Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Cathedral trick, top floor and pudding pans.

1. In Canterbury, the mysterious way the cathedral appears and disappears -- by some miracle, its great sandy gold mass is invisible in the streets closest by, but in the outer streets snapshots of the pinnacles and spires are framed in alleyways and between the buildings.

2. Alec, dancing ahead down the hotel corridors, leads me up the stair to the fourth floor to see the view (it's the cathedral again, but it's worth it).

3. At the Roman Museum there is a case of reddish pottery dishes, some crusted with sea worm casts. They were pulled up near Pudding Pan Rock by fishermen, and were prized by their wives for daily use. It turns out they are Roman dishes, Samian ware -- some marked with maker's names -- from a shipwreck or dumped cargoes.

4. It's a bright hot walk from the bus stop to the station. To our right is a green space where the river is split by sluices for a long-gone mill. We divert through to walk on the grass and look down at the passing water, then re-join the route that Google Maps is telling us to take.

Done, moon and Irish fairy tales.

1. A meeting that is over by 9.30am. 2. A big full moon is stuck on next door's chimney pots. 3. By my bed is a large and comforting boo...