All things must come to an end

12/4/09 9:35 PM

This might be my last entry in this journal, so I’m going to make a list of everything I want to talk about. I’ve found that sometimes I forget to touch on things because I get distracted. This way, I have a list to refer back to.

Palm Sunday

Vergers

Packing

Eggs

Easter Sunday

Dawn Service

Jesus Christ is Risen Today

Christmas Cards

Tom’s visit

My phone

Leaving

Meeting friends

Deal or No Deal

Sinks

Chocolate

Sally

Trip into the Close

Arundells

Holy Week

I think that’s everything.

Okay.

Let’s start with Palm Sunday, since I forgot to talk about that last time.

For the Palm Sunday service, we met in the Choristers’ Green, outside the Cathedral and over by the main gate and Ann’s house. It’s not the same section of grass that surrounds the Cathedral, but it’s just across the road and still inside the walls. Some of us were given huge palm branches, others (like me) just got palm crosses. The children were all dressed up like first century people, and there was a donkey and her foal. The Bishop and clergy and boys’ choir all came out and started the service, then clergy, choir, children, congregation, and donkey all processed down the road and up to the west front of the Cathedral, where the girls’ choir was waiting. Some of them were up in a gallery behind the statues inside, and they sang through openings in the wall to give the statues voices. It was all very lovely.

The processional hymn was the one that goes “All glory, laud, and honor, to thee Redeemer King.” Same one we sing back in St. Paul’s. That made me grin (and choke on tears a couple times—why do these services get me so emotional!? My voice kept cracking!). And, just like a good Palm Sunday procession, the back and the front of the procession got out of sync with each other, so by the time we reached the west front, we were in a different place than the choir. Oh well. The weather was beautiful, blue skies and warm sun. After a bit more outside the Cathedral, we all went in the west doors. John had the cauldron of incense… this was a cauldron the size of my head, on a chain, and he’d do 360s with it. I grinned.

For the gospel reading, the precentor (Jeremy) and the choirs sang the passion. Jeremy sang all the narration, and various choir members too different parts. It was quite lovely. The Salisbury choir is impressive.

One thing the Cathedral can do amazingly well is create atmosphere. Palm Sunday was jubilant, with the Cathedral growing more and more mournful all throughout Holy Week, culminating in a very sad and heavy Saturday. The chairs were all moved out of the nave and a line of votive candles went up one side, around the spire crossing, and back down the other. Visitors were forbidden to take pictures (though some still did—a note to anyone travelling anywhere. If you are told “No Photography,” that does NOT mean, “No Flash Photography, no-flash is okay.” That means NO PHOTOGRAPHY AT ALL. There may be security reasons, there may be respect reasons… but no pictures, period. If it says “No Flash Photography,” then all they’re concerned with is the light, and you can take no-flash pictures. There is a distinction. Amanda and I were talking about that, and she groaned and started waving her hands around an inch from my face “It’s like this: I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you!” I caught a couple visitors taking pictures on Saturday, and when I was at Westminster Abbey, I got into a bit of an argument with a lady. It went like this.

“Excuse me, Ma’am, but there’s no photography in here.”

“I’m not using flash.”

“No photography.”

“It’s not flash!”

“No photography!”

“It’s not flash!”

Ugh.

Anyway. Atmosphere.

There were priests in black cassocks praying in the center of all those candles all day. The Cathedral was stripped of ornamentation (though I suspect this is partly an excuse to give the vergers a chance to shine it all up before Easter, as that was what they were frantically doing when I dropped in with some Easter eggs for them) and the lights were off. It was a grey and gloomy day, so the whole Cathedral was dim and somber. Almost no one was speaking (which was another thing visitors were asked), and those who were or who had to were being very reverent and hushed. Vespers that night was the same way, very, very somber and mournful. They did have lights on for that, but just the faint ceiling and window lights, enough to illuminate things just enough so people weren’t in danger of bumping into things. There was a watch all night long, with people giving readings on every hour and some half hours, and keeping the cauldron with the incense lit and stocked.

