From Poppies to Paddington

I decided that I was long overdue for a blog post (I’ve even stopped coming up with excuses) so decided to focus on autumnal tales... starting with the ceramic poppies that filled the moat the Tower of London, an art installation entitled “The Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red Where Angels Dare to Tread”. With 888,246 poppies created to honor the same number of British soldiers (including those from the colonies) that died in WWI. The installation was created for the 100th anniversary of the start of the war (although the last poppies were installed on Armistice Day... never quite explained), but grew into an amazingly popular installation piece to commemorate all wars. I had an excuse to visit in early November, when I went to London for a Middlebury gathering. I arrived in the late afternoon, along with thousands of others (what I didn’t know was that there was a celebration at sundown). I managed to work my way around part of the moat for some views before escaping via the Tube before the crush of the hordes. But it was a truly amazing site, as the daylight faded and the lights around the Tower emerged from the fading light.
And light is the key word for this time of year, as the days so rapidly shorten. I notice it particularly on sailing Saturdays, first as the stunningly beautiful low angle light on the sails and the water (most typically when the sun finally sinks beneath the persistent cloud ceiling to illuminate the harbor against the dark backdrop), and then the fading light and growing chill as we haul out and de-rig the boats - before 4pm!  No photos I’m afraid, but I do have photos of Pumice which, I’ll confess, is a sailboat - a GP14, to be exact - that I share with two others. Which cost me all of £33! Boats get handed along in the club, and I couldn’t resist. My co-owners are Adrian, a documentary film maker who started sailing with the club this summer, and his friend Dan, a musician. For all of you prospective visitors, Pumice [the boat that floats - Adrian suggested the name, not me!] is much more guest friendly than Aeolus, being larger and more comfortable. I’ve also discovered that co-owning a boat means that I have someone to sail with, and that little things are taken care of when I’m not there. What a deal! I still crew for Ben on Saturdays, but it’s fun to have a friendly cruising boat...

Light was also the theme of today, when Alison, Mark and I went to Stonehenge. The motivation was a decision to go to an opening at the Rabley Gallery, where my artist friend Emma often shows her work. The exhibit included one of Emma’s paintings - a spectacular monochrome night iceberg scene - but also lots of other prints. I’m taking another printmaking class, so now I pay particular attention to the type of print, and the way it was made. But since we were in Wiltshire, we decided that we’d spend the rest of the afternoon at Stonehenge, as Alison had never been there, Mark hadn’t been there for a long time, and I was interested to see the new visitor center, which opened this year. It is very nicely done - removed by about 2 km from Stonehenge itself, and designed to evoke both Stonehenge and the older Woodhenge that has been discovered at the site... the curved roof and the pole motif actually work well, and the building and associated parking areas are nestled in a low point in the landscape, out of sight of the monument.

There are buses from the center to Stonehenge, or two different walking routes. One goes along the road, one takes off across the fields and traces the path of the “cursus” and quasi-linear row of round barrows. The cursus was named by 18th century archaeologists who found the long (2.7 km x 100 m) straight “runway” and decided that it must be similar to the Roman racetracks. It is defined by low trenches and raised berms that are fairly subtle now except when seen from the air... no one knows what it was actually for, although it is assumed to be ceremonial, particularly as it is aligned E-W toward the sunrise on the equinox. The ditch and berm construction appear similar to that of the “avenue” that leads to Stonehenge from the north.

It was a gray and chilly afternoon - we had the Cursus route to ourselves - and time to ponder. The Cursus was constructed in the early Neolithic (pre-Stonehenge); the round barrows that parallel the Cursus to the south are, in contrast, early Bronze Age (that is, post-Stonehenge) burial sites. And in between lies Stonehenge... still rather a mystery. But at this time of year it made sense to me. It lies on a local high, but is surrounded by slightly higher rolling hills (many of which are rimmed with barrows). Stonehenge is, of course, famous for its solar alignments (and nouveau druid cult that assembles on the solstices). But today I could see the attraction of the site during the winter season. The large bowl of rolling grassland occupied by this site is meant for low angle light. And just as the sun often emerges beneath the clouds to illuminate the harbor, today the sun appeared in the 30 minutes before sunset to highlight the henge itself. From our limited vantage point (part of the track around the site was closed because of mud... but that had the advantage that it was easier to take people-free photos!!), the sinking sun highlighted not only the arc of clouds over our heads, but also the east-facing stones of the monument. And this place as recorder of the seasons made sense.

On the drive home we discussed the layers of history. The Stonehenge site and environs have been occupied for at least 10,000 years. Construction lasted for at least 1000 years... which puts things in perspective! Just think where the western world was 1000 years ago. Or even 100 years ago (the poppies)... or 50+ years ago (1958, to be exact), when the first Paddington Bear book was published. Now I acknowledge that to be a rather forced segue but oh well. Because Paddington Bear has also been a theme of the fall... not because of a significant anniversary but instead because of a movie release date (27 Nov in deepest darkest Peru; 28 Nov in the UK... and for all you Americans, I’m afraid that you have to wait until Jan 16). BUT in the lead-up to the film, there’s a “Paddington Trail” in London that is similar to the Gromit trail in Bristol in 2013. It starts, quite naturally, at Paddington Station. I was in Paddington Station on Friday, en route to give a seminar at University College London (the big university in the center of London). I took an early-ish train from Bristol and had some extra time when I reached London in the morning. 

So I picked up a Paddington Trail pamphlet and pulled out my iPhone and explore the Paddington Basin (behind the train station) with Paddington as a guide. Which was actually delightful. For those of you who have been to Paddington Station, you would never guess that right behind the station is a series of canals that occupy a hidden section of London known as Little Venice. Well, that may be a stretch, but when strolling along the canals I would never have guessed that I was within a few minutes walk  of a major train station.

And it turns out that literature was the subtext of the day. I mentioned the Paddington tour to my UCL host Chris Kilburn, who then took the literary (well, loosely) theme to heart. SO - the first stop on the tour will only resonate with those of you who are into modern TV culture (specifically, those of you who are PBS Mystery afficionados). Right across the street from UCL is the filming location of the new (Benedict Cumberbatch) adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, the series “Sherlock”. As you will see, the apartment (“flat”) designated in the TV show as 221B Baker Street is now for rent (“to let”) - anyone interested? The second literary note of the trip was a view of the University of London (UCL) Senate House, an imposing (read domineering) building that was used by the Ministry of Information during both World Wars and apparently was the inspiration for George Orwell’s Big Brother in his novel 1984. Which leads back, in a strange way, to Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Alan Turing (of the WWII Enigma code breaker) in the newly released movie The Imagination Game (which I saw last night - well worth seeing).

Hmmm ... so this has been an exceptionally rambling blog and now I am trying to figure out how to tie it together. But I guess the overarching theme is WWI and WWII, which we really only grazed in the US but which still permeate the culture of Europe... and explain the very piecemeal architecture of Bristol. Another blog in concept!