My Final Project, A Fable

The Wire Girl and the City of Lace

 Once there was a wire girl who lived in a wire city.  The houses shone in the sunlight and grew warm to the touch.  People’s clothes grew brittle in winter.  The wire people made everything out of metal - brass, copper, silver, sometimes gold.  Few bits of softness broke up the metallic city.  Except here and there, in the older neighborhoods, where a bit of yellowing lace fluttered.

Some said they had all come from a country of lace, long ago.  Some said the city of lace thrived, hidden behind the sandstone cliffs that marked the boundaries of the wire city.  Some said the city had unraveled long ago and was only a town of tangled, fluttering threads anymore.  Some said, though it hadn’t unraveled altogether, the city of lace struggled. 

Everyone else usually laughed; you couldn’t build with something as fragile and delicate as lace.  The threads weren’t strong like wires.  They showed their age; they would break.  Everyone else laughed.

But the wire girl shuffled closer and listened.  And she wondered which was true.

After listening to these stories from those who believed in the city of lace, the wire girl would go walking along the base of the sandstone cliffs, her head full of stories.  One day she wandered farther than she had ever gone before.  The wire girl stumbled upon a cave, its mouth such a gentle continuation of the cliff's curve that she nearly walked into it before she realized what she was doing.  She stood for a moment, looking at this sudden highway through the formerly impenetrable cliffs.

She stepped inside.

The wire girl kept walking, even when the cave chilled.  She kept her fingers on the left wall, running them along the crumbly sandstone that skittered and dusted under the sharp edges of her. 

The sandstone changed.

She still couldn't see, but the texture shifted, softened, as a faint light began to gleam in the distance.  The wire girl emerged from the cave, blinking as the sunlight glanced off her dress, and turned to look at the cave walls.

At first she couldn't see any difference.  The sandstone was still lined with the deposits of hundreds of years.  But then she saw that the lines of the cave walls were actually thousands of trembling threads, stretched from some strange source deep within the sandstone out of the mouth of the cave toward the city of lace.

When she came to the heart of the city she realized that the people, too, were made of lace.  They were knotted, just as she herself was twisted, into shape, and their clothes were of the same patterns that made up their homes.  The wire girl tried not to stare, but she found that the people of the city were staring at her, too. 

Here and there, in the holes of the buildings, she noticed glints and gleams.  Looking closer at a corner of a nearby house, she spied a bit of metal running up the house’s side.  The wire girl stared, astonished that the city of lace would think to use something so seemingly foreign to it. 

“Surprised, little one?"

She looked up and found that the voice belonged to a large lace lion whose shoulder came to her own.  His mane was an explosion of curlicues, his flicking tail a tendril from a flower across his back.  The wire girl had never seen anything like him before.  But he chuckled at her astonishment in a way that made it quite impossible to be afraid of him.

"A little," she said.  "Everything else is lace here.  I didn't expect to see metal.  It reminds me..."

"Of home?" the lion asked.  The wire girl nodded.  "Did you think we'd never heard of alloys or metallurgy here?"  He chuckled again and, displaying wiry claws, lifted one paw to point across the square.  "Do you see that house over there?  It's a library now, but it's been here longer than I have.  Things that old need propping up sometimes, repairs."  He leaned close as if sharing a secret.  "We had to put wire in the framework."

The wire girl sighed.  "It's not at all how I imagined it."

"Is it better or worse?"

"I don't know yet."

The lace lion laughed.  “Let me show you more of our fair city, and then we’ll see what you think.”  The wire girl followed him across the square, where he turned back for a moment and nodded toward the stately building making up one side of the square.  The Council House, he told her, where the sheriff and the mayor settled disputes between the guilds.

            He told her of the Archers, who protected the city with their bows.  He told her of the Dyers, who decorated parts of the city with vibrant colors.  He told her of the Designers, who drew the patterns for the lace and knotted the buildings together from the threaded sandstone.

            The lace buildings rose on either side as the lace lion and the wire girl strolled down the road.  The wire girl glinted in the sun, drawing the townspeople’s attention to her.  But she didn’t notice, because they had come to a clock tower standing alone on a corner.

            “That used to be a train station,” the lion told her.  “The rest of it was unraveled after someone tore holes in it.  But we managed to save the clock tower.”

