pumpkinstrokemarrow

Must be getting pious as we paid two visits to Ely cathedral in the course of two days - perhaps encouraged by having acquired annual passes - which one gets for the price of a single ticket plus the bother of filling out a gift aid form. Seems quite a reasonable system: the one time tourists pay rather a lot but locals or regulars pay rather less (per visit). In any event, first visit in the afternoon, which being in the winter meant it was fairly dark. All most impressive though. Back in the morning for a second helping when it was much lighter, and saw it all in a differant light, as it were. This included finding a number of the green men (which I had never heard of before) secreted away in the detail of the carving. All very pagan it seems and not all the trusties are very pleased about their being there. I think they are a bit of up-market graffitti by the stone masons who, having been more or less chained to the place for life, wanted to get one over the clerk of works or the foreman or whatever. Then the Prior's door which contained the only bit of (legitimate) animal or people carving that I saw. Animals of all sorts, including the odd dragon, although all a bit worn and weathered. Then the stained glass museum, up at the triforium level, from which one got a differant take on the upper stone and paint work. Museum itself most instructive. I learnt, for example, that the heyday of stained glass in England was during the 19th century gothic revival (Prots and Puritans not so keen before then - all thought to be a bit Romish at best and pagan at worst) and that there is a fair bit of secular stained glass. That the Scots were more open to continental fashions in these matters than we were: we more or less stuck to replicas of what had gone before. Presumably part of the point in the olden days was that stained glass was durable, a lot more durable than painting.

Ely, like other old towns, is very into its heritage, part of which we learn is eels. I had never made the connection. However, it is now cemented in as we had eels for dinner at the Lamb hotel. Strips of smoked eel, the shape of long thin crab sticks, served with salad as a starter. Tasted like a mild smoked mackeral but with a rather differant texture. A bit cleaner and more chewy. The hotel - which was fairly old - also boasted an interesting steel contraption holding up the main staircase, a very high temperature and what appeared to be a lady staff. Very friendly they were too, up to an including quite a decent pint of (Greene King) IPA. I also know a lot more about how credit card transactions in hotels work - in particular, why exactly they like to see your card three times. Town as a whole very well pubbed - although most of them were pretty quiet. There was also a baker - a proper baker but with an older staff which made one suspect the baker would die with them - so we were OK for picnics for a couple of days. Corned beef mashed up with chopped tomato (a trick we learned from an older East End couple in Wood Green 35 years ago) rules.

Quite a good number of charity shops as well, in one of which I acquired a novel about modern China - say the eighties - published in translation by the University of Louisiana. If the book is fair, it seems that rural China has not changed as much as one might think since the arrival of the reds. They still have long running feuds between rival families and old men in the hills still take their goat's milk straight from the goat. A practise which seems strangely foreign and savage. They also seem quite keen on alcohol and tobacco.

Which reminds me that Nanny Harman - having been caught with her hand in the till, drunk in charge of an umbrella or whatever - ought to be punished. I thought that being made to sit in the stocks outside TB while she consumed two entire packets of Gaulloise (full strength) would be appropriate. She would be allowed to whack back some Stella if that helped her get the Gaulloises down.