A spiritual journey

I’m reading Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth right now, which inspired me to learn more about cathedral building. As it turns out he wrote the book for the same reason. He grew up in a born-again Christian family and never entered a church in his childhood. When he visited Winchester cathedral for the first time, he became obsessed, turning into a cathedral nerd. The book is very descriptive on the process of building a church of that size in the 12th century, detailing not just the design and building process, but everything from funding to politics.

Armed with a book on How to Read Buildings (subtitled “A crash course in architecture”), we braved the rain and high winds of yet another winter storm and drove the hour and a half to Winchester. We threaded our way between the South Downs on our left and the seaside resorts of the chalk coast on our right to Portsmouth, then turned inland to Winchester. Only last week we watched a BBC documentary on King Alfred, considered the first Anglo-Saxon king (whose bones were interred in the old minster which used to sit right next to where the new cathedral now rises), so the huge statue of him with sword raised in battle on a plinth at the entrance to the city didn’t come as a surprise. What was a surprise was the massive size of the cathedral.

We ducked into the front door out of the driving rain, shivering with cold. I was regretting going out at all instead of sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea and my knitting. An afternoon spent in a cavernous and chilly cathedral seemed like bad judgement. But when I pushed back my rain hood and lifted my eyes, I forgot my damp jeans and freezing fingers. My grumpy thoughts were replaced by awe. I stood at one end of a ginormous, vaulted hall. Large grey brown flag stones spread under my feet, frequently interrupted by granite black grave markers. Over my head the span of gothic fan ceiling seemed as far away as heaven. At the far end of the space I could just make out an intricately carved wooden separator. Pillars marched away from my viewpoint on either side of the wide empty nave. In winter the cathedral is emptied of seating to present the church in the way it was intended to be seen: a vast, impressive display of celestial power manifested through the local bishop, a place to marvel at human achievement in the name of god. It brought tears to my eyes.

Mini monks praying for their bishop

Reading The Ken Follett book I have a fresh image of life in the 13th century. Winchester cathedral was built at just that time. I squinted, trying to imagine how the building work might have been achieved. The height of the barrel vault made it seem impossible to construct with just the use of wooden scaffolding. How would the masons been able to span the pillars lining the nave to construct the centring that holds up the stone arch as the mortar dries? How would they have lifted up the heavy carved keystones? How would they have calculated the depth of the foundations and weight of the buttresses to steady the aisle walls so the ceiling didn't collapse? Now that I know the primitive materials and tools they worked with it seems even more miraculous that these cathedrals were ever built.

At first we wandered along the aisles, reading the grave markers and memorial plates. While looking for Jane Austen, who was buried here in an early morning ceremony (church service was at 10, so the funeral had to be done by then), we discovered many fascinating people: the officer who drowned after his supply ship blew up and sank during one of the colonial wars of the 19th century; the wife of a dean who described her virtues at great length despite starting by saying: "words cannot describe her"; the smart and kind and ambitious women whose accomplishments can only be read between the lines of 'feminine character' and 'extraordinary mind'; the officer described as 'angler, thinker, soldier'.

Jane Austen's memorial plaque

We found Jane Austen's grave. The stone plate makes no mention of her profession. She was not well regarded as a writer when she died, two of her books being published posthumously. But there are two more memorials to her, witness to her rising population as the 19th century discovered her skills: a brass plaque paid for by her nephew, who wrote her biography and praised her writing, and a later stained glass window funded by public subscription. The window depicts oblique references to her, such as St. John and his gospel which starts with: "In the beginning was the word..."

A screen of holy fruit: figs, grapes, pomegranate

We found other treasures in our slow meander through the cathedral: the largest medieval tiled floor, faded patterns of terracotta and cream; a bishops grave, three gnome-sized monks sitting at his feet praying; another grave, this one a Vanitas, with a gruesome skeleton topping the coffin instead of an elaborately dressed clergyman; a Romanesque transept, so different in its squat style from the elegant gothic - an opportunity to crack open the architecture book and learn something about rib vaults and shouldered arches and moulded capitals.

