![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Of Cambridgeshire and forgotten music
For those interested in pointless travelogues:
I have spent most of the last two days tramping around rural, and semi-rural Cambs, gawping at things and acquiring sore feet.
Of yesterday's wanderings in the Cambridgeshire shore villages of Swaffham Bulbeck and Bottisham there is little to note - I had intended to continue on to Fulbourn, but a vociferous welt on my heel persuaded me otherwise, suggesting that it was a nice foot I had there, and it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Bottisham, incidentally, has a vey fine church - a kind of archetype of the small but perfectly-formed village church where a reasonably beneficient local squirearchy has put money in for hundreds of years. Hence the reason why virtually everything in the church is dedicated to one Jenyns or another - oddly enough, the Jenyns Arms pub is 40 miles away, at Denver Sluice in Norfolk.
Today, however, saw moseyings closer to the city itself, starting at Cambridge station, and proceeding to Trumpington and Grantchester - a walk it has been in my mind to do for a while, and which has been awaiting its opportunity patiently.
Trumpington is a classic example of a village that has struggled in vain to prevent itself becomign a suburb. No doubt in the first half of the 20th century, when the opportunity to acquire more population and gain closer links to the city arose, it looked like a good idea. The result, alas, has been a gradual slide into undistinguished ribbon development, right down to the urban blight of curving parades of shops and offices so common in especially tedious outer suburbs of London. As a whole, the part of Trumpington around the main road reminded me of nothing so much as the area in Southampton where my gran lived - Bassett. A collection of tidy semis (known in their original brochures as "villas", no doubt), interspersed with terraced stock, a brave stab at harmonious living between different groups (since we are not allowed to refer to "classes" any more) which has just about not failed.
In such cases, however, the golden rule when trying to find the pretty bit of a village is to head for the church, and while Trumpington hardly blossomed into a second Chipping Campden, the area down Church Lane and Maris Lane did at least have some attractive brick cottages, a decent-looking white-washed pub (the Unicorn), and a splendid high-vaulted church (more lofty, if less well-proportioned, than the one at Bottisham, as no doubt befitted its closer proximity to the City and University).
Once out of the suburhan sprawl of Trumpington, the road wound about a bit on the short journey to Grantchester, as if getting used to all this open space to frolic around in. I stopped off at Byron's Pool, a weir pool where the young reprobate was apparently wont to disport himself. Even with the ugly modern steel fencing around the weir and its hydraulics, one could still imagine the budding lothario declaiming "She walks in beauty like the night" to some blushing squire's daughter, before inviting her to join him for a swim (and an invasion by a surprisingly rigid eel, no doubt). I half-expected to find some antique undergarment lying beneath a bush.
I arrived in Grantchester by way of the Mill, or at least the mill-pond, which assorted youngsters were lethargically extracting minnows from. Having watched them for a while, idly wodering if any of them would fall in, I continued on into this most venerated of English villages.
The thing about Grantchester is that, for all the fame and sense of a rural idyll, there isn't actually much to the place, and as villages go, it's not really anything special. Compared to Lavenham or Finchingfield, or to a serious fishing village like Staithes, it's really no great shakes. But it is lucky to have just the right connotations for those who hanker after poetic notions of beauty, and, more crucially, to be just the right distance from a major tourist destination. Once you actually stop to look at Grantchester in the cold light of day, it has a mill-pond, a moderately interesting church (whose clock stands at ten to three only twice a day, I'm afraid), four pubs and a tearoom. And some meadows (which we will come to in a minute).
The other strange thing I found in Grantchester was that the roads were liberally strewn with parked cars, but here were hardly any people about. I was the only person in the church (the poetic remembrance of which, after all, is the only reason the damned place is famous in the first place), and I found very few people in the streets. I can only assume the pubs and the tearoom were packed, which yet again shows that weird tendency people have to pile out to places they've heard of, then take absolutely no notice of the things in them, except by buying a postcard of the things they didn't see because they went to the pub instead.
The reason to go to Grantchester, in practice, is nothing to do with the village itself, and everything to do with the walk out to it from Cambridge. It's about two miles, along a footpath which skirts glorious meadows, with views to distant farmland and huge East Anglian skies beyond. On a warm day, with just a hint of breeze, it really is more than we poor sinners really deserve. And, being a properly-mettled path which follows pretty much a straight line, it has none of the hassle of wondering which edge of the field to follow and where the hell you are that normally attends walking rural footpaths (or at least does for me).
And then back to Cambridge, about which enough has been said already
The walking through this pastoral scene was greatly enhanced by listening to one of England's great forgotten singer-songwriters, Clifford T Ward. Ward's songs are simple (sometimes to the point of rather cloying naivete), often funny, yet also affecting. the album I was listening to, "Home Thoughts From Abroad", contains many of his finest works, most of which are about love in all its phases, and are refreshingly down-to-earth and humane (unlike, for example, the doomed whimsy of Nick Drake). The title track, for example, contains this verse (as part of a letter between erstwhile lovers separated by the Atlantic):
"How is Worcestershire? is it still the same between us?
Do you still use television to send you fast asleep?
Can you last another week? Does the cistern still leak?
Or have you found a man to mend it?
Oh, and by the way, how's your broken heart?
Is that mended too?
I miss you"
There is something beautiful in those lines, and in the plaintive voice that sings them, dwelling on trivialities in a bid to escape the finality of separation. And the line "Oh and by the way, how's your broken heart?" is one of my very favourites in anything I've heard - a expression of our national melancholy as plangent as "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way", from the much more feted album released the same year (1973).
If you've never heard any Clifford T ward, I recommend tracking down "Home Thoughts from Abroad", or the mid-price "Best of" (called, I think, "Gaye, and other stories"), which abound with treasures, no less precious for being everyday
I have spent most of the last two days tramping around rural, and semi-rural Cambs, gawping at things and acquiring sore feet.
