Royal Mile to Scottish Parliament to Arthur's Seat

Phone box by Lauren: Harry Potter birthplace by Sydney:

Edinburgh Old Town by Roxanne:

Buskers by Roxanne:

Chocolate Soup, Christine, Kirstina, Matt, by Sydney:

Christian on Calton Hill:

Hopkins quote, photo by Jon:

Arthur Seat, by Jon:

Photo by Christian:

Art Photo of the Week by Marshall:

Christian!

Arthur's Seat by Chris B:

Bentley by Jon:

The statue of David Hume is next to St. Giles Cathedral, which seems ironic to me (probably because I don't understand Hume):Scottish dairy farmers were staging an extremely low-key protest of the unsustainably low price of milk in front of the architecturally interesting Scottish Parliament. As I was chatting with a demonstrator, one of the pretty little heifers peed on the ground, spattering slightly, as such liquids do. I bet there are not many people who have been peed on by a cow at the Scottish Parliament! Everyone climbed Arthur's Seat but the van driver (me). Fearless leader, by Chris B, Photo of the Day :

Winchester Cathedral

We stopped at Winchester to visit the cathedral. It was the day before Easter, and the parish ladies were busy arranging the flowers. John talked with two deaf and gravel-voiced old English gentlewomen who bring a new arrangement to the tomb of Jane Austen every fortnight. They decried the current batch of Austen movies. "They kissed like this--'mmmmumph!'" said one. "Nobody kissed like that in Jane Austen's time! 'Mmmmmumph! Mmmmmumph!' Ridiculous! Why my mother didn't know until her wedding night that babies didn't spring from the navel!" "It's a wonder you were born at all!" cried the other. (1997)

The Austen monument: On the roof:The Gormley statue in the crypt:

The most dramatic moment in the cathedral tour was the turn into the north transept from the gothic style to the Romanesque. Heavy round pillars and arches mount higher and higher, up as far as the perpendicular walls (but of course they didn’t hold up, but tumbled down and were redone in the Gothic mode). God is there, in those arches. God was intended to be there, if he is not now. (2003)

11th C St. Nicholas baptismal font:

Cathedral nave:

There was a fair and Morris dancing competition after our tour of the cathedral (2007):

Chance Encounters

In Oxford I met a woman and her little boy at the youth hostel. He was excitable and talkative; she had the tentative and on-the-edge look of a wild deer in a public park. They spoke Hebrew - she said she supposed we were Christians - her son said he is interested in guns, bombs and "especially war, because I live in Israel and will probably be killed."

"Where are you headed?" I asked, making conversation.

She looked away. "I will ask God where we should go next," she whispered.

"Boom! Rat-tat-tat-tat!" said her son. (2007)


In the launderette at Warwick I met a little, tough-looking woman from the South Island of New Zealand who was here on a sort of memorial pilgrimage for her husband, who died last year. "We promised each other that whoever was left would go back to England. As he was dying he told me to visit the museums and the cathedrals." She had iron-gray hair, coke-bottle bottom glasses, and buck teeth. "Traveling alone is very difficult," she said, in response to my question. "I miss him terribly. But I missed him terribly and it was very difficult at home as well, so I decided to come anyway."

I saw her again at Stratford, but she was shy of me--maybe she thought she had shared too much. (2007)


In Oxford I sat on a bench on Broad Street next to a man who was drawing the buildings across the road. He nodded and smiled but didn't speak until a delivery van pulled up in front of us. "Oh, no," he said. "Well, it'll be gone soon. This is a no parking zone." (And it was). The man said he was retired from teaching art at one of the colleges and now did whatever he liked. "My wife's still working, so she supports me," he said, and laughed.

I said, "It doesn't much look like you've retired if you're still drawing."

"It's not work if you choose it," he said. John came over and sat by me, and told him about our travels with the students.

"I've taken groups of students to London just for the day," the artist said. "What you're doing, that's work." (2007)