Weekend in Winchester
Yeah, this one's a bit late, sorry to everyone who waits with baited breath to be updated on my life.
I went to see Crimson Peak with Matt, Kelly and Martyn (fellow choir members) so if you don't want spoilers or don't care, skip this paragraph. Positives first, the movie is beautiful, visually stunning. Del Toro uses such beautiful bright colours, from the walls to the period dresses and the thought that went into the composition of each frame is gorgeous. That being said, I feel like the story fell flat. I was hoping for something with the soul of Only Lovers Left Alive, and given that it shared 2/3s of the cast it was a reasonable hope. Tom Hiddleston was amazing and charming as always, and Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chasten were great. I feel like the story and writing dropped the ball, you could almost guess every "twist" just from watching the trailer, at no point was I surprised or made to think. Symbolism without meaning and story without substance. There was so much potential in the story, it's frustrating, I'm still rewriting bits in my head. I feel like I want to take the Waltz scene, put the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack behind it and just watch it over and over again. I could go on, but I'll spare you. On the plus side, the Doctor Who episode this week was awesome, gotta love Osgood!
Friday morning a couple people from class went to the Canterbury Cathedral Archives. In one of the back rooms, tucked away behind a heavy wooden door are rows of packed shelves, lined with old books. Down the centre aisle stands a long glass case. Illuminated manuscripts from the 12th century onwards, Book of Hours, Martyrologies, and farther down, the beginnings of printed books, Chaucer’s Tales, and personal devotionals. It’s so mind-boggling just to see the stories of each of the books, notes made in the margins, evidence of rebinding, passages that are crossed out due to religiously tumultuous times, but left legible enough for all practical purposes. Unfortunately you're not allowed to take photos, so I took a quick one through the door before they said not to.
Before we went back up I finally bought a tripod so I took a few pictures of Chiara in the beautiful fall colours. Some of these will definitely be added to my main photography page. This weekend was the Big Weekend Away with the Christian Unions from around southeast England in Winchester. A huge group congregated outside Venue and all shuffled onto the coach bus. We arrived a few hours later, to the church, had the introductory welcome talk and headed to the other church where we were spending the night. The next hour or so was spent blowing up air mattresses, or in my case, arranging the chairs into a lovely bed and then since we were still hungry we walked to the local chippy, just past the Mucky Duck which was a really cute little pub. Chippy's are such a unique part of British culture, you get massive pieces of fish and chips wrapped up in so much paper it feel like Christmas morning. Sleep was as good as can be as expected snuggled up on stacking chairs and the rubbery creaking of shifting air mattresses as ambiance.
After breakfast, and the morning seminars we had the afternoon off so a group of us walked into town. First up was Winchester Cathedral (Canterbury’s is nicer) and a break under one of the trees in the park. It was such an idyllic scene with the fall colours, bright sunshine and a bunch of little kids in costumes running around. You could see where they’re starting to get set up for the Christmas market, can’t wait for those! After a quick loop of the town museum we went up High Street to their Westgate (Canterbury's is bigger... and better preserved... and cars can go under it... I'm not competitive) but this one you can walk up and get a lovely view of the Winchester and a mini museum to look around.
Alexis, Esther and I continued on to the Great Hall, the only bit of Winchester castle still standing. Inside, at one end are two very Minas Tirith looking doors which were commissioned for Princess Diana's wedding and at the other, hanging on the wall is King Arthur's round table. While it's possible there was a King Arthur during the 6th century, the way he exists in literary forms is pretty much harlequin romance, which apparently Edward I was a big fan of. He built the original table, possibly for a King Arthur themed tournament (theme parties are cool), but the paint job was added much later by Henry the VIII, who oh so humbly painted his own portrait in the position of King Arthur. The Medieval gardens were lovely and we poked our heads into various charity shops as we headed back down the hill.
Esther and I continued down the walk to the river while Alexis met up with the others in a coffee shop. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves as best they can, the colours and the scenery made for the perfect fall scene. There were a few walkers on the path but heading back to the main street the roads were bare. We got turned around a bit and found the house where Jane Austin died. Once we reached the centre though, the Halloween crowd was out in full force. We waded through the throngs of mini Harry Potters and full-sized Zombies back to the church. In my humble opinion 'Zombie' is a very lazy costume - we saw zombie constuction workers, zombie tennis player, pretty much any other outfit someone had had in their closet and weren't planning on using got ripped up and soaked in fake blood. There were some people out with really impressive special effects make up on though. Halloween's not a big thing in England, it's mainly imported from American Media so I was a bit sad to miss out on it this year.
Back at the church there was a rugby game on. I semi know the rules: only pass backwards, get to the end, better than American football, the basics, but I had no context beyond that. The yellow team did something good and there was much rejoicing, then the black team did something good and there was much rejoicing and then I got bored and took a nap in the library. We had a 'hog roast' for supper, which is British version of BBQ, basically a long metal plate full of pork to put on sandwiches. A circle of life moment: pig eats out of a trough, and then we eat the pig out of the trough. We had an evening of praise and singing and then walked back.
The morning was gloriously foggy, the entire city looked like a fogged up bathroom mirror, or the loading screen for Assassins creed. Walking through graveyard on the way to the university felt really gothic. After a few more sessions and a quick lunch we were back on the bus and driving through the whiteness back to campus.
