The Tewkesbury Floods.  (I haven't got it just right yet, and I think I'm getting stuck).  Any thoughts welcome?  It's a poem about the terrible results caused by the developers of modern housing on the traditional flood plains around Tewkesbury, my native town.

Tewkesbury Floods

In Summer I played in the mowing grass

Among the buttercups, the cornflowers and daisies,

And listened to the chaffinch sing.

I saw fields hedged with tall elm trees and briar

Crowned in white clouds and warm in the Gloucestershire sun.

Moving on . . . The elm trees have gone.

Most are now dead.  Just a few linger on.

A plain, flat and featureless, save one great tower

And that’s all that there is until you look lower

Encircled by hills and three rivers that flood.

(One of them once ran ruddy with blood)

Moving back by nine centuries, St Mary’s has stood

Proud on an island just clear of the flood

For the builders precisely knew just where the land

Was best to let the huge Abbey stand.

Just above levels of flood and of tide

The Abbey stays dry with no water inside.

Moving back by five centuries to half-timbered houses

Crammed along streets and forced down dark alleys

The shopkeepers, butchers, chandlers and bakers.

A market was here which sold cattle and sheep

(and the fruit from the Vale that you hoped you’d buy cheap)

Still the rivers outside the town didn’t run deep.

A century back the world fell in pieces around

And cars, trucks and tarmac covered the ground.

More people!  More houses!  Oh! Why don’t we build

The houses in suburbs where flood land was tilled?

Now, when it rains hard, they sandbag the doors.

There’s mud in the kitchen and dirt on the stairs.

Last year was worse, you can tell by that stain

On the wall.  But alas, every year, homes are flooded again.

No cornflowers are left in the mowing grass high,

The Abbey looks down where I played, and men sigh.

For hundreds of years, old Tewkesbury was dry

But now every winter the water comes by.

Christmas Morning when I was young

It's almost 9.30 pm here on Christmas Eve, and when I was a small boy I would have been asleep by now.

Christmas in the Sidebotham household always followed the same pattern.  Early in the evening we sang Carols round our Christmas Tree.  The baubles and paper decorations, bought in the local Woolworths, or made at school, were all in place.  Dad would be drinking a whisky, Mum would have a gin and tonic, Gran would have her port and lemon. Uncle John would have a bottle of Cheltenham Ale.  I would be allowed something fizzy but not alcoholic, and DEFINITELY not beer.  I hated the odd sip of beer.  How could people enjoy such a bitter drink?

I'd get into bed, and I didn't have a Christmas stocking.  I had a pillowcase!!

In the morning, Santa had been, and my pillowcase was full, including the presents that had had to be "posted to Santa" so that they could be put on Santa's sleigh.  How gullible was I!  There were always one or two annual favourites, a chocolate orange, something for my train set, a book.

I was brought up in a temporary house just after the war, called a "prefab".  This was a house, a bit like a caravan without wheels, only bigger.  It had all sots of modern things, like hot water on tap, a bathroom, an indoor toilet, a refrigerator, things we take for granted today.  Unfortunately our prefab was not very cosy.  They were "hot in summer and cold in winter".  In the cold depths of a December winter I used to get up and find that the inside of the windows had fern like patterns of ice which had formed there during the night.  I used to keep myself warm in bed by putting my clothes on top of my bedclothes, and in the morning, some of my clothes would be warm enough to put on and warm me up.  Normally I would be warmed up more with a large bowl of porridge.

But not on Christmas Day.  The first thing that was different, and which made me feel as though it were Christmas, was or unvarying breakfast of Pork Pie.  This was no ordinary pie.  This was a large pie made with cold water pastry, chopped pork, lovely clear meat jelly.  Australian pies just aren't the same.  Even most British pies are not the same.  It has to be a home-made pie, or a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie will do if you can't get anything better.

A generous slice of pie would be cut, and some tomato sauce or chutney put on the same plate.  It was delicious - more Christmassy than holly, and easier to eat.

Every Christmas morning we had pork pie, until I was almost thirty.

Then, one Christmas, my lovely father, explained why we ate pork pie for Christmas, and opened up a huge generation gap, which revealed a world he had grown up in where the men went to work and the women raised the family.

He said that they had had pork pie when he was young (the mid to late twenties) because it was a simple meal served cold.  This was to help out the women who would be busy cooking the Christmas Dinner.

I'm sure the wives and older daughters appreciated the thought!!!

Important, please read this.

