Dr Who & Surbiton

So I learned from our superb community newspaper (The Good Life) that Dr Who was/is/will be wearing a top purchased at a shop right here in Maple Road, Surbiton.  Apparently, there are also quite a few potholes in Rectory Close.  And someone snapped a photograph (no face of course) of the sticker vigilante: a person who has been removing illegally placed signs and notices from pillar boxes and lampposts in town centre. I really do love The Good Life.

Photo Credit

Jodie Whittaker: Instagram

My Beloved, Standing Stones, & Real Ale

Last weekend was a trifecta in Avebury. First and foremost is that I got to spend time relaxing with my beloved. Not something that we have had the luxury of doing much of in the last ten years.

Added to that is the bonus of standing stones!  Avebury is unusual because it is a village in the midst of a stone circle, well three stone circles, really.  It is a very large circle that contains two smaller ones.  There is not much left of the smaller circles, but there is a fair number of stones from the larger one still standing. And the henge is just stunning.

Nearby there is the largest prehistoric structure in Europe, Sidbury Hill, and a little further on, West Kennet Long Barrow.  The remains were removed some time ago and it has been left open for us to go in. I am not pleased that the burial site was desecrated. But I could not resist stepping inside a structure built 5500 years ago. I beg the forgiveness of the ancestors of that land for my trespass. I tread with as much respect and reverence as I could muster, fully aware of the hypocrisy of this statement in face of my treading at all.  I cannot imagine I will ever get to see the inside of something so old again. I am picturing the people who occasionally returned to the tomb over the centuries of its operation whether to add more dead, or to honour them, or to assign them a duty, or some other reason we cannot fathom.

And if that wasn't enough, I got to try two (new to me) Wiltshire ales: Avebury Well Water and Wadworth Amber.

Photo Credit

Me and a stone: My beloved
Avebury by air: English Heritage
Barrow interior: Wikimedia

American Moor by Keith Hamilton Cobb

My beloved took me to see American Moor Sunday at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.  It was such a powerful piece of theatre. My normal readership will have to indulge me, as it is unlikely that either of you have seen it yet. I want to write about it, but I can't explain it. This is really one of those you-had-to-be-there things. So instead of trying to describe it, I am going to pretend  I'm writing to Keith Hamilton Cobb.

I hope that moment, when you were shouting to us, 'Do you see me? ... Do you see me?' never fades from my memory. It was all I could do to not tell you that I did. I did see you, and your beautiful, ugly, ever-changing, self-contradictory humanity, on display before us. Your writing and performance really seized me. I almost forgot it I was in a theatre. It was like I had a glimpse of your soul, and what our culture has done to it.

As soon as it was over, my first thought was: everyone needs to see this play. Only seconds passed before my thought was proven so utterly wrong, as I overheard a pensioner woman nearby explaining to someone else that maybe the director did not hire him because he was not a good actor. Wow, really? That is what you took away from watching incredibly vulnerable and remarkably nuanced inner thoughts about what it is like to experience racial prejudice? Really? Now, I understand why Reni Eddo-Lodge is no longer speaking to me about race.

And then, there was the 'question and answer' after the performance. I loved how you dangled the conversation around the edges of racial rabbit holes. It was just so great to hear honest and thoughtful conversation that approaches these issues in a communal space that actually hints at the depth of what we never talk about in the open. Just the possibility that we might one day go down one of those rabbit holes together is just... well, it is evolution, revolution, and epiphany all rolled up into one.

In the Q&A, I also learned that there is a version of the play where the director is a disembodied voice. That sounds like a real inside-your-head experience. I am not one to go to shows again but if I can see American Moor again with a disembodied director, I will be there. Profound stuff.

Photo Credits

Poster: American Moor

Northern Ireland

Work sent me to Belfast, so I convinced my wife to come over and turn it into a mini break. I got to try potato bread and soda farl, which were delicious. Then we hired a car and drove to Giant's Causeway. According to Samuel Johnson: Worth seeing? Yes, but not worth going to see. We took the coastal route back and the countryside was so beautiful that it made our eyes tired. It reminds me of Yorkshire. Carrickfergus was closed when we got to it. We stayed in the Queens Quarter and there were loads of really friendly people.

Photo Credits:
Landlopers
Wikipedia

Armageddon is here

So when we first moved in, I misidentified a pair of carrion crows that frequently visit the back garden as ravens. Apparently ravens are much bigger. Anyway, in my ignorance, I named them Armageddon and Apocalypse. I realise that it may not be the same two crows I'm seeing. But I have never seen more than two at a time, so I am going with that they are the same pair, for now. Anyway, I tried renaming them Perdition and Purgatory, but the names are just not sticking. Ah well. So this morning, I opened my curtains... it was Armageddon out there... in the back garden.

Photo Credit
Me (surprisingly enough, in early spring)

London planetree

Our road is lined with London planetrees. The wide trunks form two rows of columns along the roadside, adding a certain gravity to the neighbourhood. They were pollarded earlier in the year. The leaves are now just starting to come in. The little grouping of green at the tip of each branch reminds me of children's drawings of trees.

Photo Credit:
Pollarded London planetree: Me
The Children's Tree: YouTube animation

Recent Resumption of the Mundane

With both of us in permanent posts for over a year now, we have the psychological and financial capacity to do mundane things on the weekend.

Back in April we went to Whipsnade Zoo & Wildlife Conservation Park in Bedfordshire. Not sure what the animals to the left are, maybe wallabies? But they were looking pretty chill. In the giraffe house, there was an upper level you could go on to see them at eye level (below left).

