Christmas 2002

41 Albion St, Stratton,
Cirencester
Gloucs. GL7 2HT
Dec. 2002

Hello friends!

As the rising tide of sheep meet the floodwaters of global warming, and the hot cross buns and chocolate eggs meet the crossed wires of consumerism, the letter box crammed with holiday brochures tells us it must be time for the Irving Christmas letter!!! Time to break out the emergency supplies of punctuation marks!*?{}ۤ

And this has to be the year of the (monkey?, rat?, hippo????) CONSERVATORY! After half a year of ever-increasing levels of sophisticated measuring from many differing competences of surveyors, interspersed with low-tech measuring from us, receiving ever more unrealistic plans from the draughtspeople, vis-a-vis the space available, (thud! thud! aarrgghh! - sounds of head beating against brick wall followed by sobs of frustration), three months of pleading with builders (please God, let them come before I die!) and almost as long having it built (“Do you think it might be habitable by Christmas?” “Oo! aar! (scratch! scratch!) which Christmas be that then?”), the conservatory is ..... finished!!!!!! (sort of)...... except for the ongoing leak where the roof meets the wall...... sigh! ..... one builder and several leadmen later.......! But .... cackle! cackle! .... we still have some of their money, heh! heh! heh! Quote from next door - “It looks expensive!” That’s nice to know!

Banishing evil thoughts of murderous intent from our minds, and with slight trepidation (would we be confronted by a smoking ruin upon our return?, apart from Rupert / Tamsin that is!), we decided to celebrate my 50th. and Bob’s 52nd. birthday (in January) by staying up at the World Heritage Site that is Ironbridge. I’ve always been fascinated by the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, but by the end of the weekend, even I felt completely museum’d-out (too much to see, too much to do, bleep! bleep! overload! overload! pfssssss!!!! “Quick, get some water someone!”), and I work in one!! We stayed in a Landmark Trust property (the people who take on quirky properties, at which us eccentric Brits excel!), with a great view of the iron bridge. Apparently, the river gorge over which it is built is moving, and one day ........creak! creak! snap! crash! crunch! Ooops!!! Errrm.....! Mind you, the previous year, quite a few of the historic sites were underwater by about 8 ft.! glug! glug! glug! did somebody leave a few museums around here somewhere???

All along the River Severn here are the evocative remains of old furnaces from the 18th. through to the early 19th. century, and when you see the paintings of the Ironbridge area in its heyday, it’s like staring into the jaws of hell!! Interestingly, when one of the Abraham Darbys (the IV) became a nob (as opposed to an engineer), and moved out of the area, things started to go downhill for the Coalbrookdale area (‘twas ever thus - Hark! A song lyric has entered the brain cell - “take the money and run, buy yourself a place in the sun”, or rather Slough?!?! Hmmm!). Ironically, Ironbridge is where t’nobs live now - when they’re not underwater, that is, (glug! glug!, and other watery noises)!

Blists Hill is a re-creation of a working Victorian town, incorporating as much of the industrial architecture as possible. Impressive and beautiful were two huge red ‘blowing engines’ for the furnaces, nick-named ‘Sampson’ and ‘David’, which incorporate such design features as Doric columns and cornices - style as well as substance! We were impressed!! The Victorian town was great - you learn a lot about such diverse things as Victorian underwear, soap & candle making, metal casting, how much things cost in old money (we wish!). We had to change our money for old pennies in the bank (an unfair exchange rate!), and we spent a lot of time in the cafe (it was a cold day!), and just the thing for bright, cold January days, there was a roaring fire in the saw-dust-floored (cough! spit!) pub, oh! joy! Having bought stuff such as soap and boiled sweets loose in a bag, it brings home to you just how over-packaged everything is these days, a consequence, no doubt, of lack of local production, not that I can imagine anyone wanting such smelly, polluting industries on their doorstep these days. However, bosses and workers lived intermingled (uncomfortable!) in the same area, a consequence of lack of fast travel, no doubt? Or, being charitable, a desire to be hands-on and wanting the business to succeed?

