Dublin

On September 18 we went to Dublin. It was an easy trip from Dun Laoghaire on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit). Our first stop was at the Gresham Hotel to meet with Sean Quinn, genealogist and owner of My Ireland Heritage. He does family research and also tours with people to their ancestral homelands in Ireland. Larry has been trying to pinpoint the places where his great-grandfather Dominick (who came to the US) and Dominick’s father Thomas (who stayed in Ireland) are from. It’s been an interesting journey, and Sean Quinn really put it together for us. He is an interesting person who had another career in tourism before starting this family business. (His daughter and son-in-law help out.) We were impressed with his expertise and his love for his country. One of the problems with doing genealogical research in Ireland is that there are no records from 1821-1911. They were all burned in the Civil War. He also shared with us that many of the Catholic parishes have just thrown out their registers as they remodeled or rebuilt buildings, and that many of the priests just don’t have time to be bothered with the history. So it’s pretty difficult to locate specifics.Tax records are the real clue, and Sean gave us a lovely package of locations, directions, and information. It was well worth the time and money.

Old Library, Trinity College

After our meeting with Sean we headed to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Old Library. We learned there was a student-led tour that would include those places, and those are always fun, so we signed up and went to have sandwich before the tour began. School is just getting underway in these parts, so we watched new undergraduate and graduate students lining up as you always do at school for the many aspects of their orientation.

The tour was terrific, with an entertaining English Literature major. See the book of Kells was amazing - what a thing that is! The Old Library is beautiful. Books are organized in a very particular fashion - big books on the bottom shelved, small books on the top! Their current exhibit was about books that draw their inspiration from myths of all kinds, so we saw first editions of Lewis, Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling. We also saw a children’s book of Irish myths by one Malachy Doyle, who we will be visiting on September 27. You’ll read more about that then!

After Trinity College we headed off to see the Jennie Johnston boat and famine museum, stopping along the way for a beer at Sweetman’s. Many people who fled the Irish potato famine died en route to the US. The Jennie Johnston took thousands of passengers and there was not one death. Sadly, we got there after the tours for the day had stopped. I had pretty much stopped, too, and the beer hadn’t helped! But we refreshed ourselves and headed off for the Chester Beatty Library, a fabulous collection of books and manuscripts. It was really worth the walk, and we saw the oldest extant fragments of letters from St. Paul. Way cool.

In September every year Ireland has what they call a culture night all over the country. September 18 was the day, and it was festive everywhere. There are lots of free things of every variety. We stopped at Christ Church Cathedral (Dublin’s Anglican - Church of Ireland - Cathedral) where they had a huge food fair in the close and music in the nave. The place was packed. We heard the end of an organ recital and then the Cathedral Choir had a brief concert which included two pieces from  Handel's Messiah at the end. When Messiah was first performed in Dublin, the choir was that of Christ Church Cathedral. (It was in a concert hall, not the church.) Lots of fun.

The choir at Christ Church, Dublin

 We ended the evening with dinner at The Brazen Head, Dublin’s oldest pub. Dinner was accompanied by Rugby on television, the item everywhere. We seem to be good at landing in these countries during major sporting events! In 1998 we followed the World Cup (soccer) from place to place, even being in Paris for the final when France won! Now we’re following the Rugby World Cup everywhere. It is a passion in this country for sure.

The DART brought us back to Windsor Lodge late and we slept very well.

Dun Laoghaire

We took the ferry from HolyHead, Anglesey, Wales around noon on the 17th. The ferry goes to Dublin Port and we made our way with little difficulty to our wonderful B and B - Windsor Lodge - in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced “Dun Leery”), a south suburb of Dublin. Our hosts were gracious enough to welcome us a little early, so we were able to have a nap. We went for a long walk in the town along the coast, including a most interesting stop at the James Joyce museum in Glasthule. It’s in a round tower near where he stayed, and some lines from Ulysses are descriptive of that place. Joyce and Ulysses are everywhere around Dublin. His depiction of Leonard Bloom’s day is so precise to the area that businesses and communities post the lines on walls and street corners, on business fronts, and on restaurant menus. My favorite is the Nichols’ funeral home on Pearse Street in Dublin which proudly boasts the quote that names it in brass letters on an outside wall. I’ve never read Ulysses (and am disinclined to do so), but it seems to have a lot to do with death. We scoped out restaurants on our walk and ended up in an Italian place that was pretty good.