The Thursday before, Maundy Thursday, I went to the Mass of the Chrism, where all the priests of the diocese came in to renew their vows and receive oil for the next year. They just kept coming! About a third of the nave was reserved just for the priests. Ann was there, but we didn’t have time to chat.

On Easter Sunday, the Cathedral had a dawn service. It started at 5 AM. FIVE A.M.! But I went, because hey, only gonna be here once, right? (Wrong: I’ll be here again. Somehow. But for now, only here once). I got up at 4, pulled some clothes on, ran a damp brush through my hair (shower? At that hour!?), and made myself a cup of soup (creamy tomato and basil, yum! (OH! I need to pack the rest!)). Gizmo came wandering into the kitchen, staring at me in confusion and wondering what the heck I was doing moving around at that hour. Then I dashed off.

The Jellicle Ball, from the musical Cats, is a wonderful ‘wake up’ song for that hour with a nice bright moon. I danced to the Cathedral. Until I got inside the gate, that is, because once inside the gate, there were other people around.

The Cathedral was all lit up on the outside, and a big stack of wood for the bonfire was waiting. I was given a candle and a service guide… and then the outside lights shut off. The ushers were going around with torches to give people candles and bulletins (unlit, by the way. The only lights were from the torches and street lights). They kept shining the torches in my eyes, those super bright ones (though not on purpose, I’m sure). At 5 AM (the bells tolled), we saw the silhouette of the cross and torches being carried to the bonfire, and the bishop’s hat. A microphone had been set up, and a little light, and someone stepped up and gave a reading from Genesis. In the beginning, God created the earth, and then he created the light, and as he was creating the light in the reading, someone else darted forward and lit the bonfire. It went up fast, lots of crackling and popping and big yellow flames. The service had begun.

A torch was lit from the bonfire, and then the west doors swung open and the clergy processed inside, carrying the unlit paschal candle. The congregation all followed. Once we were all inside, the doors swung shut again with a boom. The whole Cathedral was dark except for the exit signs and the torch held aloft (big torch, on a very tall staff). From this torch, the paschal candle was lit, and there was a prayer while a verger nipped off with the torch to extinguish it. The paschal candle just gave a little light, and the whole Cathedral was around us, all massive and dark and quiet. Then the clergy lit their candles and started going around, spreading the flame among the congregation’s candles, and we all moved further into the church. “The Light of Christ/Thanks be to God” was sung, and the procession stopped a couple times until the paschal candle was placed into a holder at the very center of the church, and everyone gathered around. Then we went back to the font and watched the water rise as the font was turned on, and the bishop baptized a boy and flung water on everyone else. He missed me, but when we all went to the nave seats afterwards, during the peace, he came up and flung more water on people, got me that time. I kept ending up next to little old women who would sing loud and just a touch off-key and shrilly, right in my ear. Owwie. Made it through, though. More people were confirmed, and then we moved up into the quire. Most of the service was done standing up, because people weren’t in places where there were many seats.

There was bell ringing after the “Alleluia, Christ is risen! / The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!” bit, and a song was sung by the choir, but it wasn’t the “Jesus Christ is Risen Today (Aaaaalleluia)” song that St. Paul’s always sings. I missed that, I did. I wanted to belt it out with the rest of the congregation, but I behaved myself and just listened to the choir sing.

On a tangent, I’ve decided that while I love to listen to the Evensong service, I don’t like to attend it much. You don’t do much of anything. The choir does all the singing. I don’t care much for most hymns, but I’d rather sing them badly than just listen to them sung well. It’s too boring to just sit there and let someone else have the fun. Isn’t that what the hymns are for, to let you sing, no matter how poorly, without being embarrassed about singing badly in front of others? (Just kidding. Mostly)

The rest of the service was pretty standard Communion stuff, and then we all processed out and around the cloisters a couple times, singing “Suffrixit Dominus vere, alleluia, alleluia, suffrixit Christus hominae, alleluia, alleluia,” (repeat to infinity).

