City of the Dead

“CHANGE, whose insistent tendrils seek out the edifices we have so carefully wrought and return them once again to dust”

John Kabat-Zinn, 'Full Catastrophe Living'

Glorious weather today, perfect for a lazy pub lunch at The Wellington Arms in Hampshire, and then a long country walk. My companion suggested heading out toward the Roman ruins at Silchester, which I agreed to with no particular anticipation that it would be interesting - after all I've seen much more complete ruins at Fishbourne or indeed in Rome.

Which just goes to show that part of the delight of this little August project is doing things I never would otherwise have done. Silchester is astonishing. It was a major Roman city - on the road between London and Bath it was a market town, an army post, a centre of law and worship for the region. But unlike any other city in Britain it was totally abandoned - the perfectly usable buildings were left to crumble, the wells were stopped up. And no one knows why.

Here's an artist's impression of what Silchester would have looked like in its heyday:

Bustling little market town, right? Here's what it looks like today:

And if you're going "yeah, fine, but what *does* survive now from Roman days? Not much!" the point isn't that the original wooden buildings aren't around anymore, but that there's *nothing* there. Contrast other similar-sized Roman towns: Bath, St Albans, Norwich, Chichester, Winchester... The Romans left and then succeeding generations very sensibly moved in and used their buildings, and built their own, and the towns developed and grew. That just hasn't happened here. This town was shunned. It makes my writerly spider's sense tingle. What *happened* here?

The walls are still standing, and in some places look pretty defensive.

Most impressive of all, just outside the city walls is a fairly intact amphitheatre. It would seat 7,000 people, the entrance and exit are still there. I tried a bit of declaiming from the centre, and the acoustics are still good. But... no one used it! Why would you abandon a beautiful space like this? You'd have thought someone would use it for something...

I couldn't even get a picture which showed how wonderful this space is. I felt very inspired to try to put a play on here sometime. I wonder if the archaeologists working on the site would support something like that.

Academic writings about Calleva become sweetly emotional when talking about the abandonment. It's a genuine mystery - something I love. The Guardian suggests the town was cursed.  The BBC website  about Silchester - or Calleva Atrebatum - says that the "abandonment of the town may have been the result of deliberate policy to cleanse it of its occupants". The archaeologists from Reading University who are working there now mull on the meaning of "the deliberate infilling of wells".

It's an impressive and moving place to visit. And the mystery makes it all the more fascinating.

A touch of trespass

Today started with a failure.

I have never been into Hendon Town Hall, even though it is not 20 feet from Hendon Library (about which I've previously written) which I've had a library card for since I was two years old. And, going by the admittedly sparse information here, I imagined it would be open today between 9am and 4pm.

But as you will have guessed, I rocked up this afternoon at 3.30pm and it was shut. Which annoyed me. I peered in through the windows. I walked around the side of the building. Peered in some more, hoping to find an alternate entrance. And then... ducked under a security barrier to peer in at the back door.

Honestly, I don't really know why I did that, except to have something to write here other than "I walked to Hendon Town Hall and it was shut". Perhaps this means that blogs encourage crime.

I was probably the least rules-breaking teenager there ever was, so I never had a phase of climbing fences or creeping through badly secured gates to sneak around places - this is about as dangerous as my life has ever got. Hendon Town Hall and associated municipal buildings (library, fire station, dental clinic) are very much stuck in the 1970s. I felt, wandering around, as if I was in a 1970s BBC children's drama, and I was about to stare in through a window, witness a dastardly crime being committed which I'd then tell my parents about but no one would believe me, so I'd have to investigate it *myself* along with my ethnically diverse friends, we'd get into lots of peril before eventually saving the day. And then there'd be a second series but it wouldn't be as good because now everyone would know we were the plucky kid detectives which immediately undercuts the tension.

Anyway, unfortunately none of that happened, and although I tried all the doors Hendon Town Hall remains a locked mystery to me. So I decided to take a wander around Middlesex University instead. I don't actually know if it's *supposed* to have an open-campus policy or not, but the doors weren't locked and I had a nice walk through their British Museum-esque glazed courtyard with a semi-circular waterfall block, and out into their pleasant tree-lined gardens. I hope it is an open campus - I'd go back there another day; but if not as least I've proved the truth that you can walk pretty much anywhere as long as you look confident and  like you know where you're going.

Hello Kitchen

Only time for a very quick update today. Went to a gorgeous Japanese grocery store in Golders Green - now the home of many Japanese shops and sushi restaurants. I love Japanese packaging design - so pretty.

When I was little, Golders Green was full of Yiddish signs and Hebrew writing. But now there are many more signs like this:

And the very sweet shop assistant Naomi (yes!) explained why Golders Green has been so blessed: it's because the Golders Green College (teaching English) has been targetting Japan, and arranging accommodation and home-stays for students. So that explains it!

Token Tourist Trip

A red bus, black cabs, the Millennium Wheel, Big Ben - why yes guvnor, I spent today in Merrie Olde London town! In fact, this is the reason that I ended the day feeling hot, exhausted and slightly ripped-off.

I went to Westminster Abbey today, the Queen's own church. Despite living in London most of my life, had never been before. So, one thing I didn't know: the entry fee for this place of worship is £15. Which immediately made me understand what people mean when they say "London is an expensive city to visit".

Having 'done' Westminster Abbey as a tourist, my advice if you want to go would be to attend a service on a Sunday morning: free, plus you'd get to see the building actually operating as it's intended to, rather than as a game of "how many tourists can we cram into a very tiny chapel to stare for 30 seconds at the burial place of Mary Queen of Scots?"