Windsor Lodge

The second day of a trip I always ask myself why I’m doing this. Why travel? What’s the point when you have a perfectly good place to be at home, friends and family to be with, and good and useful occupation? It’s a good question, I think, and worth asking as we set out. I don’t know if I yet have an answer, but am exploring the question on each day.

The Windsor Lodge in Dun Laoghaire is really nice. Mary Farrell has been doing this for a long time, and she’s good at it. It’s a very pleasant house in a lovely neighborhood, with good access for the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) to get into Dublin. We were there two nights. It’s a Rick Steves’ recommendation, so there were lots of Americans!

Trearddur Bay, Anglesey, Wales

We’ve begun a month-long trip in Ireland and the UK. Yesterday was long - arrived at Heathrow, got our car, drove 5.5 hours to Wales! Pretty tiring, but it worked. This morning we take the ferry to Ireland for a two-week journey that includes locating (we hope) the place where Larry’s great-grandfather was from. We’ve not been to Ireland before and are looking forward to it.

I did some related reading for our trip and the books are sort of interesting to share. One is a series called The County Cork mysteries by Sheila Connolly. This is not great literature, and with the exception of too much repetition and a bit of overwriting, these are good plots with good characters and she really knows the area well. There are three to date: Buried in a Bog, Scandal in Skibbereen, and An Early Wake. She uses real places and streets and buildings, which I really like. (That’s why I can never read one Seattle author - can’t remember her name right now - because her mysteries are set in Seattle and she uses the real locations with different names. Drives me nuts.) Anyway, The County Cork mysteries are fun, quick reads.

And since we are in Wales, I also read Finding Camlann by Sean Pidgeon. This is a really good novel about archaeology related to the legends of Arthur. Really well done and a great read. Lots of historical detail, and he clearly knows the subject.

I’m re-reading Peter Ackroyd’s London, an interesting approach to London’s history and present. And, for Ireland, I’m reading Simon Rutherford’s first book in the three-part Dublin Saga: The Princes of Ireland. I enjoyed Sarum, and this is starting out well.

So I do hope to keep the blog up on this trip. Stay tuned!

Advent 2013

Advent 1955 
John Betjeman


The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It’s dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound -
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out ‘Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.’

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there -
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They’d sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?

The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell’d go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
‘The time draws near the birth of Christ’.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

Adventures in England 4: Lucca in London

Wake up to a beautiful morning.
Go around the corner for breakfast; full English.
Walk to the Natural History Museum.
Take the bus to the Imperial War Museum.
See the awesome Horrible Histories Spies exhibit.
Take the Tube to the British Museum.
Have a wonderful time with Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks.
Walk to Foyles.
Get blown away by so many books.
Buy books.
Walk to the National Portrait Gallery.
Talk of kings, queens, explorers, scientists, authors and musicians.
Walk into Trafalgar Square.
Walk up to Piccadilly.
Go to Fortnum and Mason.
Buy cheese (Cheshire and Stinking Bishop), Fig Almond Tort, Turkish Delight and a
blissfully good Victoria Sponge.
Take Tube back to flat.
Go out for Indian.
Stop and buy breakfast items.
Come home.
Lucca shares said Victoria Sponge.
22, 303 steps; 9.60 miles.