Hyde Park

A wash of cloud has been gathering all day.
Occasionally the sun elbows its way through their bulk, shimmering the yellow-leaved trees, sparkling the lake surface. By now the grey has dimmed the afternoon, reflecting in the water, matching the pales of swans, ducks and herons. It's late afternoon, the park is populated with joggers in fluorescent jackets, Arab families - black-wrapped women, baseball-capped guys and fidgety children feeding the ducks. Gulls and pigeons vie for scraps of bread, teenage cygnets aiming for dignity while bullying their ungainly bodies through the flittery birds.
Hyde Park has been the centre of our world this summer. We walked here, watched the Olympics here, cycled Barclay's bikes criss-cross on our way to the West End or the V&A. Catching art, as ephemeral as the Serpentine pavilion and as permanent as the Peter Pan sculpture, we discovered new corners, made connections along new paths, tested every cafe, every tea stand, every snack hut. It's not been much of a summer, but there have been enough sunny days to make the exorbitant rent that puts us near the park, worthwhile.

Tim Walker - Storyteller

Currently at Somerset House is Tim Walker - Storyteller, a show of dream-like fashion photography, using large-scale props in intricate settings. I am not normally a fan of fashion photography, of impossibly thin women in unfeasible clothes, but this is different. This show is like walking into someone else's inner imagination. The photos depict impossible situations, fairytale scenarios, horror story events. In a country house living room, a large doll is pushing through the door as a dishevelled woman helplessly tries to shut the door. A fighter plane takes off in smoke and dust, all within a high-ceilinged room complete with chandelier. A re-imagination of the Yellow Brick road, made from actual, rough yellow bricks rather than the golden variety of the movies, passes through a tinted countryside. A boy lies asleep in a swan-shaped boat, dreaming of rescue.
Entering the exhibition through a narrow door it is stunning to see the props used in the photos in the room, as if the picture has come to life: There is the spitfire bomber from the image, here crashed through the fireplace, tail-fin stuck out at a skewed angle. There the oversized doll lolls menacingly in the corner, looming over us like the vaguely scary skeleton in that doorway, a reflection of the photo where its bony arms awkwardly hug a woman in a red evening dress. On a podium a group of insects play classical instruments alongside the pictures of gowned women faintly menaced by those giant bees and dung beetles.
The photos show the use of the props, but it is the objects themselves, incongruously placed on the walls and set next to the photos, that create the disconcerting illusion that what we are seeing in the photos is real, that the dreams of spaceships manoeuvred through an English hunt by melancholy aliens, that Humpty Dumpty lying broken in a field as a panic-stricken woman looks on, that the oversized sketches pinned to the wall with plate-sized pins, the sand spilling from a photo of the desert across the floor of the gallery, are photojournalism of the strange kind, rather than a meticulously planned setup.
Walker describes the photographic process as a childish daydream: he walks up a hidden staircase into a black-clad room, a window in the far corner falling shut with a loud clap (like a camera shutter) as he looks out at an amazing view; a day dream he only occasionally has access to, to his deep regret.
Walking through the interlocking rooms of the show I am glad that the few times he has managed to walk into that dream, that room, he has come away with images of such strange beauty and mystery.