After the procession, there was champagne in the cloisters and a breakfast in the Chapter House if you paid £3. I paid and went in. Yummy cheese and bread and juices and water and porridge and cereal and fruit salad and coffee and tea and croissants and pain au chocolate and more bread and pancakes and chocolates. Yummy. :)

I had seen Amanda going into the Cathedral after the service (she didn’t have to work the dawn service, but she was on all the rest of the day, she had told me), so I went in to try to talk to her to say good-bye, in case I didn’t see her again. About halfway to the vestry, it hit me that I was leaving tomorrow, and I went into St. Michael’s chapel to cry. Again with all the emotions. This time, though, I felt quite heartbroken, moreso than when I didn’t get the verger position. In fact, when I didn’t get the verger position, I didn’t feel at all like this. No tears were shed over that, oddly enough (and no, they don’t have a new verger yet. Still checking references. Amanda hopes they get on with it, though, because the vergers are going crazy trying to do the work of an extra person).

I went back to bed after that, and spent the afternoon packing. Sally went to London to visit her kids and get her car back (she’s driving me and my bags to the coach station tomorrow). At 3, I went to Evensong and sat with Linda. It was lovely, and they did have the Jesus Christ is Risen Today song, but with altered lyrics and not nearly so many alleluias. They also had a much drearier tune. I refused to sing it and just sang it happily in my head. After Evensong, I ran into Sandra (way back at the beginning, the girl Linda took me out to have drinks with) as she was going into the Cathedral, so I got to say good-bye to her. I did get to say good-bye to Amanda after the service and my eyes only watered once. She walked me out and gave me lots of hugs.

Let’s see, how’s my list looking?

      Packing

Eggs

Christmas Cards

Tom’s visit

My phone

Deal or No Deal

Sinks

Chocolate

Sally

Trip into the Close

Arundells

Not too shabby! Okay… let’s do Eggs next.

Sally’s mother was Ukranian, so she taught Sally how to decorate Easter Eggs. Sally usually teaches kids, but she has to get special eggs to do so. Brown eggs don’t work, and all you can find in England is brown eggs. She did manage to find one stall at the market that offered to get her white eggs. Most of the eggs were whiteish, some were pale brown, but all were very light. Four and a half dozen eggs.

Only one girl wanted to learn how to decorate eggs this year.

Sally and I stayed up until midnight one night, decorating these eggs. I don’t think I was very good, but I’ll let you decide for yourself. The first picture is of eggs Sally did. The rest are mine (most of my eggs had a good angle and a bad angle).

I gave this one to Mr. Donutman. He was sad to see me go, he said.

My favourite

Oops, broke this one.

I made a basket of the best of my eggs and gave them to the vergers. No way can Sally eat four dozen hard-boiled eggs.

This is Sally’s Easter Tree, a very German tradition, she said. The leaves will open and it will be lovely.

Sally has been so wonderful to me, though. She bought me a Magna Carta t-shirt because everyone should own a Magna Carta shirt, she says, as well as a magnet of Wolfie, a book on the curiosities of Salisbury Cathedral, and a foldout of the west front. She also gave me all of April free of rent. That’s 13 days with no rent! I had to do something for her, so I racked my brains for an idea. At the beginning of the year, I remember her being quite happy over a new knife someone had given her, and how she’s never had a sharp knife before. So then I went all over Salisbury and ended up with a set of four knives endorsed by a celebrity chef and specially crafted to his standards (on sale for half-price). I got carded for the first time: it’s illegal to sell knives to people under 18 in the UK. I then bought a gift set from Poundland, pulled the price tags off, wrapped them up, and gave them to her. She was so excited just to get a bag (though said the whole reason she cut my rent was so I could get my family things, not her things!), and asked if she had to wait until Easter to open it. I told her to go ahead—it was a thank-you gift, not an Easter one. She was so excited to see her new knives (and apparently, she likes the celebrity chef) and couldn’t wait to get them open and start cutting. She made herself a ham sandwich so she could cut the roll with the bread knife, and then cut the ham for the sandwich, and then cut the leftover ham so it was ready, and then had another sandwich and used a different knife to cut the roll… she was giggling and bouncing around like a schoolgirl. I was so happy that I had hit on the right sort of gift for her. Sally’s been absolutely amazing, even if her cleaning of my room did annoy me. :D

That was on Wednesdayish, and she’s still talking about her new knives. Her new knives meant she could retire some of the old ones, including knives that were 42 years old that she’d had since she travelled the world as an army wife. Definitely time for some sharp new knives!