The Jackfield tile museum was impressive, it being still a working factory. We thought we had seen every conceivable tile ever made, but upon entering the director’s washroom and loo ............. Oh! my G........! (Slackening of jaw! Glazing over of eyeballs! Completely seized brain cell!). Restful on the senses it wasn’t! Every spare surface was covered with every tile pattern they’d ever made - I guess it would keep you amused for hours trying to spot any repeats! I suppose the Victorians were very proud of their manufactures and were so sure of their place in the world : impression being the name of the game ....and we were! The other noticeable thing about the Jackfield tile museum was the complete absence of heat - weekends in low season don’t qualify for comfort (why, when I were a lad, we slept in paper bag in t’ middle of t’ road!). The saleswoman in the shop was huddled over this 2-bar electric fire - we eyed this up quite jealously!

Just before returning home we entered the blue-and-white world that is Coalport china. Are there any other colours out there, Scully? This was distinctly overload territory - where did they all come from? Aaaah! warmth! (Feeling of well-being seducing us into buying lots of old-fashioned biscuits, honest, guv! - lasted for weeks on the daily commute, yum! )

But what of those we left behind (gulp!)? Entrusting the Irving family home to .....aarrgghh!! Well, we actually have less of them at home now..... Tamsin has run off to the groves of academe, to Dartington in Devon, where she is pursuing a rather odd qualification in Contemporary Music Performance - but what do we know, we’re only those mad people known as parents! Apparently, fusion of different styles of music and creating something exciting and different is what Dartington’s all about - I hope it lives up to its reputation! Apart from being in demand, trumpet-wise, in someone’s cheesey 70s band, she’s joined a Balinese gamelan (a sort of Far Eastern percussion band) which is reputed to play at Glastonbury and WOMAD every year - the things some people will do to get in free! She’s almost persuaded us (rumours of free tickets!) that we’d like to go and chill out at festivals this year..... yeah! man! right on! and other such out-dated expressions! Time to dig out the hippy gear, put on the wellies, and join the great unwashed (yeuch! what am I saying!), to fight our way through the fog of interesting??!! pollutants (glazed eyes, stupid grin, doped brain cell - yes, it’s Monday morning again!!), to be musically assaulted(!) (oops! slip of the computer mouse), I mean excited! heh! heh! ......no, no, it’ll be fine(!!?) This year has also seen a few changes in hair-colour (aargh! no! a rival!) and some (fewer!) changes of boyfriend.

Rupe is still living at home, at least, that’s the rumour.... Sometimes we see him for at least an hour at a time, midnight till 1am! Somewhere along the way, a weird tranformation has come over him.... His singing teacher, Maria, an opera singer, who has made it into the semi-big-time, singing with Pavarotti, etc., has persuaded him that he can make it as an operatic tenor and that he should take it seriously and try to get into one of the music colleges in London. And lo! it came to pass! Maria said “You must give up smoking”, and he gave up smoking. Maria said “You must practice” and Rupe practiced. Maria said “You must learn music theory” and Rupe learnt music theory. He has sung and acted in “Orfeo et Eurydice” and bought a suit and gone to bed early(!) and done all manner of other unlikely things. Last week, he had auditions at the Trinity College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music (no less) and next week it’s Guildhall. If he does get into one of these august institutions, they might think him rather odd (or will they??) sneaking off to play the drums in rock bands (just the two at the moment), but somehow we can’t see him giving that up.