Adventures in England 3: Family Journey

My ancestry is English on my father’s side. We know the first Winder, Thomas,  came to New Jersey with his wife, Sarah, in the early 18th century, so we’ve been North American for quite some time. One my uncles had traced it all back to England, but we’ve never gotten much farther than Thomas and Sarah and their marriage around 1700. The incomplete genealogy has that listed in London at St. Margaret’s Cathedral. I often wondered what that is, as St. Paul’s is the cathedral for the city, and Westminster Abbey the other big deal church. Where is St. Margaret’s Cathedral?

Doing a little of that family research was one thing on my list for this trip. It turns out that St. Margaret’s is that smaller sister church next to Westminster Abbey. Back in the 11th century when Benedictines built the Abbey, they got annoyed when lots of the regular folk started coming to their services and disrupting the pattern of their day. (Go figure.) So they built another church next door, St. Margaret’s, so they could be left to their own devices in the Abbey. Because it was so much a “peoples” church, there were many weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and the St. Margaret’s register, faithfully kept all these centuries, is one of the best collections of those records in England. I’m going to have to pay someone some money (ancestry.com, or The Society of Genealogy here) to see if the record of the marriage of Thomas Winder and Sarah Bull  is there. The dates of the record go back that far. So today I braved the crowds at Westminster to go to St. Margaret’s. It is very lovely, although certainly the plain sister to its glorious older sibling. The thought of my ancestors’ wedding in that place gave it an interesting grounding for me.

From there I walked up Whitehall, passing all the parliamentary offices and Downing Street where the TV cameras were lined up waiting to hear how David Cameron is going to take action in Syria. I went to Trafalgar Square and to St. Martin-in-the-Fields to pick up tickets to a concert on Friday, and had lunch in the café in the crypt. The concert tickets are for me and Sarah and Lucca, who were already on their way to London from Rome. I went to the flat to await their arrival. Around three Sarah sent a text that the plane was stuck in Germany for an undetermined time.

They finally arrived around 8:30 and I walked down the street to meet them. Lots of fun. We came to the flat and got organized and then went “‘round the pub,” as they say, for dinner - fish and chips for Sarah, a meat pie for Lucca, and a fish pie for me. Very good.

Now we are all about ready for bed at the end of another London day. A family journey from over the centuries to our own family right now. This is Nana signing off on Wednesday. 15, 521 steps.

Adventures in England 2: The Sounds of London

I’ve been reading (for about a decade -it’s a long book!) Peter Ackroyd’s London: A Biography. In a chapter titled “Loud and Everlasting” he writes this about the sound of London:
   
        London has always been characterised by the noise that is an aspect of its noisomeness. It is part of its unnaturalness, too, like the roaring of some monstrous creature. But it is also a token of its energy and of its power.
        From its earliest foundation London rang with the hammer of artisans and the     cries of tradesmen; it produced more noise than any other part of the country, and in certain quarters, like those of the smiths and barrel-makers, the clamour was almost insupportable. But there were other noises. In the early medieval city, the clatter of manufacturing trades and crafts would have been accompanied by the sound of bells, among them secular bells, church bells, convent bells, the bell of the curfew and the bell of the watchman.   

These days the sounds in London are those of multitudinous languages being spoken. I don’t think I hear the same language twice in a row walking down a street. Each passing conversation is in a different tongue than the one before. Carol Hinderlie is in New York City right now, and she asked me if London had more languages than New York. They are both amazing in the rich diversity of culture and sound that come at you from every direction. But I’d put my money on London.

On Tuesday my day began by going to a shop called Selvedge. I had seen their beautiful magazine about textile craft a few years ago, and am on their email list. I enjoy this list because of the wonderful way they show the artisan textile workers of England and beyond. It is beautiful stuff. They have a little shop in front of their office, so I set off to see it. The journey took me to a new part of London for me called Archway. It’s in the northeast corner of the Borough of Islington in northeast London. From the Archway Underground Station I walked up the Archway Road;  a nice, hilly route! The Archway Road is part of the A1, the major non-motorway road to The North. I love how the English designate general direction. You’re either going to The North, The South, The East, or The West - always with the article capitalized. I expect it comes from being an island - not much left after you go any direction!