Much ado in Delhi

Much Ado about Nothing, at the Noel Coward theatre now until the 27th, is one of those fun comedies that can be played for laughs even though we don't really subscribe to its outdated notions of marriage and gender relationship anymore. It's popular, but even though it's the RSC I wouldn't rush out to see yet another version. But this production is different. The transfer of the court of Messina to modern day Delhi is inspired. Great music, fantastic costumes, amazing accents and mannerisms, spot-on characterisation, all of that really made the theme of the play sing.
Don Pedro's soldiers are UN peacekeeping groups returned from an ambiguously described venture, some wearing medic badges on their blue berets. Carrying khaki duffel bags, they are full of spirit when they arrive, variously optimistic and cynical, but all of them raring for a party.
The women consist of a full range of modern Indian types, from the dutiful daughter happy to have her marriage arranged; the glamour-puss fashion victim flashing bling handbags and a gem-encrusted smartphone; the intellectual thinker and wit, a woman of many words, most of them brilliant. The caste system with its master-servant relationship fits spot-on into Shakespeare's cultural system. The floor sweeper and the simpleton housekeeper are perfect representations from Bollywood movies, making the clown scenes sing. In these characters, as in many of the Hindi outbursts and asides, I felt that as Europeans we were only scratching the surface of the performance. I felt as if we were missing some of the subtleties, something borne out by the laughs coming from the large Indian audience.
The set was very serviceable, with a lot of balconies and a tree used for the wedding decorations and a swing. The red drapes ran into the lighting rig, which resulted in an unprecedented theatrical event in the second half: The show was interrupted by the stage manager, who came on to tell us that the drape was stuck and needed to be unhooked manually. A rigger climbed into the grid and unspooled the clip wires so that the drape could be undone from the stage. It was quite the shock to see the fourth wall broken like this. The actors did very well, carrying on until stopped, and the actress taking down the drapes silently communicated panic without interrupting the dialogue on stage.
The climax of the actual play came with the supposed burial of Hiero, re-designed into a burning platform under a dark sky pouring with rain. As everyone was wearing white, the segue into the happy conclusion of weddings, dancing and merriment was easily accomplished.
This play is part of the RSC's Olympic year series of Shakespeare interpretations from every corner of the planet. I wish I had seen more of them now. It's still on for a few days in London, but I hope that it will tour and be revived many times. It is one of the best Shakespeare productions I have seen in a long time.

My fading Olympic dream

I love the Olympics. I really do. I grew up believing in its dream of humanity coming together to celebrate sporting achievement. I am steeped in its tenet of 'taking part is more important than winning'. Throughout my youth I was watching the games from Mexico, Munich, Moscow sitting cross-legged on the carpet, many times in my pyjamas due to the late or early hour. I never dreamt that I would be able to actually visit an Olympic event, that I would actually live in the city where the Olympics take place. It just seemed too far fetched, the logistics impossible to my mind. The idea of the transcendence of human strife through a common activity has dominated my life. The Olympics have always made me feel like a World citizen. Until now. The games we all about amateurism, about the achievements of the determined against all the odds. Keeping out professional athletes made it an event of individuality. Now it seems to be down to whoever has access to the biggest money pot.

Don't get me wrong, London is a great host city for the games, just the right amount of ingenious organisation (a pedestrian bridge across the super-busy Hyde Park corner, a comprehensive and easy to use website for all events) with a bit of hilarious shambles mixed in (the culture secretary whose bell flew off the handle during the ringing in of the opening ceremony, athlete ferry bus drivers from Yorkshire lost in the Big Smoke). It's not that, it's my current proximity to the greedy, shameless, corrupt and amoral Olympic Organising Committee and its ever-reaching tentacles that have destroyed the Olympic dream for me. A few examples:

1. For a while there was the possibility that no-one would be able to sell chips with their meals in the Olympic village other than the exclusive sponsor MacDonald's. Yes, because it was such a good idea in the first place to sell sponsorship of the biggest sports event on the planet to a fast food company known for the low nutritional value of their offering.

2. Threatening visitors who may want to upload their own videos or photos of the opening ceremony. I am all for getting a grip on the incessant camera phone photography getting out of hand all around us, but in the name of copyright and exclusivity?

3. Cadbury's, the British chocolate maker, is our 'Official Treat Provider'. A big purple tent with a Joyville Tasting Zone and a Chocolatrium (really!) in the Hyde Park screen area reminds everyone that corporate might can buy anything nowadays, even children's entertainment. Oh, and what athlete eats chocolate as part of their diet?

4. Trying to nab some last-minute tickets I discover that there is no way to buy tickets for events without a VISA card - the official payment services sponsor of the Olympics. I have one, but what are we doing when we allow a company to buy this kind of monopoly? It's not as if VISA was super-benevolent with its Wikileaks ban recently.