The wire girl looked up at the tower and asked, “You had a train station?  I mean, people came here?”

“How do you think we learned about metal?” the lion replied.  “Of course, we don’t get so many visitors anymore.  Some people never wanted them here in the first place.”

For a moment the wire girl doubted the wisdom of staying much longer in the city of lace.  But her skirt had snagged on something, and as she bent to untangle it, she spied a strange structure on a bluff above the city.  The lion followed her gaze and said, “Ah, yes.  The castle.”

They climbed Castle Rock, which the lion explained was mostly threadstone and sandstone, riddled with caves.  The castle, or what was left of it, stood lonely at the top of the slope.  Its edges were fraying, its corners unraveling, its walls worn through in places.  Forlorn bits of thread fluttered in the breeze.  The wire girl shuddered.

“The royals left years ago,” the lion said.  “They have other castles in other cities, and someone kept tearing holes in this one.  Trying to make a point, I suppose.”

“A point about what?” the wire girl couldn’t help asking.

The lion sighed.  “The royal family traveled so much from city to city that they brought new ideas with them whenever they visited here.  It was the beginning of the same riot that unraveled the train station.  Some people wanted the city to remain entirely lace.  They still do.”

At home in the wire city, some said that lace was too weak to build with.  The wire girl reached out and strummed a few loose threads in the castle wall.  Certainly the edges of the hole were fragile, but their neighbors remained taut and strong.  She wondered.

When the wire girl and the lion went back to the square, they found a confusion of lace people gathered in front of the library.  A few ran past the wire girl, with the crowd shouting after them to get more thread, heavy thread.

The wire girl twisted her fingers into the lion’s mane as he made his way through the crowd, gently weaving between the angry lace people.  At the center of the mob stood the Archers with their bows leveled at another lion made of lace.  Behind him, a fresh hole marred the surface of the old library.  The wire girl could see the books, their titles embroidered on their spines.

“Oscar, what’s happened?” the wire girl’s guide asked.  The second lion glanced wildly between the Archers, the mob, and his brother.

“It wasn’t lace anymore, Leo,” he wailed.  “It had metal.”  Then Oscar’s gaze fell on the wire girl, and his tail began to thrash.  The wire girl watched as Oscar’s tail whipped harder and harder and became tangled in the loose threads from the hole behind him.

The lace people had returned with their heavy thread, but they didn’t appear to know what to do with it.  Their knotted eyes narrowed uneasily. 

“We can’t have him tearing holes in everything,” someone shouted.

“Maybe we should take the metal out of everything again.”

“Are you crazy?  The city would unravel in no time.”

“Let’s unravel him.”

“We can’t!”

“He is my brother,” Leo growled, turning to face the crowd.

“What if we tangle him up instead?” the wire girl asked, looking at the way Oscar’s tail had caught in the threads of the library.

The crowd of lace quieted.  Even Oscar looked surprised.

“You could weave him a plinth,” she continued, “and have him stay there.”

“But he’s torn holes in everything else.  What’s to stop him from doing the same with his plinth?” someone called out.

“I will watch him,” Leo said.  “Make me a matching plinth, and I will stay there to keep an eye on him.”

So the people of lace made the plinths with the heavy thread and put them in front of the Council House.  Oscar glared at them all from the right, his tail still lashing until an exasperated group of townspeople wove that down too.  Leo settled onto the left plinth, his gaze fixed on his petulant brother.

As the lace people dispersed, the wire girl sidled closer to Oscar.  “Maybe from here you can still keep an eye on the city,” she said in a comforting tone.  The lion scowled.

“He might listen to you one day,” Leo said, “but right now you should be getting home.”

“I want to stay,” the wire girl protested.

Leo smiled.  “You can always come back to visit.  You’ll know right where to find me, after all.  I’m the lion on the left.”

She sounded strange to her neighbors when she returned through the sandstone caves, her head full of stories again.  The wire girl said she had been to a city of lace, where the houses quivered in breezes and faded in sunlight.  People’s clothes were knotted and sewn.  The lace people made everything out of thread – cotton, wool, sometimes silk.  Few bits of hardness broke up the patterned city.  Except, insisted the wire girl to her astonished listeners, here and there, in the newer neighborhoods, where a bit of bright wire shone through.

