Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Little England on a Chocolate Box

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The Cotswolds is a region of part midland/part south of England that extends to five counties and is much loved by tourists, both domestic and international as well as dwelt in by numerous celebrities, who may well be the only ones to be able to afford the properties. The region is famous for its bucolic countryside of rolling wheat fields and its towns and villages of golden Cotswold stone, picturesque and historic. These villages are what I suppose overseas visitors must imagine when they think of England, an England of thatched cottages, red phone boxes and pink roses around a door.

Husband had booked us into an old coaching inn, in Moreton-in-Marsh, which is either a small town or a large village; typically Cotswold but marginally less stuffed with tourists and traffic than the more famous ‘Stow-on-the-Wold’. The hotel,The Bell Inn lies in about the middle of the wide High Street [pretty much the only street] in a terrace of fine old stone buildings. Tolkien is said to have frequented The Bell and modelled ‘The Prancing Pony’, the hostelry where Frodo and his friends went first on their journey in Lord of the Rings, on this Inn, hence the large map of ‘Middle Earth’ covering one wall in the bar.

Our room at The Bell was out the back, across a courtyard and up some steps. Inside it had low beams and latticed windows and a great bathroom. So far so good, except that there was no fridge, meaning I’d have to ask the hosts to keep my meds in their kitchen fridge and have to trek down there first thing in the morning.

We wandered out and around Moreton-in-Marsh. It was our 20 year wedding anniversary and we opted to book a table at a Thai restaurant across the road, then had a look around. There’s not much to Moreton ITM, although it does have a [posh] Co-op supermarket, a station and a number of decent places to eat. It goes without saying that all the buildings are in carefully matched, golden-yellow stone [even the Co-op!].

Breakfast in the morning was well-cooked, if not sumptuous. Later we drove around and around the countryside until we managed to locate Hidcote Garden, a National Trust property I was keen to see. Built in the arts and crafts style, it is extensive, with many garden ‘rooms’, the planting at this time of year tumbling everywhere having benefitted from all of this summer’s rain. You could spend a couple of days here and still not get to see it all- there are borders of tall perennials, formal squares, huge pond areas, an ancient cedar- huge and graceful, wilder, informal parts that lead to an enormous park where sheep graze.

Towards the end of the afternoon the rain came and we dived into the cafe, then the shop, of course.

The following day we went to find some ancient standing stones nearby, which were impressive- a perfect ring on the hillside, as well as a couple of other stone monuments, then we opted to go to Stratford upon Avon, of which I could remember little from javing visited as a child. The town, of course was heaving with tourists of every nationality. It’s pleasant enough, with the canal and canal boats, the big RSC theatre and statues of the great man everywhere you look. We took a tour round the ‘Tudor Life’ museum, which was hilarious for its mock-ups.

Then it was back to our coaching inn and off for a meal to celebrate the ancient age I have now become- and very nice it was, too [the meal, not the age!]…

Grace is the alter ego of novelist and short story writer, Jane Deans. To date I have two published novels to my name: The Conways at Earthsend [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conways-at-Earthsend-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B08VNQT5YC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZHXO7687MYXE&keywords=the+conways+at+earthsend&qid=1673350649&sprefix=the+conways+at+earthsend%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-1 and The Year of Familiar Strangers [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Familiar-Strangers-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B00EWNXIFA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EQHJGCF8DSSL&keywords=The+year+of+familiar+strangers&qid=1673350789&sprefix=the+year+of+familiar+strangers%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1 Visit my writer Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=jane%20deans%2C%20novellist%2C%20short%20fiction%20and%20blog or my website: https://www.janedeans.com/

The Age of Ignorance

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I’ve written about regrets [https://gracelessageing.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/ive-had-a-few-but-then-again-too-few-to-mention/]. They are a negative bunch of thoughts to keep. But once you are older there is nothing to stop you feeling wistful about events, experiences or omissions in your life. I notice more, nowadays the extent of the knowledge I do not have, will never have.

Nothing emphasises this monstrous continent of ignorance more than TV quiz programmes. We’re not talking about ‘Family Fortunes’ or pointless ‘Pointless’ here. By TV quiz I mean ‘University Challenge’. Husband [a science PhD], rattles out answers like bullets. Who invented the stratospheric isolator? What is meant by the term paleoncentesis? What is the symbol for symbium axide? [you get my drift].

I can do some of the contemporary literature questions, but I’m pathetic on Shakespeare, having a sketchy familiarity only with the plays I was given to study at school, in the dark ages. Hence I can attempt questions on Hamlet and The Scottish Play [see what I did there?], although a failure to be mesmerised by the plot of Henry 1Vth [part 2] at the time has resulted in no memory of the details of the play whatsoever.

Chemistry; for me, this is the pinnacle [or rather, nadir] of ignorance. As a small child it started well, with a natural desire to make mud pies, perfume from garden flowers or interesting concoctions fabricated from kitchen substances. The problems really began at secondary school, where we sat in rows at benches housing fascinating apparatus; bulbous-shaped containers and complicated, glass instruments and occasionally we got to watch a substance smoking or bubbling from having been mixed with something else by the teacher. This experiment would be viewed from afar, though never undertaken by ourselves.

No, what we had to do was copy up copious, incomprehensible squiggly equations from the blackboard and make some sort of calculation from them. I am sorry to say that these unfathomable statements held no connection whatsoever in my mind to the exploding liquids in a glass bulb we’d witnessed from a great distance, away down the science lab.

We discovered early on that the chemistry teacher, Mr Prothuck was so deaf that we were able to overcome difficulties with our weekly, oral ‘test’ by being told the answers to his questions by the person we were sitting next to, who could simply refer to her exercise book where last week’s squiggly writings were recorded.

I was further hampered in my grasp of the subject by having to go each week, on Wednesday afternoons [our dose of double chemistry] for an entire term, to have the plaster checked on my broken arm-and for weeks after that, to have physiotherapy on said arm. I was delighted, of course to miss months of chemistry and I will never know what I missed in those many Wednesday afternoons, but it is also likely that if I’d been in attendance I would still be in ignorance about it.

Chemistry, reader is only the hair on the end of the elephant of ignorance’s tail. Motor mechanics, computer malfunctions, world economics, higher mathematics, Buddhism-and so much more. Personally, I blame the teachers…