Halloween

Here is Olivia dressed up as a witch for Halloween. She was invited to a friend's house for a party and I think she had fun, but came home with only 3 pieces of candy. She said, "Now can we go trick-or-treating?" but, of course, they don't really do trick-or-treating here. She was so disappointed. We'd told her before, but you know when you hear something you don't like, it's best to forget it. I asked her if it was the going door to door she missed or the candy and she said, "Well, the candy mostly." I promised she could pick out a small bag of candy at the candy stall in the market this weekend. That seemed to satisfy her. Cultural clash temporarily diverted. I've got to get thinking about how to deal with Thanksgiving.

Punting this past Sunday

Since the weather has been uncommonly sunny for autumn in England, we've been trying to do lots outdoors. This past Sunday we packed a little picnic lunch and went punting after church. We thought a nice tour along the backs of the colleges would be an educational event for our children. Despite their father's best efforts, they remained somewhat ambivalent to the glorious wonders, history and architecture of our surroundings. Their main interest seemed to be who got what half of the large gingerbread man recently purchased in the market as a special treat. Eliot's comments consisted of exclaiming, "Punt Crash!" every time we came close to another punt, even though we were never close to crashing. He also toyed with the idea of blowing the whistle on his life jacket and kept asking why he couldn't. Olivia said she was tired. Perhaps you will find the pictures from the afternoon enlightening since the verdict is out on whether the kids did or not.


Ivy covering one of the buildings at St. John's College.



Coming out from under the "Bridge of Sighs."


King's College chapel and Trinity College to the left.

Bury St. Edmunds

On Saturday we took the train to a town called Bury St Edmunds, a bit less than an hour from Cambridge. St Edmund was the last king of East Anglia (the easternmost region of England); the Danes killed him in 856, and his body was reburied here in 903. A thousand years ago this whole region of England was under pretty much constant attack by rampaging Scandinavians. Why they wanted it I’m not sure, since much of it was under water. But that’s a story for another day. Anyway, the town gets its name from the shrine to St. Edmund; pretty quickly a powerful Benedictine monastery grew up around the shrine, and became a famous pilgrimage site. The abbey is mentioned in the Domesday book.

St. Edmundsbury Abbey was apparently the wealthiest abbey in England by the time Henry VIII got his big idea, so it really took a beating in the 1530s. Henry liked to collect "evidence" of just how bad the abbeys and monasteries were; when he sent one of his goons to Bury in 1535, the report noted "much guzzling, gambling, wine, and women." Much to our disappointment, none of these were in evidence during our visit. Today the abbey is just a picturesque ruin, spread out over many acres, which the town maintains as a huge public park, with lovely flowers, a playground, and so on. The walls themselves are pretty worn down; it turns out that after the dissolution the good townsfolk of Bury used it as a quarry. So the stone is spread all over town; a kind of literal dissolution, I guess, which nicely matches the literalistic tenor of the English Reformation. Anyway, it’s a really great place, and the kids had a terrific time clambering about on the walls.


Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, the queen of France, had been buried in the Abbey. But when Henry stamped out Catholicism in England, and the abbey along with it, he had to exhume his own sister and then re-bury her in nearby St. Mary’s church. I guess there are some unforeseen consequences when you pick a fight with the Pope.

While Wendy and the kids were romping about in the ruins, I wandered off a bit and happened, quite by chance, on the Greene King Brewery. Greene King is the largest brewer in this part of England, and they’ve been based in Bury St Edmunds since their founding 150 years ago. Beer is made from barley, and apparently the barley in East Anglia is the best in England. There’s a museum at the brewery, so I wandered in. It turns out that beer has been brewed in Bury St. Edmunds for an awfully long time. The monks were apparently going at it full tilt by the 12th century, selling beer to all the pilgrims who came to the abbey and presumably making a nice little profit. But a lot of the product never left the abbey walls. According to the account books, in the 13th century the monks were allowed a ration of a gallon of beer a day. If they were ill, this was increased to a gallon and a half per day.

Now, I’ve long thought that I would be a good candidate for the monastic life. (Wendy, who knows me pretty well, thinks this is preposterous. You be the judge.) But I was never quite sure why it was so appealing. Now I know. A gallon of beer a day! Sure, the poverty and the chastity would be hard, but, sheesh, that’s a lot of free beer.