Up North, Down South and Good Luck Poo

With the lifting - just a little - of the lockdown, Son the Elder arranged a trip for us to Minsterworth, just outside Gloucester, where he needed to pick up a purchase from off eBay, and to Gloucester Cathedral, where he was meeting his friend Tom for the handover of acting DVDs. It was only going to be a flying visit, but I was glad of the chance of getting out of Bristol for a couple of hours, as well as giving my new-to-me car a bit of a run. 

So here's Gloucester Cathedral ...

... and some ghost signage on Berkeley Street ... 

... and 99 - 101 Westgate Street, which building dates from c1500 and is said to be the last lodging of Bishop Hooper before his execution by burning at the stake in St Mary's Square on 9th February 1555.  

When I got back to the car, I noticed a bird had christened my car with some poo, which I took as a good luck sign. 

Today I was off again - this time with the Northerner and Cwtch the collie - to Uphill, where I was due to get my second dose of Pfizer vaccine at Weston General. Immediately afterwards, we headed to Berrow beach so that Cwtch could get her first taste of the sea proper (her recent visits to Portishead notwithstanding). 

Upon arrival it was clear that the powers-that-be at Burnham and Berrow golf club had been brandishing industrial-sized secateurs and diggers during the enforced shut down, much like at the local golf club.  For a start, there was a pill box I'd never seen before ... 

... and much of the lovely tunnelling footpath through the dunes had been ripped open and the sky let in.

The pussy willows lining the reedbeds were lovely, though, and the ascent and descent to the beach was as exciting as ever. 

As luck would have it, the tide was so far out that Cwtch still didn't encounter the sea ...

... though she did get her first taste of the beach. 

We didn't walk too far as the Northerner has been recovering from something narsty (albeit not in the woodshed) and I was being careful on account of my jab. It was enough to be at Berrow with our eyes on ... well, more or less the same horizon as up the meadow, actually, but from a very different angle. 

It was sandy enough to walk out to the wreck of the SS Nornen too, which was as photogenic as ever, with no need to dodge the sinkinny sands and mud. 

A different dog that is ours with us on this visit, though - and she couldn't quite contain her surprise and delight that such a place exists, even if the sand looks better than it tastes and the water is salty.

There are even sticks, which are one of Cwtch's favourite things. (Ted was only interested in balls.)

Time to go back through the sand dunes and around the marshes ... 

... and past the little white bench with its views of Brent Knoll and Crook Peak ... 

... and through the churchyard of St Mary's with its cowslips and dead nettles ... 

... to the car which once again had been anointed with good luck poo. 

I did start to wonder if you could have too much good luck poo, so when a muck spreader pulled out in front of me between Berrow and Burnham-on-Sea, I decided to keep well back, just in case. 

King John wasn't all that bad, you know

My arrival in Worcester, in squalling rain and bluster, was inauspicious. As soon as I reached the walkway by the River Severn, my umbrella blew inside out and all the metal spokes snapped. It looked like a collapsed bat and there was nothing for it but to bin it. 

In relentless rain following weeks of drought, the tale of Old Testament-style flooding told by the bricks set into the wall behind the Cathedral was all too plausible.

Sundays are not great days for Cathedral visiting. The problem is that people tend to use them for worship. But the purpose of my journey was to fetch my mother home from a brief sojourn in Nottingham and I determined to Make The Most It.  

And lo, when I got inside, I wasn't surprised to find a large part of the Cathedral roped off to visitors and a service about to start.

It looked all distant and golden, like a biblical heaven. 

There was nothing for it but to fossick around the bits I could see. Like the nave where I found myself paying attention to things that don't normally hold my interest.

The most riveting thing about Mary is her address, Slaughter Hall. 

1889 pulpit, part of restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott

There were many tombs - a lot of bishops, and also of unidentifiable men who were probably bishops. It made me wonder what the point is. Better surely to be burnt and scattered, or to be buried with an acorn in your belly button. 

It would give these little fellers a break ...

... and it would be better than running the risk of being sawn in half, like Bishop Someone-or-other looks like he might be in danger of being. 

On the other hand, if you had a tomb like this, you could sail it over the Seas of Oblivion, or hitch it to an Irish cob and journey Down The Deep Lanes. 

Ricardo Eedes, Dean of Worcester, died 1604

1850s-60s font, part of restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The Moore monument, c 1633

Abigail, wife of Godfrey Goldisburgh, Bishop of Gloucester, died 1613

Tired of piety, I wandered off to explore the Chapter House and the Cloisters. 

The latter have a series of stained glass windows by Archibald John Davies of the Bromsgrove School of Applied Arts. They date from the 1930s and give a potted history of the Church with special reference to Worcester. 

There seems to have been a fair bit of burning going on ...

The burning of Tyndale's bibles, c1530

The burning of Bishop John Hooper in Gloucester, 1555

The burning of service books on College Green, Worcester c1547-58

... not to mention assassinating and executioning.


The death of Becket and the penance of Henry II

The execution of Charles I

And look how massive Elizabeth I was! 
 
But I wanted to get into the rest of the Cathedral. It was, I worked out, almost 40 years since I'd last been there and time was running out on my two hour parking slot. And I needed to see the widescreen technicolour stuff, historically speaking ... 

... namely, the tombs of Prince Arthur (elder brother of Henry VIII) ...  


The funeral of Prince Arthur, 1502

... and the tomb of King John. 

Yes, John, so bad they named him just the once. 

The signing of Magna Carta, 1215 and the burial of King John, 1216  

But not unreasonably, given where we were, the worshippers were still worshipping.

I took in a few more tombs.


Sir John Beauchamp of Powick and Alcester with Elizabeth Pateshull, died c 1389

Robert Wilde and Margaret Cooling, husband and wife, died 1607 and 1606 respectively


Then - at last - the red ropes were unhooked and the wrought iron gates opened.

I whizzed through the Crypt, sweating at the thought of my car. I bolted up the North Aisle.


Unidentified knight, c 1240 

I admired roofs ... 

... and the beautiful east window. 

Another knight, 13th century

Aha, Prince Arthur's chantry ...

... and his tomb. Strange to think how different English history might have been had Arthur not died at the age of 15. Not least, how would King Arthur of legend have stood up against the legacy of a later, upstart King Arthur I? 

The time was a quarter of an hour past my car parking slot. Through a gaggle of Japanese tourists I could see another tomb. Had to be John. I waited for them to drift away. 

There he was ... the tyrant and oppressor who inadvertently gave us our charter of liberties.

‘Foul as it is, hell itself is made fouler by the presence of King John,’ wrote Matthew Paris in the 1230s.

'Tell you what,' I whispered in the ear of this, the earliest English royal effigy, 'if you fix it for me not to have a parking ticket, I'll tell everyone you weren't that bad ... or at least, better than King Henry VIII.' 

He didn't answer and nor did the creature at his feet, his mouth being too full of sword.

I dashed out of the Cathedral. The car park was minutes away but at every turn I ran into a dead end. 

And I got wetter and wetter. 'Damn you, King John the Only.'

Back at the car, my windscreen was ticketless. Fantastic. 

And although he was rubbish at thinning traffic and stopping torrential rain, later in the day, my new mate proved great at supplying an empty disabled parking bay right next to the service station doors so that my mother could make a beeline for the ladies. 

And also at fixing it for my dinner to come straight out of the oven as I staggered through the door. 

Could be worse, John. You could be King Eadwig.