Of yesterday's wanderings in the Cambridgeshire shore villages of Swaffham Bulbeck and Bottisham there is little to note - I had intended to continue on to Fulbourn, but a vociferous welt on my heel persuaded me otherwise, suggesting that it was a nice foot I had there, and it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Bottisham, incidentally, has a vey fine church - a kind of archetype of the small but perfectly-formed village church where a reasonably beneficient local squirearchy has put money in for hundreds of years. Hence the reason why virtually everything in the church is dedicated to one Jenyns or another - oddly enough, the Jenyns Arms pub is 40 miles away, at Denver Sluice in Norfolk.
Today, however, saw moseyings closer to the city itself, starting at Cambridge station, and proceeding to Trumpington and Grantchester - a walk it has been in my mind to do for a while, and which has been awaiting its opportunity patiently.
Trumpington is a classic example of a village that has struggled in vain to prevent itself becomign a suburb. No doubt in the first half of the 20th century, when the opportunity to acquire more population and gain closer links to the city arose, it looked like a good idea. The result, alas, has been a gradual slide into undistinguished ribbon development, right down to the urban blight of curving parades of shops and offices so common in especially tedious outer suburbs of London. As a whole, the part of Trumpington around the main road reminded me of nothing so much as the area in Southampton where my gran lived - Bassett. A collection of tidy semis (known in their original brochures as "villas", no doubt), interspersed with terraced stock, a brave stab at harmonious living between different groups (since we are not allowed to refer to "classes" any more) which has just about not failed.
In such cases, however, the golden rule when trying to find the pretty bit of a village is to head for the church, and while Trumpington hardly blossomed into a second Chipping Campden, the area down Church Lane and Maris Lane did at least have some attractive brick cottages, a decent-looking white-washed pub (the Unicorn), and a splendid high-vaulted church (more lofty, if less well-proportioned, than the one at Bottisham, as no doubt befitted its closer proximity to the City and University).
Once out of the suburhan sprawl of Trumpington, the road wound about a bit on the short journey to Grantchester, as if getting used to all this open space to frolic around in. I stopped off at Byron's Pool, a weir pool where the young reprobate was apparently wont to disport himself. Even with the ugly modern steel fencing around the weir and its hydraulics, one could still imagine the budding lothario declaiming "She walks in beauty like the night" to some blushing squire's daughter, before inviting her to join him for a swim (and an invasion by a surprisingly rigid eel, no doubt). I half-expected to find some antique undergarment lying beneath a bush.
I arrived in Grantchester by way of the Mill, or at least the mill-pond, which assorted youngsters were lethargically extracting minnows from. Having watched them for a while, idly wodering if any of them would fall in, I continued on into this most venerated of English villages.
The thing about Grantchester is that, for all the fame and sense of a rural idyll, there isn't actually much to the place, and as villages go, it's not really anything special. Compared to Lavenham or Finchingfield, or to a serious fishing village like Staithes, it's really no great shakes. But it is lucky to have just the right connotations for those who hanker after poetic notions of beauty, and, more crucially, to be just the right distance from a major tourist destination. Once you actually stop to look at Grantchester in the cold light of day, it has a mill-pond, a moderately interesting church (whose clock stands at ten to three only twice a day, I'm afraid), four pubs and a tearoom. And some meadows (which we will come to in a minute).
The other strange thing I found in Grantchester was that the roads were liberally strewn with parked cars, but here were hardly any people about. I was the only person in the church (the poetic remembrance of which, after all, is the only reason the damned place is famous in the first place), and I found very few people in the streets. I can only assume the pubs and the tearoom were packed, which yet again shows that weird tendency people have to pile out to places they've heard of, then take absolutely no notice of the things in them, except by buying a postcard of the things they didn't see because they went to the pub instead.
The reason to go to Grantchester, in practice, is nothing to do with the village itself, and everything to do with the walk out to it from Cambridge. It's about two miles, along a footpath which skirts glorious meadows, with views to distant farmland and huge East Anglian skies beyond. On a warm day, with just a hint of breeze, it really is more than we poor sinners really deserve. And, being a properly-mettled path which follows pretty much a straight line, it has none of the hassle of wondering which edge of the field to follow and where the hell you are that normally attends walking rural footpaths (or at least does for me).
And then back to Cambridge, about which enough has been said already
The walking through this pastoral scene was greatly enhanced by listening to one of England's great forgotten singer-songwriters, Clifford T Ward. Ward's songs are simple (sometimes to the point of rather cloying naivete), often funny, yet also affecting. the album I was listening to, "Home Thoughts From Abroad", contains many of his finest works, most of which are about love in all its phases, and are refreshingly down-to-earth and humane (unlike, for example, the doomed whimsy of Nick Drake). The title track, for example, contains this verse (as part of a letter between erstwhile lovers separated by the Atlantic):
"How is Worcestershire? is it still the same between us?
Do you still use television to send you fast asleep?
Can you last another week? Does the cistern still leak?
Or have you found a man to mend it?
Oh, and by the way, how's your broken heart?
Is that mended too?
I miss you"
There is something beautiful in those lines, and in the plaintive voice that sings them, dwelling on trivialities in a bid to escape the finality of separation. And the line "Oh and by the way, how's your broken heart?" is one of my very favourites in anything I've heard - a expression of our national melancholy as plangent as "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way", from the much more feted album released the same year (1973).
If you've never heard any Clifford T ward, I recommend tracking down "Home Thoughts from Abroad", or the mid-price "Best of" (called, I think, "Gaye, and other stories"), which abound with treasures, no less precious for being everyday