Long day

23/1/09 9:45 PM

Gosh, my legs hurt. They don’t mind walking so much. It’s the stopping that makes them start aching…

I had to go to the bank today. My debit card still hasn’t arrived. It did arrive in London, at the BUNAC office, and they forwarded it to me 11 days ago, but it never showed up. Sally figures if it isn’t here already, it won’t turn up, so I had to go cancel it and get a new debit card and PIN. Luckily, I have no money in my UK account (I was waiting for my card), so even if some unscrupulous person got their hands on it, they wouldn’t be able to do anything.

After the bank, I went to the visitor services office to talk to Lesley, the volunteer coordinator. She gave me some times to work in the chapter house as steward, including 1-3 and 3-4:30 today. Both of those shifts only had one person showing up. The second shift, though, the lady never did show up, so I was on my own.

The chapter house was very busy today. There were 3 groups of 50 American students, 150 in total, one right after the other. I was forever repeating “No photography in here, please,” and watching as they filtered in, glanced at Magna Carta, and then clumped up to talk about their hair or coats or whatever. Sigh. Is there no awe and reverence for a nearly-800 year old document? At the end of the day, a group of Spanish teenagers came in, and UGH! I had to tell every single one of them “No pictures in this building,” and I had to keep repeating it because they thought it meant “No pictures of Magna Carta” and then “No pictures of this side of the wall,” and then “No pictures of the ceiling.” No matter how many times I said “None in this whole building,” they kept trying to take more pictures.

Pictures are forbidden in the chapter house for conservation and security reasons. We don’t want anyone being able to study the security measures for Magna Carta (not really that many, to be honest) and stealing it, nor do we want forgeries of any of the valuable and ancient items on display, nor do we want people taking flash pictures of the light-sensitive ancient piece of history. There are signs everywhere with pictures of cameras and the big circle with a line through it, a fairly universal sign for “NO PICTURES,” I assumed. Sigh.

I had to tell the Spanish group about fifty times that we were closed, too. The constable came in to lock up Magna Carta, and I would tell a group “We’re closed, please leave,” so they’d head toward the exit. I’d move to another group, and after telling them we had closed, I’d turn around and see the first group had sat down a few feet away from where they had started, so go back to them and repeat “Closed, please leave,” and gesture to the door (and they understood, because they did speak some English), and then I’d see that the second group had only gone a few feet, and a third group was keeping the constable from locking up because they decided that now they wanted to study Magna Carta in great detail… Ugh!

But I did learn a bit about Magna Carta today, from listening to another steward. Not only is Salisbury’s copy the best preserved of the four original, but it is also the best written. The handwriting is the same from top to bottom, unique among the four surviving copies, and there are no major mistakes, no missing words, no scratched out typos. It is quite an impressive piece of writing, if I do say so myself. A popular question was “How many pages is it?” and everyone was always astounded when I answered, “Just the one.”

One boy, though, one of the American teenagers from Syracuse, came up to me and said, “Now, as an Anglican, what do you worship? As a Roman Catholic, we worship Jesus Christ, but what do Anglicans worship?” It took some time to explain that there really isn’t much difference between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, and that yes, we do worship Jesus too. I had to turn him around and show him the massive sculpture of Jesus up on the wall with the symbols of the four evangelists around Him to convince him that we were Christians here, same as the Catholics. I also told him that if he were to go to a service in the Cathedral, he would find it very familiar to his own. Honestly, though, who taught him about different faiths!?

There was a camel in the Cathedral today. A big one, the sort with two humps. Brom something. Tomorrow night, you see, is a big concert that the girl choristers are putting on called “Starry Night,” and it’s about Epiphany and the three kings coming to see Baby Jesus. The kings brought a camel, hence the use of a camel in the concert. Don’t ask me why they decided to bring the camel in. Everyone is cringing at the thought of camel droppings and camel piss and spit, and they have a cover to put on the font so the camel doesn’t try to drink from it. Apparently, it’s the wrong sort of camel, anyway, since the two-humped ones are from the Gobi desert, which is not where the magi came from. Today, it was in the cathedral for rehearsals.

At the end of the day, there were three Canadian men who came into the chapter house. They asked a lot of questions and were genuinely interested in things. When I was leaving, I ran into them again in the Cathedral itself, so I gave them a tour. It was my first tour of the Cathedral, and they thought I did a great job. I had such a grin on my face walking home from that! They had also asked me about the location of the Haunch of Venison, a pub/restaurant in a building that’s as old as the Cathedral itself (not a good place to eat, from my experiences there). I was able to direct them there, though, so I felt like such a Salisbury native. :)

I returned home around 6:15, when Sally reminded me that I had agreed to go out with Linda at 7. Linda has been trying to hook me up with people my own age, because she’s worried that I might be getting lonely here. I’m not getting lonely, not at all! Most of you know that I’m quite a loner by nature, so I enjoy being alone or just curling up with the cat. After all the people in the chapter house, I was feeling quite drained and tired, but I did say I would meet Linda and her friend, a young woman from Columbia named Sandra, who is 23, and go for a drink with them.

It was with weary legs that I trudged back to Sarum College. I had no interest in going out for a drink at a pub (I don’t drink) with someone my age (I prefer the company of older people, to be honest, if I have to spend time with anyone), and at dinner time. I hadn’t eaten since an early lunch, aside from a few digestives I had in my purse and munched on along the way. Good thing I did, too, since the drink only included a small bag of crisps as meal. I didn’t get to start cooking my dinner until after 9 PM.

The drink, though, wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Sandra’s in Salisbury to learn English, and she has a very good grasp on it. The three of us did a lot of comparing between our respective countries, and Sandra seems to be a quiet and intelligent person. She also had an awesome coat that she had bought at Laura Ashley’s in town, so I’m going to look for it tomorrow.

Anyway, that was my day. Now I’m quite tired and ready for sleep. My legs still ache. Tomorrow is Market Day, though, so doughnuts! Maybe I’ll take a bath tomorrow, and soak my calf muscles.

That’s one nice thing here—bathtubs are extra long. The Brits love their baths. :)

(I’m getting the hang of flushing the toilet, too!)