5. The incessant bombardment with advertisement around the Olympics is driving me crazy. I wish companies would use their imagination. But the draconian crackdowns on the use of the terms 'Olympia', '2012', even plain 'Games' in advertising, regardless of whether it's a Greek cafe or Nike shoes, feels just greedy.

So my quest for the rest of these games is to see how much of the Olympics I can take in for free, without feeding the maw of commercialism, and whether I can recapture some of my fast-dissolving dream along the way. Wish me luck.

Cork and water

One of my favourite summer event in London is the Serpentine pavilion. In its 12th year, the surprisingly permanent-looking structures are erected in the spring and dismantled in the autumn. They are variously strange and awe-inspiring. This year's is a reference to the pavilions that have come before. An archaeological dig of sorts, the 12 pillars represent the past structures, while geometric cork blocks wrap around the remnants: leftover cables, plinths, foundation pieces. All is covered by a flat metal disk collecting rain water, making visible the ground water that normally remains underground. How appropriate in this deluge of a summer!

Best of all, stools shaped as champagne corks. A hint?

 

Boris Bikes

Boris Bikes ready to go at Hyde Park

At last- a day without rain. For weeks it seemed as if spending the summer in London was a really bad idea for someone who eshews socks and umbrellas. I am not a fan of weather in general, preferring the bland simplicity of Dubai's perma-sunshine to the chopping and changing of London days, where rain is followed by blinding sun by lowering grey clouds by howling winds. It's July, and finally I am confident that I can go out and not catch a cold. A perfect day to take a Boris bike for a spin.

What is a Boris bike?

Barclay's Bikes, as they are properly called, are clunky upright bikes, built like tanks (23 kg, chain and mud guards, puncture-proof tyres, built-in dynamo, brakes and gears courtesy of Shimano) and liberally labelled with the blue and white logos of Barclay's sponsorship. Boris bikes are named after the London mayor who introduced them in 2010. They are niftily designed to withstand daily punishment by tourists as well as commuters and casual users, with hiring prices cleverly planned to encourage short trips over day-long tours. As an addition to the tube/train/bus network of central London it is to the designer's credit that they are so popular that on a sunny day they are impossible to come by.

Find a station

So how do you use one of these chunky bikes? Where do you pick one up? How do you pay for the ride? As with many activities lately, it all starts with an app. Barclays themselves have designed a very functional iPhone and Android app that looks for docking stations in the vicinity, tells me how many bikes and spaces are available, even lets me plan a ride. At a docking station I can pay for a bike, check the map and dock my bike when I'm finished with my trip.

Barely a bike left...

Card or key?

I am an annual member for £45 per year, so I have a key to quickly free a bike. Before I joined the scheme, I slipped a debit or credit card into the payment point to print out a 5 digit keycode to use on the bike rack's keypad. Having a key has made grabbing a bike so much faster, rather than having to click through the multiple choice screens, accepting terms and conditions, choosing the number of bikes, and receiving the I can be on the bike in seconds.

Planning where to go

The iPhone app lets me plan my trip. I can choose from speedy, steady or quiet route types, and Google map will show me the way. A nifty built-in timer will tell me when my free 30 minutes are up. It would be nice to have turn-by-turn speech instructions, so that I wouldn't have to stop at junctions to check the map or try to memorise the route, and a phone holder in the handlebar would also stop me from getting lost, but built-in GPS units on each bike may be too much to ask for.

Set it up

The bike, for all it's clunkiness, can be adjusted to fit. I set the bike to my preferred height by the numbers on the saddle stalk. There is a holder for a bag welded to the handlebars. No back wheel rack means I can't carry heavy shopping or multiple bags, so I have started to travel light - and avoid wearing trailing scarves or bulky jackets lest I garrotte myself in transit. I check the brakes, pedals and bell and off I go.