Of course, our little treasures (cough!) were unable to resist the temptation to come on holiday (aka The Great European Trek) again with us (they know a good bargain when they see one!). Since we sort of said that if they come with us again they might be forced to contribute ........... I guess it’s just us next time, then! Italy was chosen for (a) being sufficiently exotic, (b) warm, (c) the endless fascination of the disaster scenario that is Herculaneum & Pompeii, and (d) it isn’t France! (Rupert’s words). The holiday started in the usual manner : curses, accusations, panic, glaring blackly at each other, and “Mum, you’ve been in the bathroom for hours!”, and the sudden realization that we’d left the banana behind! (Last year it was the bread-loaf!?!? ........aaarrrggghhh!!! - it was not a pretty sight!). Left behind on its own, the poor banana became embittered & evil and plotted “Today the house, tomorrow the world!! cackle! cackle!’’ (The upside is if we lost our keys, it could open the door for us!). It was supposed to start with a quick rush down to Bologna by motor-rail followed by a leisurely drive to Lake Trasimeno, but as we drove onto the Eurotunnel train ...... O! Oh! .......mutter! mutter! time differences! tisk! tisk! ........So!........it turned out to be a leisurely motor-rail to St Moritz, followed by an immensely long drive........Wonderful mountain scenery! Great Swiss cakes! Hairy switch-back roads! “It should only take us about six hours”............Twelve hours later: déjà-vu! The Irving family holiday always involves arriving at the holiday cottage after getting lost driving around dirt tracks in the pitch black, and this was not going to be any different! Following meticulously the instructions given, we drove along narrower & narrower mountain roads until arriving at...... a house full of people from Moscow (probably the Russian mafia), having the time of their lives, Russian-style! .........Sheepishly, we had to ask to be rescued : we’re getting good at this!!

We stayed in a comfortable house on a farm, on the borders of Umbria / Tuscany, with a beautiful swimming pool and a superb mountain view, but we did seem to spend the whole week trying to spot the tinkling goats! The next morning, the weather was hot (for us namby pamby pallid English persons), and the pool was well-used : this year there wasn’t half an hour of “aah” ing and “ooh” ing whilst sliding ever deeper into ‘Arctic’ mountain pools (in fact, the kids put their foot (feet?) down and broke out in a rash if walking, especially in mountains, was mentioned!). Tamsin was determined to fulfil her life-time ambition of ‘sunbathing’ by the pool, but the gathering afternoon clouds caused the goose pimples to become ever bigger, and she was forced inside to read (yes, you did hear correctly!!) ....one moment while I faint.... ugh! thud! Rupert made a vow to become fit and swim every morning - which was fine until we started to run out of conditioner “But my hair will be so unmanageable!” (sigh!) .....The best laid plans .............!!! Because we were quite high in the mountains, the weather was definitely cooler than down in the plains. Every morning the sun was hot, and then half-way through the afternoon the clouds would drift in & occasionally towards the end of the week it would rain (considerately, mostly at night!). So we went out most days to somewhere with a different microclimate, sweated (especially near Lake Trasimeno), and then froze in the evening when the wind got up (usually in hill-top towns!). At least it was predictable!

Italy is just full of interesting places to visit (can’t cope! too much choice! aargh!!). Cortona, our nearest town, was full of American students, because the University of Georgia has an Arts programme there. It’s a delightfully attractive town, full of little art galleries, museums, and expensive shops. Especially amazing in the Etruscan museum are all the local finds such as this unique bronze chandelier, hanging inside its own little classical podium. As I was inching my way closer to peer underneath, despite all the mirrors strategically placed for this very purpose, suddenly “de da de da” startled the hushed atmosphere, and sheepishly I mouthed sorry to nobody in particular! Two minutes later ...... “de da de da” - oops! “****!” and other such unladylike exclamations were heard! A museum attendant got up out of his chair and glared at me blackly, ready to grab me, everyone stared, and I turned a vivid shade of red!!! Meanwhile, back in the outside world, exclamations along the lines of “Wow! a hippy shop!” were heard from Rupe & Tams, from which they emerged several hours later (I lie - it just seemed like it!) with a tie-dye T-shirt (Rupe) and a bag (Tams) having weedled money out of us on the grounds that they hadn’t got any ......hmmm! Our indulgence : the most amazingly hugest tastiest fungi ever, with a meat-like texture (subliminal messages seeping through from our carnivorous subconscious “meat!” “meat!”) - I soooo wish one could buy those here (a course on edible fungi recognition, anyone?).

