Wednesday, August 01, 2012
An even closer run thing
Having slept on it, thought we ought to continue to monitor the preparation for the Olympics at Hampton Court Palace, which turned out to be a good deal busier on Monday than it had been on the preceding Saturday. Now I have occasionally been to the same production of the same play twice. Occasionally been to the same special exhibition twice. Occasionally read the same book twice in one year. Been around the inside of Osborne House maybe five times - but this last at intervals of a year or more. So this is the first time I have been around a bit of heritage twice in three days. Next year, maybe go for the hat trick: three visits in three days? Could I wangle a free pass from the trustees if I promise to dress up and do a song & dance?
A good second visit; slightly surprised that the place stood up so well to a second visit so soon after the first, with one's attention sometimes straying from the labels (with their rather childish & irritating faux-old presentation) to the artefacts. Poked a few trustees, the first of whom knew all about mantuas but not about why everyone was dying of smallpox rather than tuberculosis. It turns out that mantuas were nothing to do with Mantua, rather a Stuart court fashion in dress, imported from France, which sometimes involved hoops, known as panniers, sticking out at the side. Whereas I had thought that pannier dresses were called just that and were a fashion of the Tudor rather than the Stuart court. It also turns out that the French name for the things (according to Wikipedia anyway) is manteuil, one of those rare words unknown to Mr. Google. Also unknown to all three of my French dictionaries, although the OED comes quite close with the obsolete manteil. So plausible, with plenty of manty words in the right general area, but maybe Wikipedia errs for once.
Not impressed by the various tier three luvvies dressed up in 17th century togs trying to impersonate personages of the period and be educational at the same time. They had loud voices and were very full of themselves (a bit like presenters on heritage programmes on television) and their humour & scripts palled very rapidly. Would have been much better to let us look at the artefacts in peace. One likes to think that the Palace is a cut above Chessington World of Adventures.
But very impressed by the chapel ceiling on the second visit. Something to lose oneself in while the priest whacked out the sermon. Or hopefully mumbled so as not to distract the younger members of the congregation from the important business of exchanging charged & significant glances with members of the opposite sex. An important bonding opportunity, or at least that is what the goings on in churches in costume & detective dramas would lead one to believe. We have also learned, after visiting the outside of the Palace for twenty years or more, that the roof which we had taken to be the roof of the chapel was actually the roof of the great hall - observing in our defence that great halls and the naves of chapels & churches were, after all, built in much the same way, so it is not surprising that they look very much the same. Its just that there are not that many great halls surviving so one forgets.
Tilt Yard restaurant shut, perhaps because it had been given over to the olympians, with the catering contractor trying manfully to deliver sausage rolls and other snacks from trestles outside the east front. They clearly needed a bit more practise because the serving girl was taking ages to pop a sausage into a bread roll, despite the sausages being spread out in front of her and the rolls being precut for the purpose. My sausage was good but the roll was entirely ordinary, if bulky, being made of the same sort of stuff as is used by the hot dog barrow boys on the south bank. But very pleasant to snack out in the gardens in the sun.
BH very tickled to have to enter and exit through the fancy wrought iron gates between the privy garden and the river, the ones which have been partially painted in gold and which look a bit odd. This also gave us sight of some men from the XXX battalion of the YYY regiment guarding the railings between the river and the main entrance into the Palace. Stolidly standing at 20 yard intervals, three feet back from the railings. They were neither armed nor in ceremonial dress and it was not at all clear whom they thought might attempt ingress by this particular route.
PS: rather put out this morning to find that the entire front page of the Guardian has been given over to a swimmer, a jock to use a bit of transpondan lingo. To think that the Guardian used to be the thinking persons' paper from Manchester; persons who rose above such crudely pectoral competitions.
A good second visit; slightly surprised that the place stood up so well to a second visit so soon after the first, with one's attention sometimes straying from the labels (with their rather childish & irritating faux-old presentation) to the artefacts. Poked a few trustees, the first of whom knew all about mantuas but not about why everyone was dying of smallpox rather than tuberculosis. It turns out that mantuas were nothing to do with Mantua, rather a Stuart court fashion in dress, imported from France, which sometimes involved hoops, known as panniers, sticking out at the side. Whereas I had thought that pannier dresses were called just that and were a fashion of the Tudor rather than the Stuart court. It also turns out that the French name for the things (according to Wikipedia anyway) is manteuil, one of those rare words unknown to Mr. Google. Also unknown to all three of my French dictionaries, although the OED comes quite close with the obsolete manteil. So plausible, with plenty of manty words in the right general area, but maybe Wikipedia errs for once.
Not impressed by the various tier three luvvies dressed up in 17th century togs trying to impersonate personages of the period and be educational at the same time. They had loud voices and were very full of themselves (a bit like presenters on heritage programmes on television) and their humour & scripts palled very rapidly. Would have been much better to let us look at the artefacts in peace. One likes to think that the Palace is a cut above Chessington World of Adventures.
But very impressed by the chapel ceiling on the second visit. Something to lose oneself in while the priest whacked out the sermon. Or hopefully mumbled so as not to distract the younger members of the congregation from the important business of exchanging charged & significant glances with members of the opposite sex. An important bonding opportunity, or at least that is what the goings on in churches in costume & detective dramas would lead one to believe. We have also learned, after visiting the outside of the Palace for twenty years or more, that the roof which we had taken to be the roof of the chapel was actually the roof of the great hall - observing in our defence that great halls and the naves of chapels & churches were, after all, built in much the same way, so it is not surprising that they look very much the same. Its just that there are not that many great halls surviving so one forgets.
Tilt Yard restaurant shut, perhaps because it had been given over to the olympians, with the catering contractor trying manfully to deliver sausage rolls and other snacks from trestles outside the east front. They clearly needed a bit more practise because the serving girl was taking ages to pop a sausage into a bread roll, despite the sausages being spread out in front of her and the rolls being precut for the purpose. My sausage was good but the roll was entirely ordinary, if bulky, being made of the same sort of stuff as is used by the hot dog barrow boys on the south bank. But very pleasant to snack out in the gardens in the sun.
BH very tickled to have to enter and exit through the fancy wrought iron gates between the privy garden and the river, the ones which have been partially painted in gold and which look a bit odd. This also gave us sight of some men from the XXX battalion of the YYY regiment guarding the railings between the river and the main entrance into the Palace. Stolidly standing at 20 yard intervals, three feet back from the railings. They were neither armed nor in ceremonial dress and it was not at all clear whom they thought might attempt ingress by this particular route.
PS: rather put out this morning to find that the entire front page of the Guardian has been given over to a swimmer, a jock to use a bit of transpondan lingo. To think that the Guardian used to be the thinking persons' paper from Manchester; persons who rose above such crudely pectoral competitions.
# posted by Jim @ 4:16 AM 