She didn’t let me just give them to her, though. You can’t give someone knives, she told me, or else it’s your fault when they cut themselves. She had to pay me something for them, and the traditional payment was 10p. So I got a nice 10p coin for the knives. A fair trade, I’d say. I love making people happy. :)

Packing

Christmas Cards

Tom’s visit

My phone

Deal or No Deal

Sinks

Chocolate

Trip into the Close

Arundells

Sally snuck me in to a tour of Arundells as well on Saturday. She works at Arundells, mans the front desk, and usually you have to pay for a tour. This is a little medieval house (with lots of updating over the years) that used to belong to Prime Minister Edward Heath until his death in 2005. Now it’s open to visitors. It was quite a nice little house, full of paintings by famous people (two Winston Churchills) and signed photos of famous people (he was PM during the Nixon era) and it had lovely Chinese wallpaper in the staircase. The best part, though, were the gardens, which extended all the way down to the river Avon and were landscaped so you couldn’t get a clear shot of the house from the river (ex-PM is like an ex-President, lots of security). No pictures of Arundells for you, sorry.

I do have pictures of my usual way into the Close, though. Here’s a step by step guide of what I see.

Sally’s house.

River Avon

St. Nicholas’ Hospital, an almshouse. Brother Patrick and Margaret both live there. It was founded in 1215, same year Magna Carta was born.

Harnham Gate

The Cathedral!

The bonfire wood for the dawn service.

Keep going ahead down the path in front of the Cathedral and you’ll get to Choristers’ Green and then into the city.

Packing

Christmas Cards

Tom’s visit

My phone

Deal or No Deal

Sinks

Chocolate

Sally’s sinks are odd. She has all 3 kinds of taps (let me know if there are any others). There’s the split tap, typical of most older British homes. Split taps have two separate taps, one for hot water, one for cold, on opposite sides of the sink. Hot water gets very hot, cold water gets very cold, and neither is comfortable to wash your hands in for long. She has single taps, where hot and cold come out of the same tap and you can mix them to get a comfortable and steady temperature, and she has the oddest little hybrid tap, which looks like a single tap except that the hot comes out one half, the cold comes out the other, and there is a SPACE IN THE MIDDLE. So if you try to create a comfortable temperature, you get one side of the flow that’s boiling, one side that’s freezing, and no mixing at all. Yeowch!

I’ve also been finding myself losing interest in Deal or No Deal (just in time to leave, right?) There’s one more person whose show I want to see (Graham, aka Evil Tarzan or Fluffy Sex God), but other than that, I’m ready to move on. Woo!

Like I said, I’ve been packing today. I’m almost completely done, just have the things I’m using tonight and tomorrow morning left to stuff in somewhere. I think my bags are a bit overweight. :\ Oh well. If I have to pay, I have to pay. Online check-in isn’t working, though, for some reason. Grr.

Every time I thought I was done, I’d zip the bag, grin to myself, look up, and spot something else that needed to get put away. I’ve got it all, now. I just hope none of my chocolates get confiscated by security. I’ve tried not to pack anything opened. I also hope they don’t get crushed. Some of them are pretty, like this egg that was sitting on my bed when I got back from the dawn service.

Thanks, Sally!

While I was packing, I found a Christmas card for Father Jason and his family. I was supposed to mail it when I got here and got his address. Oops.

I did have his address, though, so that’s all ready to go in the mail tomorrow. Sorry, Father Jason! It’s my fault the card was delayed, not my mom’s, even though her name is on it!

