A Day Out: September '08
I'm back in
the UK. I am supposed to be selling
a couple of flats in
the Goldhawk Rd. The sale has been going on and on for ages. I have a
problem getting tenants out of the place. The story is a saga of
disaster upon disaster. I have never had such an awful experience in
the world of real estate. Maybe I will write it up some day, but not
just yet, the bruises are still sore.
The day after the deal was
finally settled I decided to have the day
off: a trip into the country, a nice meal, maybe a cream tea. I wanted
to do the kind of thing that is so quintessentially English and cant be
done in Portugal.
For a change it was a lovely
sunny day, warm and bright. We drove off
into Buckinghamshire. There are some intriguing restaurants out in the
sticks, nestling alongside narrow roads amongst the hedgerows between
Amersham and Hemmel Hempstead.
At Chenies there are two pubs
within walking distance of each other
that serve rather nice food. Then there are the coffee mornings at the
church further down the road, where you sit in the churchyard, nibbling
home-made cakes. It was a bit windy so we brought our table and chairs
into the church and had elevenses at the end of the nave.
Further into the valleys and
hedgerows of ancient England is a pub on a
crossroad with a long menu of fascinating country dishes. A pint of
real ale, a country pie, blackberries cascading over the hedge almost
up to our table; it's a nice way to spend a leisurely day. And the big
plus is that it is a dead zone for mobile phones.
We drove up to the top of a
hill and looked over the fields, across to
stands of beech trees crowning the top of the next hill, then plunged
down between high hedges, and over a tiny stream laced with bunches of
cress.
I decided to make for
Dorchester on Thames. We drove slowly through
miles of country lanes, down to Marlow, and then across to that rather
quaint little village of Hambleden where we stopped to watch the
cricket. Then across country, heading for the edge of the Chilterns,
where the land suddenly drops away and you can see right across
Oxfordshire towards Birmingham.
Dorchester is a very old
settlement, reaching back to the iron age, and
probably earlier. The first church here dates back to 635. The current
abbey building dates back to the twelfth century.
For those of you who are
interested in such things: King Cynegils and
King Oswald granted Birinus some land in Dorchester to build a
cathedral church whose sphere of influence extended from the south
coast as far north as modern-day Bedford and Towcester. This small
cathedral was built of wood, most likely on the site of the existing
Abbey, and Birinus was buried there in 650. But then came the threat of
war between Wessex and Mercia, so the Bishop's seat and St Birinus'
relics were moved south to the relative safety of Winchester. The
diocese was divided into two circa 680, with Mercia gaining control of
the northern part and transferring the bishopric to Lindsey and
Leicester. This lasted until the Danish raids of the 870s: Lindsey was
abandoned and Leicester was unsafe, and the bishopric was transferred
back to Dorchester. Thus, at that time, the diocese of Dorchester,
under the Saxon Bishop Wulfwig, extended from the Thames to the Humber.
However, Dorchester did not have any secular importance, and Oxford and
Wallingford became the two main administrative and military centres of
the region.
The real reason I go there is
for the feel of the place and the
afternoon teas. Inside are two tables laden with amazing cakes. When I
first went I recall the tea was advertised as "One cup 15p, second cup
10p, third cup 5p". There are flapjacks, carrot cake, coffee cake,
scones, jam, cream; all home-made by an army of volunteers.
Julie sat on the bench
outside facing an old fashioned rose. I followed
the sound of music into the abbey.
There at the top end of the
church was an orchestra playing Strauss. I
walked down to the front, sat in a pew and listened. It was all very
informal. The conductor was wearing shorts. It turned out to be a
rehearsal for a concert to be held that evening.
To one side was the soprano,
Sally Matthews, singing one of the Four
Last Songs; a wonderful work with intriguing sonorities.
There was a scattering of
interested tourists standing along the aisle,
looking at the bronzes, and sitting in the pews. Suddenly the music
stopped. The conductor directed them back a few pages, and they started
again.
Somehow the serendipity of it
all, the way the music was chopped up as
only certain bits were rehearsed, and the setting in the ancient abbey,
all conspired to make the next three quarters of an hour a fascinating
listen. It would obviously be wonderful to listen to the whole concert
straight through, but eavesdropping on the rehearsal somehow gave the
rest of us an inside view of the music. We could get more involved in
the structure of the piece, and for me was a more interesting
experience than it would have been attending the concert that evening.
And the big bonus was that it was all free. How nice!
When they came to the Brahms
Requiem I walked back out to the late
summer sunshine, joined Julie, and we went in for afternoon tea.
Afterwards a walk through the
gardens, and a short wander down to the
river Thames, a ramble in the water meadows, and then a slow winding
drive back home. A really nice way to spend a late summer sunday. And
everything except the lunch was pure serendipity.
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