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ashlymeHello Dreamwidth. It's been a while hasn't it? Weekend just gone, I had a lovely date with cybermule. We drove up to Coventry on a rain-blurred afternoon. Parked up, we walked past the medieval door I recalled from my last wander round the city, when Tennant was filming the DW episode The Shakespeare Code. We lunched on falafel wraps and sweet mint tea. We'd come for Coventry Cathedral, having talked about it for a while, but H let me do the inevitable dive into the local Oxfam bookshop (no big haul for a change, but a 50s Penguin paperback on The Life of the Robin was had) on the way. She has her own long connection with the city. I'd wanted to see the cathedral for a long time. I really do need at least one more visit to tell you properly about it. I don't know if this building could have been erected at any place or time. I'm an atheist, not a militant one I hope; but it was full of numinosity; I was in awe. I could have stood for hours in front of the Piper/Reyntians stained glass window for the Baptistry. The font (saved from the Blitzed original cathedral, I think) has a scallop-shaped hollow; it feels as full of Time as any fossil shell. Sutherland's tapestry left me slack-jawed. Dwarfed, but in a good way. An organist was playing as we walked around; the pipes are as massive as any local industry. The Chapel of Unity looks like a science-fiction temple, a huge ribbed drum of a building. The floor is a mosaic of the Apostles' symbols, St John's eagle at its centre. Who the hell left a golf ball there and why we couldn't imagine, but we repositioned it by the eagle's tail: a saint's egg. The Herbert Gallery was closed by the time we got out, so we drove back to Brum, where I'd booked a room in a Digbeth pub. Down the road from here is a massive Edwardian hotel, part Stephen King's Overlook and part Ludwig of Bavaria's fairy castles: all massy redbrick and conical greened-copper turrets. I had the privilege of reading a short story H had written that week. We ate chips and scallops (which seems to be a Midlands-only delicacy; it's fried mashed potato covered in batter) then went onto a local poly meet-up, which mostly went well, despite my fear of crowds. In the morning we went and had a leisurely breakfast, but not before finding a little bit of parkland on the Digbeth edge, with a burntout Victorian house flaunting its roof-bones at the sky. Talked over a new collaborative story. We parted at lunch, but I'd arranged to see JH in the evening, which softened the blow of not seeing her for a few weeks. (Miss you, lover. <3)
Reading: too many things to really go into, but they include Edith Nesbit's horror stories and a weird Anglo-European history by Peter Vansittart, which is iridescent and compacted and mostly about myth as far as I can see. Listening: Sons of Kemet's new album Your Queen is a Reptile, which is fucking amazing if you like eclectic edged jazz. Tubas playing dub bass lines. Check em out.
In other news I now need a pair of glasses for reading as well as one for distance. So I suppose I've now got my middle age card well and truly stamped. I chose the reading glasses from the women's section ("You do know that...?" "Yep") and my only regret is that I didn't choose this frame (they're a delicate purply-pink) for "everyday use". Might as well make my specs enby as anything else.
I found a picture on Facebook of what should have been a lemon but grew into some knobbled tentacular monstrosity, shared it, and it jogged a memory about my dad's greenhouse. He grew (and still does grow) tomatoes. Every year without fail there'd be at least one tomato that'd mutated (perhaps trying to become two berries rather than one?) and grown itself a Mr Punch nose. You'd get hoverflies trapped there, ticking against the panes like indoor rain. I can still smell the greenhouse: it was warm, a greenwater smell, a little stagnant but not unpleasant.
cybermule. We drove up to Coventry on a rain-blurred afternoon. Parked up, we walked past the medieval door I recalled from my last wander round the city, when Tennant was filming the DW episode The Shakespeare Code. We lunched on falafel wraps and sweet mint tea. We'd come for Coventry Cathedral, having talked about it for a while, but H let me do the inevitable dive into the local Oxfam bookshop (no big haul for a change, but a 50s Penguin paperback on The Life of the Robin was had) on the way. She has her own long connection with the city. I'd wanted to see the cathedral for a long time. I really do need at least one more visit to tell you properly about it. I don't know if this building could have been erected at any place or time. I'm an atheist, not a militant one I hope; but it was full of numinosity; I was in awe. I could have stood for hours in front of the Piper/Reyntians stained glass window for the Baptistry. The font (saved from the Blitzed original cathedral, I think) has a scallop-shaped hollow; it feels as full of Time as any fossil shell. Sutherland's tapestry left me slack-jawed. Dwarfed, but in a good way. An organist was playing as we walked around; the pipes are as massive as any local industry. The Chapel of Unity looks like a science-fiction temple, a huge ribbed drum of a building. The floor is a mosaic of the Apostles' symbols, St John's eagle at its centre. Who the hell left a golf ball there and why we couldn't imagine, but we repositioned it by the eagle's tail: a saint's egg. The Herbert Gallery was closed by the time we got out, so we drove back to Brum, where I'd booked a room in a Digbeth pub. Down the road from here is a massive Edwardian hotel, part Stephen King's Overlook and part Ludwig of Bavaria's fairy castles: all massy redbrick and conical greened-copper turrets. I had the privilege of reading a short story H had written that week. We ate chips and scallops (which seems to be a Midlands-only delicacy; it's fried mashed potato covered in batter) then went onto a local poly meet-up, which mostly went well, despite my fear of crowds. In the morning we went and had a leisurely breakfast, but not before finding a little bit of parkland on the Digbeth edge, with a burntout Victorian house flaunting its roof-bones at the sky. Talked over a new collaborative story. We parted at lunch, but I'd arranged to see JH in the evening, which softened the blow of not seeing her for a few weeks. (Miss you, lover. <3)Reading: too many things to really go into, but they include Edith Nesbit's horror stories and a weird Anglo-European history by Peter Vansittart, which is iridescent and compacted and mostly about myth as far as I can see. Listening: Sons of Kemet's new album Your Queen is a Reptile, which is fucking amazing if you like eclectic edged jazz. Tubas playing dub bass lines. Check em out.
In other news I now need a pair of glasses for reading as well as one for distance. So I suppose I've now got my middle age card well and truly stamped. I chose the reading glasses from the women's section ("You do know that...?" "Yep") and my only regret is that I didn't choose this frame (they're a delicate purply-pink) for "everyday use". Might as well make my specs enby as anything else.
I found a picture on Facebook of what should have been a lemon but grew into some knobbled tentacular monstrosity, shared it, and it jogged a memory about my dad's greenhouse. He grew (and still does grow) tomatoes. Every year without fail there'd be at least one tomato that'd mutated (perhaps trying to become two berries rather than one?) and grown itself a Mr Punch nose. You'd get hoverflies trapped there, ticking against the panes like indoor rain. I can still smell the greenhouse: it was warm, a greenwater smell, a little stagnant but not unpleasant.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-30 11:27 pm (UTC)Well, this part of Dreamwidth is glad to hear from you.
it feels as full of Time as any fossil shell. Sutherland's tapestry left me slack-jawed. Dwarfed, but in a good way. An organist was playing as we walked around; the pipes are as massive as any local industry.
That sounds wonderful. I think of all the people I know, you write about architecture the best.
Reading: too many things to really go into, but they include Edith Nesbit's horror stories
Please write about those! I don't think I've read any of her adult fiction, ever.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-01 06:46 am (UTC)Thank you very much.
*I think of all the people I know, you write about architecture the best.*
That's very kind! I'll find some words on Nesbit for you.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-01 05:10 pm (UTC)Yay!