Until just a few days ago, I also had a Christmas card for my friend Tom, who lives in Poole and goes to University in Cardiff. I met him last time I was in England, and we’re really good friends (both love Cats and cats and chocolate). Salisbury was a direct line from his home, though, so during his Easter holidays, he came up to visit and I gave him his card and his gift (two theatre-sized boxes of mixed Nerds, a sweet he’s become addicted to since I brought him some in 2007, but which you just can’t find in the UK). He had a Christmas gift for me too… but he forgot to bring it! He said he put it in the post, but it’s got less than 12 hours to reach me, on a bank holiday. I don’t think it’s going to make it this time, Tom.

While he was here, though, we went to a sandwich shop for lunch and talked about history (England is full of it) and politics (he wanted McCain to win so he’d die and Palin would take over and Bush could then say he wasn’t the stupidest president (he was joking)). Then we went for a walk out to Old Sarum, the old hillfort that was the original site of the city of Salisbury. There was strife between the castle people and the cathedral people, though, so the old cathedral got permission to move, and they built the New Church, which is Salisbury Cathedral today. The town just kinda followed, and the hillfort became abandoned. It’s about 2 miles north of Salisbury, and is now owned by English Heritage. It was a beautiful day and the views were amazing. Tom liked to pose on the ruins of the castle.

The old cathedral’s foundations.

BEAUTIFUL day

New Sarum from Old Sarum

That wasn’t why we went to Old Sarum, though. I suggested the trip with just one motivation in mind (and made sure Tom knew it so he didn’t agree to something he didn’t want to do).

Emily likes English Heritage lip balm. The only English Heritage site in the area is Old Sarum. I was in England, so it was only appropriate that I stock her up.

I bought out all the lip balm on display (only 4 containers). They look a bit different, Emily, but they have the same flavors, so I think it was just a container redesign. Sally has offered to keep her eye out for them if you ever want more.

We then paid the £3.30 to get access to the castle ruins and Tom had a delightful day, since the last time he’d been here was when he was 10, on a school trip. He felt like a child again, he said. He didn’t like, though, that I knew more about Salisbury than he did. This was his country, he kept saying, he should be showing me around!

It might be his country, but Salisbury’s MY city.

That evening, he made chicken curry and I made chocolate chip cookies, and we drank coke. Only just now do I realize that everything we had started with a c. Amazing. I had taught him my cookie recipe, and he made it with great success, so much so that cookie thieves are asking him when he’s going to make more. We tried to find the Saturday Night Live skits online, but no site would let you watch it in the UK. So sad!

My phone

One thing left, and it’s not a long one! My phone will let me write texts but not send them. If anyone can help me solve this conundrum, I’d be thrilled. Thanks so much!

And now it’s time to put pictures in and post this online. I’m getting sleepy, so I think I should try to sleep. I’m going to miss this country and city and cathedral and people so much. And the cat. :) At least I’ll be coming home to Sophie.

(Gizmo flopped down on the keyboard today when I tried to print my bus ticket. ON the keyboard).

I’m not sure if I’m going to continue this blog once I’m back in the States. Surely my life in the US isn’t as fun and exciting as my life in the UK, right? I know some of you have expressed interest in my continuing to post in it, though, so I don’t know. Maybe I will.

In other news, these are my smoothies. One is Rasberry/Cranberry, the other is Coconut/Pineapple/Banana. Both are yummy, and both were obviously designed by someone having fun. It took me 14 tries to get good pictures of the bottoms.

This one says: Unscrew cap at other end to access smoothie

This one says: If you forgot to put the cap back on, your trainers are probably now rather wet.

They both say this: *it helps if the cap’s on.

And in OTHER other news, this game is fun.

http://www.skt-products.com/contents/hikkoshi.html

You don’t need to understand the writing to play it. It’s called Samauri Furniture Movers or something like that. Click once to start the catapult, click again to release the object, and hope it lands in the outline. My high score is 13343. What’s yours?