Sun and Spain

Andalucia is the southernmost part of Spain. Parts of it get 320 days of sun a year. And having survived a couple of month’s worth of English winter—which isn’t harsh, just very, very, grey—we decided we needed some sun. Europe is full of these wonderful discount airlines that will whisk you anywhere for just a couple of pounds; the one we flew, called Ryan Air, is typical in that there’s no assigned seating—everybody just piles on board and sorts it out. When you’re flying with a family of four, and you want to sit together or at least within shouting distance, it can be a bit stressful—but we managed to secure seats near each other, and last Monday we flew to Jerez (pronounced “Hereth”) a moderately-sized city near the coast known for sherry (“sherry” is actually an Anglicization of “Jerez,” and the English have historically imported tons of the stuff), flamenco dancing, and horses. We didn’t get much experience of the first two—in fact, I don’t really like sherry, and flamenco dancing usually happens after midnight—but we got the third, in the form of the Andalucian School of Equestrian Arts. This doesn’t mean pictures of horses, but rather the art of getting horses to do things they don’t naturally want to do, like arch their necks in a particular way and dance on their hind legs. We watched them training some of the horses. We knew Olivia would love it, and she did. It’s all very beautiful, and stylized, and, well, Spanish.


This the part of the Spain that was under the control of various Islamic dynasties from about 750 to 1350, so there’s an amazing blend of architectural styles and cultural traditions still visible. In fact, Andalucia is probably one of the few places on earth were Christian, Jewish, and Muslim peoples lived together in relative peace. Jerez has a modest—though still impressive—complex called the Alcazar (a much smaller version of the famous Alhambra in Granada), which contains a Moorish castle and baths, a mosque, and a beautiful garden that’s been restored to what they think it looked like a thousand or so years ago. On our last day we spent a peaceful afternoon there, basking in the sun and absorbing the feel of the place. It’s striking to be reminded that while the Islamic dynasties in southern Spain were installing running water and heated floors in Cordoba, creating extraordinary works of art, and reading Aristotle, the rest of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, basically grunting at each other and eating with their hands. Certainly Eliot was impressed when I told him all this.

Snow in Cambridge

Last week it snowed, and everybody freaked out. London pretty much shut down; Colin's parents, who were staying in London at the time, reported that they couldn't get any food, the buses and the tube shut down, and all the shows in the West End canceled. Well, it was the biggest snowfall in 18 years, all five inches of it. Colin walked in to town on Monday and came back shaking his head: our bank was closed, and the sign in the window said: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to open the bank today." Given the current financial meltdown here, Colin said he thought maybe the bank had run out of money. But he looked around and nobody was rioting. Just a few inches of snow, and a few kids throwing snowballs.

There's a general sense of having survived a traumatic event, like living through the blitz. The normally emotionally reserved British got all emotive about things, too, especially on the radio. The local BBC radio station turned into a massive self-help exercise, with the announcers pleading with people to "tell us your story." How were they all managing? Where were the trouble spots? Had they gotten to work? We deeply needed to know.

No one owns a snow shovel in this town. In fact, I took an informal survey of my British friends and none of them had ever even seen a snow shovel for sale - anywhere. I had to describe it: "It's a shovel with a wide squared edge, used for shoveling large amounts of snow. No, not a garden shovel. These have a flat edge. No, not a spade, much larger, with a flat edge. No, not a trowel. You want to pick up the snow with it, not weed with it." You get the picture. The end result of the snow shovel shortage was that all the side walks became slushy and then froze, becoming absolutely impossible to navigate, especially when holding a 3 year olds' mittened hand. Especially when your 3 year old thinks sliding on the ice is really what walking is all about. We did manage to get Eliot to and from nursery without any major mishaps, just slogged through the slush and slid through the icey bits, and put our boots under the radiator to dry out when we got home. We were both wishing we had wellies!

What's interesting though is that people just accept this mess of slush and ice. None of the walks are cleared and so people will have to walk on ice for weeks, but instead of doing anything about it people just carry on. The circumstances are just beyond their control, I guess. On my way to yoga class last Tuesday night, I almost fell a couple of times on some black ice along the sidewalk behind the church. When I left my class an hour later, I decided to walk on the crunchy snow so as not to fall. Ahead of me, 3 British women walked single file, carefully placing each foot on the ice-covered walk. Crunch, Crunch, Crunch! I walked confidently by, stepping on the snow covered lawn. As I passed them one of them said, "Why didn't we think of that?" And I said (and thought later I really shouldn't have), "Because you are all well trained British women and when the signs say 'Keep off the Grass' it's hard to change."

