their friends, which involved tense negotiations about what time, how long, where money was to be kept, how they would get home, or be collected, staying together etc, etc.

  

Well, now, I have to say, it’s a much more tolerable experience.  There was some lottery money used to restore the Forest ground, and the drainage seems to have been sorted out. It used to be horribly muddy, even if it hadn’t rained, but it isn’t now.  I don’t know whether it’s new regulations or what, but everything is cleaner – the ground, the rides, the fair attendants, the games stalls – and especially the food stalls, which are actually reasonably tempting, which they most certainly weren’t, years ago. It all feels much calmer and safer, although I imagine Saturday night is still a bit hectic.

Some things have gone – the boxing booth, the man who guessed your age, the wall of death, mouse town, which was a bit rubbish, but the kids always liked it. I’m sure there was the odd freak show thirty five years ago, too.  But there are still the old fashioned riding horses and the cake walk, and the helter skelters and ghost rides, and hook a duck, where you always win something.

As I said, the food stalls are much more appetising than they used to be, and have gone somewhat up market. I don’t think I could ask for mushy peas and a cappuccino with a straight face. But they still do the fresh doughnuts, which float down the river of hot oil, flipped over with an automatic paddle and, unlike any other doughnut I have ever tasted, are delicious.

So the second Nottingham tradition was the Beer Festival. This is obviously a lot more recent.  This year it’s actually called the beer and cider festival. There are literally thousands of beers and hundreds of ciders.  I wasn’t tempted to go until I heard that there was cider too. I don’t really like beer, but I do like cider. Mind you, there are fruit beers, which I probably ought to try. Blackcurrant and cherry sound as though they should be nice, banana  and coconut not so much.  

It’s held in the castle grounds, which is a really lovely venue. The first year I went I discovered Old Rosy cider, which is reasonably widely sold now. But I began to get an almost overwhelming urge to lie down on the grass and go to sleep, and Phil had to take me home. Fortunately, it’s practically next door.

Last year, I realised that eating solidly throughout would be beneficial, and discovered  Granny’s Weapons Grade Ginger Beer, and roast pork sandwiches.

This year, with help from a friend, I discovered a  perry called Impeared Vision, and the restorative effect of a large fruit filled flapjack. I think it’s the sugar. 

Two more Shakepeares

We’ve just been to Stratford to see two less popular plays, Titus Andronicus and All’s Well That Ends Well. It was a lovely trip. First, Stratford has a lot of clothes shops aimed at women of a certain age, all within a shortish walk, and I always end up getting something. This time it was a dress which I’m very pleased with.

Then the weather was lovely, a really warm Indian summer, so we bought picnic food and ate it by the river. There was a slight problem with that -people feeding the geese and swans with white sliced bread. Most places ask you not to do so, pointing out that bread is bad for wildfowl, and it made me a bit edgy, but not enough to dare to actually spoil peoples’ fun. There should be signs explaining the problem, as there is almost everywhere else; but Stratford has so many geese and swans it’s possible that the council prefer a few to blow themselves up and die, rather than that they arouse the wrath of the animal rights people by culling them. Actually, having thought about it, perhaps they can’t cull the swans without the Queen’s permission.

The two plays seem to have gone through an unpopular patch, but actually modern sensibilities mean that they are more accessible now than they were at one time. Titus, in particular, with its extreme violence and revenges taken, fits rather well with the Tarantino school of movie making. There were some rather hysterical bursts of laughter from the audience when matters became excessively bloody. Titus himself responds to the deaths of his sons with laughter.  So I appreciated it more than I expected I would. The whole cast was excellent, and the wonderfully choreographed orgy of murders at the end was stunning. I’m not sure that I want to see it again – a lesser production would either be simply horrible or laughable, not manage the trick of being both.

One thing I did like, and it added to the slightly surreal feeling of the play, was that the Goths were dressed as modern Goths, with the same huge platform boots and black lipstick. I think I enjoyed it, if that’s quite the right word, better than my husband, who has a low tolerance for blood. But he’s recovered quickly – when we got back to Nottingham and ate out, he ordered pie! It might be a while before I fancy pie. 

   

All’s Well That Ends Well also seemed a bit unpromising, but again modern ideas about men who refuse to grow up, women making close alliances and being more mature and organised than men, all mean that the play is more understandable for modern audiences than it probably was, certainly in Victorian times. And the production managed to put in a few moments, hinting that Bertram actually fancied Helena but was frightened of commitment, which made him more sympathetic. I don't mind the ambiguous ending. I don't see that it's a fault. The ending of The Tempest is ambiguous and people never seem to mind that. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it – the men were terrific . I was a bit unsure about Helena, but it isn’t a part with a lot of scope. The other women were great. Again the choreography was wonderful. It’s finished now, otherwise I would urge you to go at once.

So now we’re down to four definite Shakespeares (Cymbeline, Pericles, Henry VIII, and Love’s Labours Lost). I know Cardenio and Two Noble Kinsmen have been relatively recently decided to be at least partly by Shakespeare, but if we can manage the four definites we will be happy.