We had to do the ‘big Roman Catholic churches’ thing in Assisi, which were impressive, especially the speed with which they had rebuilt and restored after the earthquake a few years ago. There was much to admire in the Basilica di San Francesco, but feeding coins into a slot to illuminate a light-bulb (lighting candles is forbidden for conservation reasons) to the saint of your choice, just seems a tad tacky to me, as well as the shops with their endless statues of St. Francis and St. Clare (ugh! even worse!). This mix of rampant commercialism and religion seems to go hand in hand in Catholicism - something we in Britain are unaccustomed to since the days of pilgrimages to Canterbury, etc., in the Middle Ages, prior to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The monks then were obviously extracting money from pilgrims in just the same way! No wonder Catholic churches are so over-the-top opulent! Somehow though you cannot avoid a certain sneaky admiration for the way they move with the times - even to the extent of making St. Clare the patron saint of television! Because buildings are always built over remains of other buildings, what is extremely disconcerting is walking on glass over Roman street plans & sewers between church pews!

Getting into Perugia is like a cross between the London underground, the Jorvik Centre & the Oxford Experience - up & down escalators & through time zones. Parking your car ‘down below’ (no, not hell ...... not unless you count the Perugian obsession with self-flushing loos that sense when you’ve opened the door, wait until you sit down, flush, close the lid, but lack the intelligence to realize whether anyone is still seated ........ or maybe that’s the plan! cackle! evil cackle! flush out all tourists! heh! heh! heh!); one ascends on escalators to the Piazza Italia inside the city, passing through (on foot) the surreal, shadowy Mediæval quarter - all located underground! Apparently, these streets were vaulted over a few centuries ago as a support for the Pope’s palace, which was built to subdue the local influential family by burying all their palaces. The Perugians had their revenge by pulling it down in 1860 when Perugia joined the new Italian kingdom! Perugia is stylish, the shops are out of this world - so are the prices! - but this didn’t stop Tamsin trying on yet more clothes! Filled up with truly yummy ice-cream, and in need of some exercise, we tottered down the main street towards the famous twelth century fountain, drooling slack-jawed over expensive consumer items & beautiful buildings, desperately seeking the famous chocolate shop, whereupon we were distracted by ..... “Hey! We can actually afford something in here!” ......a Body Shop! Feeling that we would like to help Rupert achieve his ambition for the week, we bought him a bottle of conditioner!!! (you weren’t paying attention, were you???). Perugia was great though, all the shops are open until 9 p.m., and all Italian life is on the streets until late - I guess it’s warmer! - and no cars!!!

After a quick jaunt over to Isola Maggiore on Lake Trasimeno (hot, wet & sticky - a microclimate all of its own) to look at a few frescoes and a bit of lace-making, and meeting a few bemused, slightly inebriated Belgian hippies, we filled the car up with as many figs as we could carry from the cottage ‘garden’ and headed south to another universe!

We were heading towards Naples, which the previous cottage owner had said was interesting!!?? (what was meant by this we found out later!!!) to a nearby town called Airola. The road from the motorway east of Naples to Airola was to give Bob nightmares for the next week! There are signs, but not as we know them, Jim! Suddenly a sign leaps out from behind a bush together with its associated road! ...... screech!! sharp right turn! nerves shattered! ....... Drivers undertaking, cutting you up, appearing from nowhere out of side-roads, macho motorcyclists playing chicken with cars, and ........where is this place called Mozzarella di Buffalo?