Ely with Olivia - A Perfect Day Trip from Cambridge

Last week Olivia and I took the bus to the cathedral town of Ely. The history of the cathedral is particularly interesting to us because the original monastic community there was begun by a woman, a Saxon princess named Etheldreda . 1400 years ago Etheldreda married to a local prince and was given the Isle of Ely as a dowry. At that time, Ely was surrounded by marshes and accessible only by boat. Etheldreda’s first husband died and she married another prince, Egfrid. Seven years later Etheldreda had a vision and wished to become a nun. Egfrid released her from the bonds of marriage and she joined a monastery, but before long, Egfrid changed his mind and came to collect her. Etheldreda fled to the Isle of Ely and took refuge there. She founded a double monastery for monks and nuns in 673, but died six years later of a throat tumor brought on by the bubonic plague. When her wooden coffin was reopened in 695, her body had been preserved and the tumor healed. Thus the already revered woman became saintly. For 200 years the monastery flourished, but in 869 the Danes came and burned and pillaged everything.

In 970 the ruined monastery was reopened and in 1081 the work on the cathedral began. Many of the materials used in building the cathedral were brought to the site by boat. The cathedral is a wonderful mix of architecture from Norman all the way through to Victorian. Two unique features are the Lady Chapel completed in 1349 and the largest of its kind and the wooden octagonal lantern.

The Lady Chapel would have originally been brightly painted with beautifully colored stained glass and adorned with statues of saints. All this was destroyed in 1541 after the dissolution of the monasteries. Now, it is completely white with an striking statue of Mary in a bright blue gown, arms reaching towards the heavens, responding to God’s call. We both like the statue very much, but some people have criticized it for not being reverent enough.

The octagonal, wooden lantern was constructed after the central Norman tower fell in 1322. Instead of rebuilding a square tower a monk named Alan de Walsingham had the idea of opening the space up even more and created an eight-sided tower topped with a striking combination of 200 tons of wood and lead.

As we walked through the chapel pointing out scenes to each other in the stained glass windows, we both whispered. It does fill you with awe and wonder to be in such a place, marked and visited for more than a thousand years. As we left, we walked down the street and through the old porta, the huge stone gatehouse that you would have entered to get to the monastery originally. In a pasture on what used to be the site of the medieval vineyard, we watched 3 shaggy ponies munching on parsnips .

Merry Christmas

Ho, Ho, Ho

There are some times when you realize that you really don’t belong in this country, much as you may love it.

Last week we went to something called “Reindeer Night” at a local farm. Olivia’s choir from school was singing, and Wendy had arranged for a ride earlier. Eliot and I decided it would be fun to tag along too.

It was dark and about 35 degrees and raining steadily when Eliot and I set off at 4:15. Our friend Devrin dropped us off at some shops several miles outside Cambridge; we had been instructed to make use of the “park and ride scheme” because parking at the farm itself was limited. We had originally invited Devrin and his kids along with us, but he muttered something about a phone call and headed back to Cambridge. Devrin is a smart guy; I should have been paying better attention.

Confident, however, in the “park and ride scheme” and in the general organizational competence of the English, Eliot and I waved goodbye to Devrin and trudged off into the night. It was dark. And cold. And wet. And muddy. None of the parking attendants had heard anything about a park and ride scheme. They suggested we wait out by the road.

Twenty minutes later, Eliot, who had been chattering merrily away all this time, asked me why we were standing next to a busy road, in the middle of a field, in the rain. This struck me as a remarkably intelligent question. So we trudged back to find the parking attendants. In the interval they had determined that there indeed was a park and ride scheme in operation, though no one knew exactly when it would begin to operate. They advised patience.

Several other parents had straggled in by this time, though none of them, as I think about it now, had a three year old in tow. And they were all wearing wellies. It was about this time that it began to dawn on me that I may have seriously misjudged this particular venture. But this was also about the time (quarter past five, for those of you keeping score at home) that lights appeared in the distance. Things were looking up!