Ecoute tous les gens,s'il vous plait, particulier mes amis en France. Je vous remercies vos comments gentils, mais je suis tres embarasse. JE N'AI PAS le MND! J'ai plusieurs des symptomes, mais a ce moment, je n'ai pas cette maladie tres horrifique. Qu-est ci que passe est j'ai mise mon nom au petition MND et un comment aussi, et tout ca a ete distribuer a touts mes amis qui lise l'Internet. Je suis tres heureux que j'ai plusieurs amis qui ont mis leur comments, mais je dois repeter. Heureusement, je n'ai pas le MND, trois ou quatre symptomes seulement To all my friends, please listen, particularly my English friends. Thank you for your kind comments, but I am very embarrassed. I DO NOT HAVE MND: I have several of the symptoms, but for now, I don't have this horrific disease. What happened was I put my name to a MND petition as well as a comment, and all this has been transmitted to all my friends on Facebook. I am very happy that I have so many friends who have commented, but I must repeat. Happily I do not have MND, only three or four symptoms of it. A tutti mi Italiane, voglio dicere NON O MND. Grazie per vostri buoni penseri. Fur meine Freunden in Deutschland, Ich bin sehr lustig sagen Ich habe nicht MND haben. Es ist gut haben mein Freunden, aber Ich sag, Ich habe nicht MND. I am still very embarrassed but thank you for your kind wishes and understanding.

And lastly, Part Trois!

Je voudrais ecrire cette accompte en francais, mais je regrette je n'ai aucun acutes, graves ou circumflexes.  Et cedilas!  Oubliez cedilas!  Ils sont trop difficile trouver, comme huitres numero trois en juin.

No, I'm sorry, but my keyboard just is not up to it, helas.

I hope, Gabriel and Florianne, that you are reading this, otherwise my bilingual account sera in vain! :)

Alors, Gabriel poured me a glass of a noble dry white wine with a stony visage.  Or perhaps it was a stony dry white wine with a noble visage.  Either way, it was a beautiful gesture which was much appreciated.  Merci beaucoup, mes amis!  For those who maybe are not as familiar with an assiette des fruits de mer, it is literally a plate of the fruits (the bounty) of the sea.  No two assiettes served on different nights are the same, because the shellfish must be extremely fresh, and usually, the ingredients are only lightly boiled or steamed, either in pure water, or more rarely in barely flavoured stock.  The ingredients are served cold.  At La Procope, as one would expect, with l'Ancienne Comedie Francaise on l'autre side of la street, the presentation is pure theatre.

First, a metal stand is placed on the table by the waiter with a flourish.  Then he approaches with the "Assiette" itself.  This metal plate was elliptical, and about 40 or 50 cm long at its widest dimension.  On the plate was heaped a pile of ice about 10 cm deep, with the sea food arranged around it.  Around the edge were six of the largest oysters I have ever seen.  They were huitres no.3.  (The French Fisheries size their oysters).  At the top of the ice, there were a few prawns, and one or two cooked clams.  Around and on the ice were scallop shells, each of which was heaped with seafood of different species.

To eat this feast was Florianne who borrowed an oyster permanently.  As an English gentleman I could not refuse her, not even one of my molluscs.

The waiter, dressed in black with a very long white apron, placed my cutlery on the table.  There was a spoon, a four pronged fork; a three pronged fork; une fourchette avec deux tines and a pin for the most efficient extraction of the meat from the shells.

The table looked impressive.  Florianne asked if we had in English a saying that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.  Yes, I replied, but I had missed my chance.  As a suave gentilhomme anglais qui a soixante-onze ans, I should have said that nothing was bigger than my stomach, and therefore I must have very large eyes, and complimented her for saying that.  Instead, I weakly said, "Yes".

She mentioned that La Fontaine had popped in for lunch about two hundred years earlier.  I thought she was going to ask whether he had been at the next table eating oysters.  No, I said, but this gave me a chance to recite the Fox and the Grapes (sounds like an English pub!)

"Certain reynard gascon, d'autres disent normands" and so on.  They looked surprised.  I must have looked surprised, too, as it was sixty years since I had last recited it.  Florianne also recited a fable, but she could continue for longer, as she had last recited it in school only a very few years previously.

Florianne and Gabriel made that evening an evening to remember.  It was possibly my last evening in Paris, and they sprinkled it with gold.  They were both such marvellous company.

And yes, Florianne was correct.  My eyes ARE bigger than my stomach.

A Tale of Two Cafes - Part Deux

As I drank my pastis I reflected that I had found a good place to eat; that I only had 65 euros in my pocket; that I had already spent some of that sum on pastis; that I was about to spend 39 euros on their signature seafood shellfish dish; and that I had better put down the wine list with as much faded grandeur as possible - "but don't you find that white wine overpowers the delicacy of sea food?  I prefer sparkling water - Perrier from choice.  I believe it allows the whelks to BREATHE"

What I didn't know was that I was eating in the oldest cafe in Paris which has its own Wikipedia page ; that I would recite a fable by La Fontaine off by heart; that I would gain some wine, lose an oyster, and listen to La Fontaine as it should be listened to; and wear out my semi colon key.  In the process I would make two friends, one on Facebook, one not, who were from Toulouse and who were celebrating their Fourth Anniversaire.