The welded bag carrier

Join the Maelstrom

I am ready to join London's crazy traffic. Londoners are more competitive than most other city dwellers I have encountered. While in other countries road traffic can be a free-for-all, a mess of different driving styles like Dubai, hindered by a complete lack of signage like Addis Ababa or just a general flouting of the rules like Nairobi, London has an air of repressed anger funneled into intense competition between the different classes of travellers. Everyone uses and abuses the rules to their own benefit: taxis dash down bus lanes, cyclists run red lights to get the jump on motorised transport, buses squeeze their huge bulks into gaps in the traffic flow. Pedestrians are hyper-alert to any movement around them, as neither the cyclists nor the motorised faction take any prisoners. None of the dreamy jaywalkers of Joburg CBD, if you are walking in London you better have your wits about you.

Throwing a group of amateur cyclists into the mix has interesting results, specially since - unlike other first world cities - London has barely any dedicated bike lanes. Marking yourself out as a Boris biker means labelling yourself ignorant of the unwritten rules of London traffic: every second counts and there is always someone who is willing to overtake you. Don't hope for mercy, because getting there fast is serious business. Boris bikers often dawdle, they may be lost, or vague as to their direction, they are inexperienced cyclists. Their bikes are heavy and unwieldy, so they are slow to react. And the stigma of the Boris biker can not be hidden, it is a blue flag of shame.

The blue flag of shame

One thing I have learnt from the Boris bike scheme is that Londoners are desperate for a new, easier way to get around town. Taxis are expensive, buses slow and the Tube crowded and hot. Commuting by bike is not an option for most Londoners, the distance from their home to the office is just too great and traffic on the main trunk roads into town too dangerous. But for getting round the city you can't beat the bike. I would be reluctant to lock up my bike in public in London, lest it is stolen or removed, but the Boris bikes are designed to be placed in racks rather than used all day. The first thirty minutes of each trip are free, with prices rising steeply for longer journeys, thus discouraging bike hogging. No daytrips along the canal with this scheme, or leaving the bike outside while dashing into a shop, but definitely a quick dash from Oxford Street to Hyde Park for lunch. For casual travellers, or non-Londoners who just want to go for a spin, the system is perfect.

Problems

The bike scheme was intoduced in July 2010. To begin with the fully automated system of hiring and replacing bikes was flaky. The scheme is run by Transport for London, who control all local public transport aspects. But the actual operation of the scheme is outsourced to a private company, and the setup costs heavily sponsored by Barclays. The various layers of management initially resulted in an unreliable process, with people complaining of not being able to hire bikes and being charged random amounts if they did manage to get one. Two years later, and running 8.300 bikes and 15.000 docking stations with a recent expansion eastwards, most complaints relate to the incredible success of the scheme, which regularly results in bikes being unavailable, specially in the West End where pressure comes from Hyde Park tourers and West End party people heading out of Zone 1.

The logistics of the scheme are dazzling: broken bikes need to be identified and fixed (bikes get an inspection on average every two weeks, and numbers of destroyed or stolen bikes barely reach double-digits after two years); bikes need to be relocated to busy areas when a wave of customers have left them stranded in the wrong part of town (the company uses electric vehicles for this so as not to negate the carbon savings from all the cycling); vast numbers of payments have to be processed properly with custom hardware (keys, docking stations) and unreliable humans in the mix.

The future

London's bike scheme is not the first in the world. Many other cities have offered impromptu hire bikes to their population, from Amsterdam to Montreal, many with much superior biking infrastructure, prioritising human-powered traffic over cars. Such is the pressure on transport options in London that any new choice was going to be taken up enthusiastically, by commuters as well as casual users and visitors. The London scheme is simple and effective, now it just needs to bring about a shift in priority towards cycling versus driving. London has shown that this can be done with the success of the congestion charge, gently but firmly forcing car traffic out of the centre of London. If the next step is to pedestrianise the city and focus on good bike routes, London could amost become pleasant to navigate. I am certainly a fan, alreay regretting that I brought my own bike to London with me.

A Walk in the Forest

 

Meanwhile, back in Germany spring has sprung. Crossing continents and seasons, we get a chance to wander from autumn in the South African Karoo, with its freezing starry nights and clear still days, to the fresh green of suburban German parks, tame and organised for the enjoyment of dog walkers and weekend cyclists.