We met Giuseppi at a pre-arranged place in the town so that he could lead us to this large pink building known as ‘Antico Molino’. It was just outside the town, down what looked like a country road (hard to tell in southern Italy - lots of possibly illegal building interspersed with small farms) surrounded by high grape vines. At some point, it had been a mill, but later had been converted into a health club and hadn’t changed much. On one side of the living room, there was a huge games room containing nothing but a table-tennis table and a large echo! On the other side there was a smaller room containing nothing but ripped-out sockets and a chair, with ladies and gents changing-rooms beyond! Upstairs was quite normal! Outside was a superb view of mountains and this very large formal English garden, with statues, architectural trees, ponds and a long, thin pool - highly popular on account of the baking hot weather! Giuseppi and his wife left us with an evening meal, wine and a massive bread-loaf, together with instructions to meet him at his shop in St. Agata dei Goti (it means Goths - nothing to do with people who dress up in black clothes..... or goats!) - about three-quarters of an hour away over the mountains - at 11 a.m. sharp the next day. We didn’t dare disobey! I guess it’s pass on the lie-in, then?! We were puzzled by an opticians being open on a Sunday, until we arrived and discovered it was market day, and the whole town was buzzing!! Best trading day of the week! Shutting the shop with a typically Italian flourish “I have enough money! The customers? - oh! they know me, they can come back later! Now I am the local tourist guide!”, and, leaving the throng to his wife, Giuseppi took us on a two-hour personal tour of beautiful old churches (including one that had never been open before, with the most amazing floor tiles!) and old buildings with superb murals that had seen better days (but were now being done-up by the nouveau-riche (local Mafia?) from Naples), an art exhibition, & ending up with free snacks at the excellent gourmet local trattoria ..... mmmm!! Eating there later in the week was an experience. “Aaargh no! we forgot to bring the dictionary with us!” Communication being somewhat limited ..... “Um eeny meeny miny mo! I wonder what we’ll get! Oh, what the hell......... mmm! yum!”

Apart from being pre-occupied by impromptu firework displays in the wee small hours (yawn!), signalling the start of yet another Catholic religious festival, we spent the rest of the week immersed in things Roman. Sneaking round the back of Vesuvius to avoid Neapolitan driving, we came upon Pompeii ...... eventually! “Where the **** are we? Who’s stolen all the road signs?” I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no money for such mundane things as road signs ..... or roads - even the motorways around Naples have large pot-holes! .... no doubt the money’s all siphoned off into the pockets of local politicians. Pompeii has a serene atmosphere, but then that’s obligatory with ruins, isn’t it? And the manner of the town’s demise plays upon everyone’s imagination! Once we’d turned the map the right way up and orientated ourselves, we realized Pompeii was MASSIVE - there was no way we could get round it all! “Hmmm! we’ll have to be selective.” Various suggestions were made : “How close is the brothel?” “We HAVE to see the amphitheatre - Pink Floyd played there!” “The baths usually have interesting!??! mosaics!” Swept along by a tide of international voyeurs, we found ourselves jammed in the doorway of the brothel, with the humidity being high enough to destroy all wall paintings in the vicinity!! No wonder they had removed most of what was considered the most outrageous murals to the ‘Secret Room’ in the Archaeological Museum in Naples! (Tamsin was champing at the bit for the rest of the week!!!). It’s so easy to relate to urban Roman society as being so similar to ours in so many ways - what I hadn’t realized was their almost total reliance on takeaways!! (only rich people had kitchen areas with the appropriate slaves!) - and you all thought that was a modern phenomenon, didn’t you??? Also the thoughtful raised paths across the roads (like high Zebra crossings!), so that people didn’t get their feet muddy, which contained grooves so that cart-wheels could go through!

The next day, on our way to modern Herculaneum (Ercolano - suburb of Naples), exposed to the full horrors of Neapolitan driving ...... beep! beep! screech! even more frayed nerves! “Quick! in there!” .... BEEP! BEEP! SCREEEEEECH!!! as we swerve into the car-park! Rolling our eyes heavenward in thanks to The Almighty, we were astounded to see, lurching towards us, what appeared to be a mobile scrap-heap tied together with string, with bits hanging off and wires sticking out!! This proceeded to cough and splutter in our direction until coming to rest ...... pffssss!! double parked & totally blocking the exit! The occupants bought a ticket and wandered off! I guess that’s one answer to the high Neapolitan car crime rate! No-one would steal that!!!