In early May we visited Kew Botanical Gardens in Richmond. There's my beloved and I (below) on the Treetop Walkway with the newly reopened Temperate House behind us. The other picture is in the Bluebell Wood.

Last weekend, we went to Monkey World Ape & Monkey Sanctuary in Dorset. The woolly monkey (below) was part of a small family group that was foraging near the edge of the enclosure. The chimp (below) had climbed to the top of a telegraph pole to investigate his food puzzle box away from the others. Apparently, if a tree is included in the enclosure, they will uproot it, and lay it on the barrier, and climb out.

Photo Credits
My beloved

Winchester Cathedral

I spent the Three Hours Devotion this year in Winchester Cathedral. I did not find what I was looking for there. What I did find was stunning cathedral architecture, a sublime choir, and cerebral speeches steeped in deep theological deliberation.

A-cappella call-and-response of the sung liturgy wafted from everywhere and nowhere. A third of the way through, I was certain that the singing was getting ever so slightly louder and louder, until the processing, well-rehearsed choir materialised just to my left in the northern aisle, as their approach was obscured by the row of columns separating the aisle from the nave. A nearby 12th-century Tournai font drew my eyes to the light within shadow of a three-dimensional black marble relief of St Nicholas and the three daughters. Words of a deftly constructed sermons floated in the air under the weight of the ribbed vaulted ceiling.

It was all very beautiful. But I was looking for something else. This is not going to come out exactly right because I am trying to express something that I am finding difficult to convert into the concreteness of words on a page. Society already bombards me with stories of exceptionalism, of victory snatched from the clutches of defeat. It is every superhero movie: weakling becomes hero. It is every underdog game: unlikely victor. It is every recovery story: disability overcome. That happens... and it's great when it does. What about when it doesn't? ...when the recovery does not come, when the big game is not won, when the weakling is not transformed... The injured, the defeated, and the frail are all still human... and we must go on. It is not as compelling a story, but it is the common story of billions of us whose lives trajectories stray from the ubiquitous success narrative.

Looking past suffering and imposing a tyranny of glory, meaning, and victory onto it adds more cruelty to already awful situations. I have eyes, and what they see is that suffering is usually just horrible. If I try to imagine myself standing with the followers of an itinerant holy man watching our leader gruesomely tortured and executed, in that moment, I am not contemplating some upcoming resurrection, glory, or hope. There is just despair, misery, and defeat. That is it. Such moments are overwhelming to witness. Sure, now, thousands of years later, we have the ease and luxury of connecting this day with the Resurrection. But that was not the view from that day: that day was just horrible.

I am not rejecting the victory of the Resurrection. I just feeling like I am already exposed that narrative everyday, relentlessly. Good Friday is the one break from it that I desperately need. What I am hoping to find on this one day is to allow those who need it, a space to just sit in the presence of suffering without a promise of its end. Somewhere within that abyss of being a hapless witness to suffering is a link to the compassion that defines our humanity.

Photo Credits

Tornai Font: Londinoupolis

Women at the Cross: History.com

Winchester Cathedral Nave: val's road

American Burger Sauce

So… burger sauce.... I’ve been in England a while, so maybe burger sauce is a recent phenomenon in the United States. And the US is a big place, so maybe there is some region I’ve never been to (or I have not been in long enough to) discover the ‘burger sauce’. Or maybe it was right under my nose the whole time, and I just never saw it. My nose is afterall quite sizeable, and my visual scanning skills are infamous. But in all my years in the US, I neither encountered nor heard of this alleged American delight. But, for the discerning American tourist who simply cannot do without burger sauce like mom used to make: fear not! It is easily found, not in the gourmet burger bars nor in the American franchises, but in nearly every family owned burger shop. And I cannot help but guffaw inside every time I see it. But here’s the funny thing… I tried it a few years back, and now I crave it because… get this… it reminds me of home!


Photo Credits

Heinz: OpenFoodFacts.org

Hammonds: ThomasRidley.co.uk

Back to the future

So we have moved yet again. You might ask why. Well, the place we were living, while in pictures and politeness of blogging seems quite nice, it was an environment that was draining us. Almost immediately after moving into our Surbiton flat, there was a weight lifted. The name Surbiton may seem familiar. We lived here before, just down the road in fact.

What a strange sensation moving into an area that we actually know something about. The bonus of recent experiences of moving from Horsforth to Morley and from Dartford to Surbiton is that we may have finally figured out important flat features to consider that were previously not obvious to us: a high street that is accessible on foot and a view of some green/landscape.

Photo Credits

Christmas tree: My beloved

All the rest: Letting agent

Hamilton

My beloved scored tickets to Hamilton about a year ago and on Friday, she took me to the show. It was amazing for so many reasons. It refuses to bow to the cult of celebrity so the singing and dancing are not compromised one iota. It relies primarily on the lyrics to tell the story, so any props or tech are there only as enhancements, never overshadowing the lyrics. But best of all is its unapologetic mix of virtues and faults that combine with good fortune and bad in complex and nuanced ways that lead us all to the best and worst versions of ourselves, following one right after the other, with intensity and levity, with an intellectual and emotional integrity that can only be captured inside brilliant artistry or within the fabric of our real lives. It was just amazing.

Photo Credits

My Beloved

Iceberg Lettuce

The displays in the grocers seem to suggest it is lowly. I typically use iceberg lettuce as the primary ingredient in my lunches. I usually just slice into the head, but today for some reason, I decided to peel. instead  I had never really noticed before how the leaves are all wrapped up in each other. It is rather amazing how the layers of leaves are so tightly folded from one side, then the other. There is barely any room. It is rather amazing and beautiful: not really lowly at all. What other treasures are hidden from view by my notion if its value.

Photo Credit: quickcrop.ie