Poor Carson

Carson's got a sword...watch out.

As the lone guy in our group, surrounded by seven girls, Carson was doomed from the start to be constantly singled out.  Nearly every time we took a tour, met a new tutor, or even ordered dinner at a pub, people would take mental note of the gender ratio in the group and ask, "You the only bloke, then?"  Their reactions to this ranged from sympathy to teasing admiration.  Below are some of my favorite incidents resulting from having only one guy in the group.

• During the Galleries of Justice tour (which, to be fair, included Andy as well), Carson was the one picked to model the masks prisoners used to have to wear to prevent them recognizing each other and making friends.  I believe the matron's remark was something like, "There, now - isn't that an improvement?" when we could no longer see his face.
• When we went on the ghost tour of Nottingham, Carson was automatically selected to reenact the, shall we say, unfortunate (and awkward) end of Edward II's life.  The tale involves a red hot poker.  Let's leave it at that.
• I was not present for this one, but I heard about it later.  While trying to assert his opinion in a discussion, Carson was outnumbered and complained, "This is a matriarchy!"  Someone responded, "No, no, it's a democracy...with a female majority."
• In the hostel in London, as soon as Carson went into the bathroom for a minute, we all started changing into our outfits for the evening.  When he tried to come out, we shouted, "Carson, stay in there!" and made him wait for several more minutes.
• At the Rescue Rooms our last night in Nottingham, Allie and Lauren had brought their boyfriends, and Steve and Gavin were also with us.  Someone asked Carson if it would be weird not to be surrounded by girls anymore, and he said, "Yeah, this is the largest concentration of guys I've been around for four weeks!"
• At several points during our final week, we all joked that Carson may have forgotten how to interact with other males after being surrounded by girls for a month.
• The phrase "Poor Carson" was uttered, sarcastically and sincerely, probably several hundred times.

Basically, Carson had to deal with girl talk, jokes about his "player" status, and a general absence of other males his age (except Andy, but that was only for one week) for a month.  

If my group members remember any other stories, I will of course update this post!

The Adventure Comes to a Close

I overslept Friday morning and found myself scurrying around and praying that I’d have enough time to get dressed, run to Bonington, trim my artwork, pin it up, print off a final copy of my story, and figure out how to display it before meeting my friend Chris at the bus station.  The fact that I had already packed all my clothes except for one dress really expedited the outfit selection process, so I actually did manage to get to Bonington within a reasonable amount of time.  Gavin had brought in a cool leather cover thingy for sort of framing my story, plus he had found a sort of lectern to stand under the artwork so the words and the art wouldn’t have to vie for space on the same wall.

My final project

After enlisting Megan, McKenzie, and Gavin to help pin up the panorama and asking Gavin to pretty please print off the last copy of my story (in my defense, his staff card was what gave us access to the printing lab at all), I dashed off to find Broadmarsh Bus Station.  Although I was successful in meeting up with Chris, the walk made me a little sad because I realized there were still whole districts of Nottingham I hadn’t yet explored – and I had run out of time to do so.

Chris’s classes had already ended, so he had decided to come up to Nottingham for a day trip.  It was fun getting to be the tour guide, and it helped me realize just how much I had absorbed in my weeks here.  I took him to the castle for the obligatory picture with the Robin Hood statue, then down to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem for lunch.  We caught up on our favorite experiences of the summer and reminisced about Bellarmine before I pointed out the caves in Castle Rock and told him the story of Mortimer’s Hole.  From there, because I knew he’d appreciate it, I showed him the plaque marking where Charles I started the English Civil War.  He enjoyed all these sites, but noted that he was disappointed in the lack of singing animals in medieval clothing (sadly, life is not a Disney film).

Since my exhibition was starting soon, we meandered toward Market Square, where I pointed out the Council House above the hubbub of the “beach” and introduced him to Oscar and Leo, the Right and Left Lions.  From there I showed him the NTU campus (upon seeing Arkwright, he said, “So you go to school in a castle”) and led him through the twists and turns of the labyrinth that is Bonington to the exhibition space.