I arrived at the shop and it is delightfully funky, looking like an old-fashioned place to buy sewing notions and cotton. And that’s a lot of what they sell in the shop, much of it restored antique fabric. I found a lovely, very plain, table runner to buy. When I left there I decided to take the bus. The store had been at the crest of the long hill, and as I turned to down the road I was amazed at the view before me. It must be the best view of central London anywhere, maybe even better than Hampstead Heath: St. Paul’s, the Pickled Gherkin, the new, spiky building they’ve nicknamed The Shard, and everything else in their shadows. Wowie.

The bus took me to Soho, my next stop for the day. I decided on this trip to check out the Dorothy L. Sayers London sites. At the end of her life, she was a churchwarden at St. Anne’s in Soho. It was at St. Anne’s that she delivered some of the speeches that became her classic essays, and she invited T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and others to speak at St. Anne’s. This was all during the war, and the gatherings became important focal points for the larger community, words of thought and hope and intelligence in an unbelievably difficult war. The sanctuary and whole back half of St. Anne’s was bombed, and the building (what was left of it) was used as a community social service place for many years after. In 1991 it was refurbished and consecrated as a worshiping place once again. Sayers remains are under the tower, in the front of the building that wasn’t bombed. The new church is a little hard to see from its Dean Street address, tucked in between the restaurants, theatres, and sex shops that make up Soho. When I finally found it, I walked into a small enclosed corridor and then into a beautiful small chapel. The priest appeared, and I said, “I understand Dorothy L. Sayers is around here somewhere.” He laughed, and said he’d be happy to show it to me, but it would be in half an hour as there was to be Eucharist at 1:05. I said I’d be happy to stay. It was a lovely congregation, about 10 of us. Two were classic: Betty and Jean. Betty was losing it a bit and kept talking out loud, and Jean kept telling her to be quiet, also rather loudly. But once the liturgy began, all was serene. He had a good, brief sermon on last Sunday’s gospel, and we stood round in a circle to receive. After the service, he attended to Betty and Jean and the others, cleaned up the space, and then took me to the tower and DLS. The Sayers Society had put up a new plaque on the 50th anniversary of her death in 2007. It’s in a room used for lots of other things - sleeping bags all around, and a work project. Perfect.

Although he had another appointment to keep, we talked for some time. He is a second career person, after a first career as a puppeteer! The parish of St. Anne’s has a widely various ministry, as you might expect from its location. But he was having fun and getting oriented in his first full-time position. He told me about one of his predecessors who almost ran the place into the ground - certainly ran out most of the parishioners. He said one current member, an American, described it this way (all done in a spot-on American accent by the priest): “We were on the train to Aberystwyth and he was taking us to Penzance. We would have been fine going to Penzance if he’d told us where we were going and why, but he was off to Penzance and we were still on the train to Aberystwyth.”

The liturgy at the Eucharist was Common Worship: Rite One, and one of the options for the prayer after communion was this: Father of all, we give you thanks and praise, that when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory. May we who share Christ's body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us, so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.  It wasn’t used, but its beginning reference to the Prodigal Son reminded me of the quote from Sayers I have probably used most often through the years: God, like the father in the Prodigal Son, can see repentance coming a long way off, and is there to meet it. It was wonderful to meet sisters and brothers who still gather around such grace at St. Anne’s Soho.

I went from there to see the house where Sayers lived in the 1920's. It was up towards Russell Square, not far from the Inns of Court. So after I took pictures of the blue plaque at 23-24 Great James Street, I had a quiet walk through Gray’s Inn, and then back to the Tube and to the flat. I went out later to buy drain cleaner for the kitchen (downside of renting a flat), and for Indian and a G and T (very good!). A day full of London sounds, from buses and church bells and Betty and Jean, to the sweet voices of all the children who play in many languages in the neighborhood. 15, 596 steps.