I mean, a lot of very famous people are buried there. Or at least memorialised there. In places, it's literally hard to squeeze between the tombs to get through to look at the other tombs. Elizabeth I is there, Chaucer is there, Edward the Confessor is there, Charles Dickens is there. You get the drift. And the architecture is very beautiful. This is the ceiling of Mary Queen of Scots' chapel:

It's crammed full of people, though. People who all have their ears pressed to their audio guides, which are included in the £15 price, but which I nonetheless decided to forgo because I don't like someone else telling me where to direct my attention. And because I'm the kind of overeducated snob who goes "I don't need an audioguide, this is a good opportunity to practice my Latin". (And only discover from Wikipedia when I get home that I'd totally mistranslated and that woman was Anne of Cleves and not the king's cousin after all.)

The funny thing about those audioguides is that it means that some tombs and chapels are full of people standing around with vacant expressions, trying to look at whatever it is they're being directed to look at, while others are almost empty. I liked that. I headed mostly for the empty ones and enjoyed the relative quiet. I liked the sound of this woman (and also the spelling):

 

Many children of either sort! Died at the age of 90! (Unless I've got my Latin wrong again and it's actually 23 or something.)

I also enjoyed the part where any of us who wanted to were invited for a "short service of prayer" into the Chapel of Edward the Confessor, which isn't open to the public. I can't understand why more people didn't do this - out of probably 700-800 people in the building, only 15 of us went to the (five-minute-long) service. I mean, I'm not a Christian, but I'm happy to sit in a lovely ancient chapel and agree with the sentiment "God bless the earth with peace" and so on. It makes me think that a lot of people are probably very frightened of religion. Or maybe they don't want to be reminded about God when they're on their holidays.

Or perhaps it's the way the Abbey organises things, with set times for "tourists" and "worshippers", that makes visitors feel resentful of being reminded that they're not just looking at a lot of lovely memorials to famous people but are in a house of prayer. In my memory of French and Spanish cathedrals I've been to, they just carry right on praying, hymn-singing, incense-burning around the tourists, and expect the visitors to be quiet when it gets to the important bits. I like that more, I think - the brief service I attended felt like the most genuine part of my visit. Why *not* do away with the audioguides and just say "this is a house of worship. If you are not taking part in the prayer, please move quietly and remain absolutely silent"? Because you wouldn't be able to charge people £15 to enter then, I suppose.

The most quiet, peaceful part is the Nave, which you come to right at the end of walking around the Abbey, by which time I was quite desperate to leave. But I stopped in time to read Livingstone's (as in "Dr Livingstone, I presume?") stone:

"For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and abolish the desolating slave trade of central Africa where, with his last words, he wrote: 'All I can say in my solitude is, may heaven's rich blessing come down on everyone - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

Which... well, like the Abbey, there are bits of that one can really appreciate (abolishing the slave trade for example), and bits that are a lot less palatable. But at least the epitaph can be partially excused for having been written more than 100 years ago. I'd go to the Abbey again, like I say, on a Sunday morning, but otherwise I cannot recommend it.

What Would Gordon Say?

Just getting this one in under the wire. Went to Gordon Ramsey's pub The Warrington this evening for dinner. Huge fan of Kitchen Nightmares - basically I realise that one of the great pleasures of telly for me is to watch people try to cook stuff, get it wrong, and then have the faults pointed out. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own cooking. I love how insanely passionate Gordon gets about the food; you get the feeling it physically pains him to see someone choosing bad ingredients, or treating good ingredients poorly.

So... high hopes for The Warrington. It should of course be precisely what he recommends on Kitchen Nightmares: good, hearty, local food simply but beautifully prepared. And the menu's pretty good. Nothing especially exciting sounding (presumably he saves that stuff for the Michelin star restaurants not the local eateries) but a good selection.

When it came it was... well, frankly it was fine. I mean, I didn't feel cheated for the money, but nor did I feel that I'd had something exceptionally good.

Here was my spelt risotto:

It reminds me of that 4 On Demand ad that goes "Rocket. Parmesan. Beautiful." It tasted fine. The texture was a bit too watery - I think a risotto should be creamier than this, although I realise it was spelt not rice.

Here was my companion's lamb shank:

According to reports: nice size portion, perfectly fine taste. Essentially, the kind of food you'd get at a nice country pub and go "yup, that was pretty good." My advice: if you want a nice meal out in London, spend £5-10 a head more and go to Arbutus on Frith Street.

This was the view from our table:

It was a hot evening in London, they'd opened the back door because they don't have air-conditioning. I have to say, I think a restaurant really ought to have some way to cool the place down if it's very hot, just as they need a way to heat it up if it's very cold. It was bordering too-warm when we went, and the place was mostly empty. If it had been full, it would have been stifling.

Anyway, here are the desserts:

Banoffee pie in foreground, ice cream in background. These came slightly below "fine", tbh. The bananas in the pie tasted faintly of salmon. There was too much cream and it was unflavoured and bland. The icecream was similarly fairly tasteless. If these dishes had been on Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon would have thrown the plate at the wall, screaming. As it was we just didn't finish them, politely paid our bill and left.

The one plus point: the service was very friendly and attentive. Our waiter (pictured) told us that Gordon sometimes comes into the restaurant, but he's always very nice and softly-spoken. Oh Gordon, how you have deceived me.