Old Herculaneum is altogether more enjoyable, being smaller, and full of rich folk (well, it did have, about two thousand years ago - it’s a bit quieter now!). Opulent villas, magnificent murals, statues and water-featured gardens (what’s new?). Everything is two-story’d (at least), and so well-preserved due to its being instantaneously covered by a pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius during the A.D. 79 eruption. There’s a poignancy about Herculaneum that is missing from Pompeii, in that you see the carbonized roof beams, the instantaneous and horrific vaporizing of someone who was too ill to leave their bed, part of a metal bed-head and foot above a shop where the ceiling had caved in, the amphorae of olive oil, etc., in the shop below, together with the carbonized wooden screen that slid across to close the shop at the end of the day - all the human details of everyday life buried & forgotten for two millenia ............ Rupe & Tams whizzed round much faster than us due to a combination of ‘youthful attitude’ and fully-charged batteries! This time we realized that being ‘plugged-in’ to an audio cassette meant that one could get so much more out of the visit, even if the streets were filled with self-absorbed zombies crashing into anyone in their path! But ... batteries have a tendency to die. Hmmm! two people with their heads glued together!! Must be the sun, poor dears! Occasionally a crowd would coalesce around self-appointed guides (researchers?), who would tell you facts not on the tape - a bonus!

Of course, we HAD to visit a live volcano - Vesuvius being off-limits due to the fact that it involved A LONG WALK!! So we visited Solfatara, the storm-centre of what the Greeks called the Phlegraean (fiery) Fields. This is a crater of a collapsed volcano, where there are sulphur gas vents, bubbling mud pits and whistling superheated steam fumaroles - VERY EXCITING!! The soil is SO hot beneath your feet that if you poke a tiny hole in it, steam emanates! Ooops! Melted soles - perhaps better not stand still too long! Guides play tricks by holding a smoking torch near a fumarole, which instantaneously shrouds everyone in swirling fog, due to steam condensing around the carbon particles - good for photo opportunities! Cut to an apprehensive-looking Rupe! The whole coast is so unstable round there - apparently it keeps going up & down like a yo-yo (technical term - ‘Bradyseism’). Since Roman times the land has fallen by about 20 ft.; in the 15 th. century it began rising, and then fairly recently (in the last 20 years) it fell again by roughly one metre almost overnight - life is nothing if not exciting in the Bay of Naples!!!

Every day brought new experiences, mostly of the stress-inducing kind! Bob, being frayed around the edges to the point of completely fading into the background, decided to let the train take the strain, and thus we trundled into Naples on a creaky old train that made London commuter trains look modern, but nevertheless ran on time!!! (Thank you Mussolini!). In fact, nobody drives into Naples, unless you are (a) Neapolitan, and (b) suicidal. Apart from a visit to the Archaeological Museum, the highlight of the day involved watching Neapolitan drivers in the rush-hour, marvelling at the way they manage to avoid scraping each other with one millimetre to spare! (You think I’m kidding, don’t you???). It’s an extremely macho way of driving that we English barely comprehend - they are such masters!!! Poor old Bob also experienced the other almost certainty in Naples - being mugged! Actually, almost mugged! Neapolitan muggers do it with such style that if you discover them in the act, they give you your money back with a smile - different!? but disconcerting!!?

After that, there was nothing left but to drive home, to drive home, to drive home ......... well, all the way up Italy, under Mont Blanc, through France and across England, sampling the highs (£210 / night - aaaahhh, the freebies! the eight course breakfast!) and the lows (£40 /night - oooooh, the sink with no plug!) of various hotels on the way ........ And here we are, back, with noses pressed firmly to the grind-stone.

And so we must leave you, gentle reader, buffetted by the winds of fortune for another year ......OR ...........Christmas is icumen in!
Lots of luv to you all,

Joy, Bob, Tamsin & Rupert.

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