The lights got closer, and the roar of an engine louder. Here, at last, after standing in the rain and the cold and the mud for 45 minutes, was our park and ride scheme. The kind folks from the farm had sent it for us, and it was …. a tractor. Yep. A tractor. Or, to be perfectly accurate, a tractor pulling a hay wagon.

Well, we were going to a farm, after all.

Now, I grew up in a cold-ish part of the world (New Hampshire) and I think of myself as fairly tough. But the chill of an English winter is of a different order. 35 degrees isn’t that cold by the thermometer, but I’d rather have zero in New Hampshire than 35 here. Unlike the raging, good vs. evil spiritual warfare of a New England winter, where you always know whose side you’re on and that light will eventually triumph over darkness if you just hang on long enough, the damp of an English winter sneaks around, insinuating itself like Iago into your thoughts, your attitude, your whole outlook on life. Coleridge said that Iago was an example of “motiveless malignancy,” and that pretty much gets to the heart of a rainy English night in December.

Fifteen minutes later, the hay wagon deposited us at the farm. Eliot and I had now spent a full hour getting to Reindeer Night. And what was Reindeer Night? Well, for three pounds a head you get to walk around in the mud with hundreds of other people, look at a few donkeys—and, well, that’s about it, really. You could spend a couple of extra pounds for some mulled wine in a paper cup. The ubiquitous Santa in his grotto was there, too, but Olivia has I think seen enough old men in grottos for one year. Oh—and there were reindeer, too, in a stable. They looked rather the worse for wear, to be honest. Santa must have worked them pretty hard over the last couple of years before retiring to his grotto.


Trying to restore feeling to my feet by stamping and jumping, peering at a bunch of broken down reindeer, slipping and sliding around in the dark, feeling mud and who knows what else slowly seeping through the soles of my shoes, I realized that, to coin a phrase, I’m just not from around here. It’s as if there’s a hidden code, and if you see the words “farm” and “night” and “December” in relative proximity to each other, you immediately think: “leave three-year-olds at home,” “wear wellies,” “bring a torch” “expect a tractor,” and “pretend to have a good time.” Unless, of course, you’re me, in which case that particular neuron didn’t fire, and you bring your three year old out in his sneakers to sit in the rain in an open hay wagon because you thought, in your innocence, that it would be “fun” to see some reindeer. I looked around. No one else had brought a three year old. Everyone else was wearing wellies. And, just to rub it in, they were all pretending to have a good time, too.

Ah: I almost forgot the reason we had gone through all this. Olivia’s choir sang Christmas carols in the Reindeer’s stable. And—but you knew this already—they sounded magnificent.

The Nativity Pageant At Holy Trinity

This morning Eliot and Olivia participated in the annual Nativity Pageant at the church we attend here in Cambridge. You see Olivia standing outside the church with some of her friends. Olivia was Mary and Eliot was Sheep #1. Both had lines to memorize and said them perfectly. As these things go, the pageant went off fairly well considering there were, at a minimum, 15 three year old sheep.

The Barton School Christmas Fayre

This morning Olivia and I attended her school Christmas Fayre with two of her good friends, Heidi and Morgan. And no, I didn't spell it incorrectly. Based on my first experience, the annual school Christmas Fayre seems to be a Christmas bazaar and school carnival rolled into one. The school's multipurpose room was filled with stalls selling Christmas crafts that the children had made, baked goods and various games you could play for a small fee.

Olivia tried her luck at the "Lucky Lolly"stall (received a unmarked lolly, so no prize), the "Jammy Jar" stall (won a jar full of goodies only a kid would love: plastic monster finger puppet, plastic bear, plastic bendy pencil and a box of smarties - which are like M&Ms and probably made of plastic), and the snowman raffle, where to my amazement she won a stuffed snowman on her first try. The odds were against her so I thought that one would be a safe. At least the snowman wasn't plastic.

She finished the morning off with a visit to Santa in his grotto. There, for a mere 2 pounds, you are allowed behind the tinsel barrier and escorted by an adult elf, through a little maze of what I think are supposed to be snowdrifts, but which really look like piles of boxes covered in white sheets bedecked with candles, to an elderly Santa crouching in a dimly lit corner. I think we both thought the set up a bit odd, so I accompanied her. After a brief visit in which Santa asked her her name and her age, but not where she lived, she received a wrapped gift. It turned out to be a set of plastic craft beads.