8/19/13: Had dinner at an Indian place – I
ordered prass (?) something w/ peppers and then said make it spicy, and got a
veggie dish that curled my feet when I ate it, it was so hot, but the server
good-naturedly brought me lots of water and then I was fine.
Had I said I’d
wanted to go to Peterborough – the Blue Guide said it had a v. fine Norman
cathedral? “One of England's most
important”.
Yesterday we went to
Ely (pronounced Eel-ee as in full of eels) got there by 10, so had ½ hour to
see the cathedral before the service started.
V. fine w/ lots of Norman arcades of columns. But we couldn’t go into the choir or chancel
(I guess because services were to start @ 10:30), or the lady chapel (where
many figures defaced during the reformation).
We walked around
outside some – fine day and lots of triathaloners running in circles around the
cathedral close. Found a convenience
store and bought some artificial sweetener.
Then we passed a bookstore – I’d been looking for a book that defined church
architectural terms I was seeing in my guidebook – like reredos (a stone screen
on the east wall behind the altar). I
almost didn’t go in because it looked v. small but it turned out to have a 2nd
and 3rd floor and a 3rd floor had an architecture section,
where a helpful saleslady (proprietor?) found just what I needed, and several
other books besides.
And she brought me tea – I settled in to examine
& was happily occupied some little time.
Meanwhile, S had
found some walk-books and talked to the proprietor and found out about a nature
center on the fens (Wicken
fen), which we set out to find, S driving (of course—it’s not as if I’ve
driven a bit or wanted to). A curb
jutted into the street & we drove over it, me squeaking in alarm, as I’m
wont to do.
When we arrived at
the center, a little further on S looked at the tire. It looked ok.
The fen center was interesting – the docent by a windmill had a lot to
tell about how the fens were drained.
The water is pumped by windmills into the washes, which run to the
sea. However, there is some winter
flooding, as when a strong melt coincided with spring tide and storm, as in
’47. He’d never heard about the 9 Tailors (a
Dorothy Sayers mystery set in the fen country).
We went around the rest of the boardwalk, admiring dragonflies, sedges,
and lodes (medieval canals that drained the fens).
We set out for
Cambridge – S remarking that the car was pulling more and more to the
left. At a roundabout, a lady was
shouting at us and pointing and I could smell burning rubber and when we
eventually pulled over, of course the tire was flat. And of course the rental car had no spare, as
S found out after calling AA. Some
confusion about how to dial AA, which had an 800 number.
I tuned out and read
the architectural primer I’d bought in Ely, full of terms like pyncostyle,
systyle, eustyle, diastyle and aerostyle, all of which refer to the ratio of
space between columns to the diameter of their base.
The AA guy appeared,
found the tire the car needed wasn’t obtainable. Don’t go to Peterborough, said he – it’s a
rough town except for the cathedral. So
I gave up on it. I’d wondered why the cathedral
wasn’t in Fodor’s.
He had S drive the
car another couple miles @ 5 mph to a nearby tire store, and drove us back to
our hotel. I dozed & Steve mulled
over the afternoon, reading the fine print on the car rental contract. Then we walked into the center of town to an
Italian place (the busses stopped running @ 6 PM), and drowned our sorrows with
pizza and beer for S and wine for me.
There was a Nutella/banana pizza on the menu for dessert. How could we resist?
We walked back to
the hotel & subsided into bed, S quite uncomfortable from a sore back. A couple of hours later, an alarm startled us
awake – we never figured out what it was – maybe a car alarm outside?
S up around 5:30 to
pack and dress and at breakfast by 7 so as to be at tire place by 8:30. They’ll take some time to find the right tire
and have to talk w/ Hertz.
S calling the credit
card place, which in principle covers damage to rental cars, but who knows
what’s the case in practice?
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