First of all, is there a more perfect food combination than cider and chips? If there is, don't tell me about it because I might spontaneously combust at the thought that there is something better. Pint of Strongbow from the off-licence: £1, glorious glorious chips: £1.60. My dinner: sorted. Actually, this is dinner part 2, as I had some really yummy tofu with green onions and ginger on the train back from Cambridge. But my knee was crying out for alcohol and my stomach for starch. So, chips and cider it is.

So, my transcription of this evening's dead-tree pub musings:

January 13--Cambridge

Up until about 4:30 the weather today was lovely; brisk but sunny. I've stopped now for a Strongbow but nothing on the pub menu really floated my boat, so I'll just grab some takeaway for the train on my way to the station. I definitely seem to be at the pub equivalent of a road house, but I wanted to be near the train station, which is about a mile out of town. There's an Alan Moore lookalike across the room and video slot machines a few feet away (and you know we always think of the UK as such a nanny state, but if you want to drink or gamble you can apparently go right ahead, any time, anywhere).

I don't know why my big question for the day was, "has anything changed?" Cambridge hasn't changed in hundreds of years so why should it have changed appreciably in the past couple decades? Only two things that I noticed: Lion Yard is now a massive, posh, three-floor shopping arcade, and there are now good restaurants. Though both Pizza Hut and Old Orleans are in the exact same locations. I remember when that lone Pizza Hut was your only hope for a decent pizza in Cambridge. How times have changed.

I'm also no longer 12 years old and the daughter of a resident Clare Hall fellow, so I'm now much more of a ninny about walking through the colleges. Trinity (I think) was charging admission! Did they always do that? And I totally missed the public footbridge over the Cam so went the long way round down by Magdalene College.Then walked all the way down past the mill pond and back up the other side to Little St. Marys Lane and the churchyard.

Little St. Marys' literature says there's been a recent improvement effort for the churchyard, but it still looks as overgrown as it ever did before. I wonder what it says about me that in all of Cambridge, with its huge manicured lawns and geometric courtyards, it's Little St. Marys churchyard that is my favourite spot.

Stepped in to some used book stores to try and find one of the little editions of Hamlet (those little Shakespeare editions from the turn of the century are a dime a dozen), but everyone was just plum out of that one. They had everything but. Almost got another Troilus and Cressida, but instead got an edition of Songs of Innocence for Dave.

Had tea across Kings Parade from the college, waiting for Evensong at 5:30. Sight fiasco getting there on time. I thought I was early when I rolled up to the gate that they keep open for tourists visiting the chapel and it was closed. There was signage saying that Evensong was at 5:30 and that the doors would open 15 minutes prior, and I was indeed a bit too early for that. So I went back over to Lion Yard, ducked in to Boots just for a quick warm-up only to find several shelves of 50% off Doctor Who schwag, and picked up a fob watch for £7 (can't beat that with a stick) and then legged it back over to Kings, only to find that blasted gate still shut! This time it was definitely not that I was too early, so I scooted around to the front of the college, where there was a sign saying the college was closed to visitors. I ignored this sign. I sort of disguised myself among a small group of other people and went in. Turns out they were going to the chapel as well and I hid amongst them as we arrived round the other door, which was open-ish, and received a very disapproving glare from the don acting as usher.

Because I was late (poor signage, Kings College!) I had to sit behind the screen for the service. A bit of a bummer because at Kings, the screen is really much more of a wall , and of course Kings houses a painting by Rubens at the alter and the service was being done by candlelight, and I could kind of see all that through the opening in the screen, but still it was from afar.

The music however was sublime and transporting (Kings College Boys Choir--way better than the Westminster Abbey choir I must confess). Almost the entire service was sung and the acoustics in there are just amazing. It was glorious and put me in mind of Hamlet actually: What a piece of work is man. Listening to the voices and looking up at the vaulted ceiling (which at Kings is an intricate filigree), my thoughts were naturally not of god (not being thus inclined) but of the works of man. I think it definitely means you're a humanist when you go to Evensong and wind up exalting in humanity. Probably not the desired effect.


And as always the photo album has been updated, click on the thumbnail. There will be video tomorrow.

Pilgrim's Progress

PS Dad I never did email the Sedleys. I am very bad. I had meant to do it the day that I left town but then there was all that last-minute flight change business, and then it occurred to me that I didn't really know what day I'd be going because I was basing it on the weather (and you know how random that is here) and then everything just got completely mad and my knee started acting up and I didn't know if I'd make it at all.