I take a walk through the strips of forest and fields bordering Recklinghausen, a medieval town turned mining centre in the industrial heartland of the Ruhrgebiet. Here slag heaps and steels mills rub up against horse paddocks and wheat fields, the old heavy industry threaded through with recovering wilderness and neat parks.

Mark, my walking companion, has lived here all his life, jogging, dog walking and mountain biking from Düsseldorf to Dortmund. When I ask how he knows where the nice walking is and how he doesn't end up in the grotty industrial estate by accident, he explains that there are regional hiking organisations ensuring the quality of the walking paths all across the country. A 'Wegwart' (path orderly) regularly hikes all the routes to check the signage, looks for fallen trees after rains or storms, controls the cleanliness of the path, marks unruly plant growth. This person is responsible for renewing the complex routing signs, which distinguishes between loops, A to B routes and long-distance tracks. They also record any maintenance work and damage for the local council to rectify.

Mark tells me that to become a Wegwart one as to attend seminars where one learns the correct way to attach a route sign to a lamp post, the appropriate paint to use for marking potholes, the minimum requirements for safe passage to avoid lawsuits from injured hikers. An up and coming Wegwart has to pass an exam or two to show their competence. It they conduct themselves properly they are eventually given expanded route networks and may even be allowed to train other wannabe Wegwarts. It strikes me that the German hiking groups have managed to turn a mildly enjoyable hobby - going for a walk - into an unpleasant chore, complete with studying for exams and the stress of having to work at what was once relaxation. How very German.

 

Since it's Mayday I have discovered another strange German tradition: troops of friends (mostly youngsters) drag a wheeled trolley around with them while drinking beer and listening to the loud music blaring from the stereo on the trolley. Apparently it's entertaining to walk around the neighbourhood and parks all day while drinking.

And last but not least we shop at the local farm store for freshly cut asparagus and new potatoes for our dinner. Asparagus season is taken very seriously here, with recipes traded as treasures, asparagus festivals and wines that match the most popular recipe of asparagus, new potatoes, slices of ham and Hollandaise sauce. A perfect combination, I think. And asparagus season is over far too soon, so we stuff ourselves at dinner time.

 

Border crossings

Arriving in Europe through the Balkans has meant many many border crossings. One day we had breakfast in Macedonia, coffee on the high plains of the Kosovo and dinner on the coast of Montenegro. Countries have blurred, we barely have time to put our passports away, but we have also crossed plenty of invisible borders: the ‘donkey cart on the road’ border, or the ‘reliable road signs’ border, the ‘clean toilets at roadside petrol stations’ and the ‘no more flatbread’ border. Some we have relished (who doesn’t like a clean toilet), but there are some things I miss in this return to old familiarities. There is a marked distance to strangers now. It’s not that I miss the intense privacy intrusions of Ethiopia or the hassling touts of Egypt, but the easy hospitality of Sudan and the friendly curiosity of almost anywhere we pulled up, the willingness to accept my poor attempt at local language in the Arab world.

One of the concerns I had about this trip has been whether we’d be able to cross all those African borders, whether we’d have to bribe people, whether we’d be refused visas or have our car searched. None of these worries became reality in the end. Border formalities were unfailingly chaotic and inscrutable, took a few hours of standing in the heat wondering what it is about bureaucracy that wins through with even the most relaxed nationalities, but no-one ever showed one bit of interest in the contents of our car or gave us grief about our visas. There was of course the exception of Egypt where at both the incoming border at Aswan and the exit border at Nuweiba the officials displayed complete contempt for any sense of efficiency, courtesy or honesty, but that was a big exception. Now we are in the EU borders have become a part of that memory of strange things we did in Africa. We recently crossed the ‘not having to get out of the car’ border, and now they just are no more until we again leave the safe bosom of our home continent.

European landfall

We have arrived on our home continent. Actually, we have crossed it half way already, in a mad dash to get to central heating and warm showers, i.e. my brother's house. Have a look at the map and you'll see the distances we made in the last three days. Yay for being able to drive in the dark again. I expect the next update to announce our arrival.

Happy new decade!