And so to Gabriel and Florianne, mes felicitations on your Anniversaire; mes condolences for joining in son Anniversaire, (it wasn't me to blame but Florianne and her passion for large oysters.

I was only the catalyst.

The waiter led me to my table.  There was a hard seat, and opposite, a soft banquette, a sofa that continued past several tables.  Florianne was sitting next to me, and opposite, on a hard chair, was Gabriel, who had obviously spent much thought and time on the planning of the evening's proceedings, alas, without taking my possible presence into account.

Fortunately pour moi, both Florianne and Gabriel were from Toulouse, a town known for its love of Concorde.

Fin de Part Deux
End of Part Two

A Tale of Two Cafes

If you like good food, where do you get it?  I'm often asked this, and I can only reply that sometimes I eat well, and sometimes I eat fairly well, but seldom in the last few weeks have I got food poisoning, and looking back on that unhappy evening, I should have known better and played by my own rules.
If you are in a tourist spot like Prague, for instance, I head for the side streets.  There you are more likely to see a good authentic menu.  A narrow street not accessible by tourists on a bus is a good start.  Next I look for a simple menu, preferably without steak on it, or pictures of the dishes.  I found such a place near St Charles Bridge.  The menu was simple, and at the back of the cafe was a television showing an ice hockey game between Canada and the Czech Republic.  At the next table was a Canuck and three Czechs.  After my meal, they invited me to join them. We drank and cheered and booed and drank and a good time was had.  At the end of the evening, they gave me their business cards (they were work colleagues).  How lovely people are.

Two weeks later, I was in the Quartier Latin in Paris.  I wanted an evening meal, but as I walked along the Odeon, I was beset by spruikers wanting me to eat in cafes with pictorial menus and mange biftecks, which was fortunately not what I had in mind.  I set off down a side street as I do if I want to be alone with a good meal and without a bus of tourists, and the world is my oyster (or in France, mon huitre no.3).

I came across this understated place called La Procope.  It looked a bit posh, the diners were glamoreux, but heck, I had 65 euros in my pocket and the world was mon huitre.  Talking of oysters I noticed that they served a very nice "signature" dish of sea food, the famous assiette des fruits des mer.for only 39 euros.  I went in.  "Table for one, please" I asked insouciantly.  I received a veritable torrent of French.

"So you can't fit me in tonight"
"Oh yes sir" said the Maitre d', "but not for a quarter of an hour,  Find a seat and have a drink," so I sat down next to the hatch where the waiters were fetching the drinks from, and had a glass of pastis.

To be continued . . . .

Even Masons have their Vaults

Even Masons have their Vaults

This is the story of two masons and their experiments.  I am quite sure they were friends, certainly collaborators.  One was Head Mason of Tewkesbury Abbey, and the other of Gloucester Abbey, now the Cathedral.  They are only twelve miles apart, well within a day's walk, and they were both built at about the same time.  Both churches were originally built in the Romanesque style, and in the 14th Century the ceilings were vaulted,  Both churches retain lierne vaults, where ribs called liernes sprang from the columns, and the liernes were reinforced by secondary ribs called tiercerons.  This example is in the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey.

The Suns were added at the command of Edward IV after his Yorkist army had won the Battle of Tewkesbury in  1471.  Shakespeare probably saw them (Stratford is only a short distance up the river) and wrote about "These suns of York" in Richard III.  When Isabella, Countess of Warwick died, she had a chantry chapel built.  Time for an experiment.

The ceiling wasn't particularly heavy, and so radial liernes were used in the upper storey.

You can see how the liernes radiated without any need for tiercerons, giving a flatter ceiling.  In this case the liernes would have been fitted with hanging bosses, since broken off.  Downstairs there is a most interesting vault, completely new in design.  Not a lierne vault, but a decorative transition.  Again, there would have been hanging bosses, but the vault itself is unique to this chapel.

The ceiling of this vault is still flatter, but the two masons found that it was still capable of load bearing. In the next chantry chapel to be built, that of Edward Despenser, the "classic" design of an English fan vault is achieved.

These eight tiny vaults, I contend, are the very first English Perpendicular style fan vaults.  They carried the weight of the ceiling.  The Gloucester mason still built his main church with lierne vaulting, but the lighter weight of the cloisters allowed him to use fan vaults.  Sadly, the Tewkesbury cloisters were destroyed, but they may have been fan vaulted, too.  Fan vaulting became the norm in St Georges Chapel Windsor, Eton College, Wells Cathedral and Kings College Cambridge, but I maintain that those eight tiny vaults in Tewkesbury were the first to be built.