Everyone else’s pieces had turned out really well.  Megan did album covers inspired by our outings; McKenzie wrote a story and created an accompanying tree out of pictures she had taken throughout the program; Marissa wrote poems; Katie designed coats of arms; Ali reimagined the Nottingham coat of arms incorporating things like Phantom of the Opera; Abigail created a display depicting the battle of experiencing a place while looking for gluten free food; and Carson wrote several epistolary and almost prose poem pieces which he displayed across a wall.  All in all, I was thoroughly impressed with our group’s efforts.

Several of our tutors showed up, along with Allie and Lauren and Steve, who brought scones and champagne for everyone to share.  Everyone mingled and complimented each other’s art and tried not to think about how it was almost over.  As Marissa would later point out on Facebook, when we gathered for a group photo, our cuddliness was a far cry from the not-sure-how-to-get-into-formation people in our first picture on our first day.  There’s something about exploring a strange country with complete strangers that bonds you.  And yet, despite the bond that had formed, we would probably never be in Nottingham together again.

After an evaluation of the Fulbright program (likes, dislikes, goals completed, goals turned to dust, surprises, etc.) with Valerie, we dragged ourselves back to the flat to finish packing, still trying not to talk about how this whole thing was nearly at its end.  We still had dinner with Steve, Allie, Lauren, and Gavin, after all, and probably some pubs after that.  We had whole hours left.  It wasn’t over.

I personally found myself reaching my limit by the time we left the Rescue Rooms, the first bar we visited after dinner.  Hugging our guides goodbye, I headed back to the flat one last time to cram my dress into my suitcase and quadruple check my flight itinerary for the next day.  Eventually I just tried to get some sleep, even though the endless checklist of Travel Stuff kept racing through my head.  The cabs would come at 4:15 a.m., at which point it would truly be the end.

In the quiet stages of tiredness, we were much more willing to discuss our sadness at the end of the Fulbright program as the taxis zipped through the darkened, empty streets.  The surreal atmosphere of the world that early in the morning, I supposed, complemented the surreal feeling of our time in Nottingham having sped by and gone slowly all at once.  So we said our goodbyes to this English city that had come to feel something like home, and off we went into the darkness.

Our Last Week: Attempts at Art

Our final week in Nottingham focused almost entirely on the creation of our final projects for our culminating exhibition.  They'd been alluding to this terrifying event for the whole four weeks, but only now did it begin to loom visibly on the horizon.  By Friday, we had to come up with (and then pull off) some display-able something, preferably to do with our experience in the UK.  It was a pretty open ended assignment, just the kind that sends students like Katie and I (and probably a few of the others) into fits of worry about whether or not we’re doing it right.  Gavin oversaw our efforts in the same stifling room as the previous week, reassuring us that we could indeed create something resembling art, and it could even be good art!

Since I tend to favor words over illustration, I began my project with the idea for a fairytale based on various parts of the city’s history.  Throughout our time in Nottingham, our tutors and tour guides kept using the phrase “city of lace” to describe the local pride in their once-famed textile industry.  It made me wonder – what if there were literally a city made of lace?  The fairytale aspect spiraled from there, combining with an earlier idea to write an origin myth for the Left Lion as a Nottingham meeting place and eventually becoming a symbolic short story incorporating a number of my favorite pieces of Notts history.

The story (mostly) completed, now all I had to do was…the actual display part.

Although I had plenty of ideas in my head for how the text could interact with images, I knew I tended to have trouble translating such visions onto the page.  I had already made cutouts of local landmarks and spray painted them to look like lace for last week’s project, so I wanted to incorporate those somehow to save myself a bit of work.  Another Revolution Monday (of involuntary volunteering) and the following Tuesday and Wednesday passed without much progress on the actual creation front.  I mostly just revised my story and batted ideas around.

Having finally decided to do a sort of panoramic scene of my story’s setting and obtained the materials for the project, I devoted Thursday to nothing but work.  I had a little too much fun hammering wire into the desired shapes, became increasingly frustrated with my interesting but ridiculously time-consuming idea to create sandstone out of glued threads, and printed new, smaller versions of last week’s lacy landmarks when they proved to be absurdly large next to my developing illustration.  Eventually, while the rest of the group went water skiing (which I would have only observed anyway), I glued down the final pieces of my project and stomped home to shower and relax, having worked so long on it that I wanted nothing more than to tear it up into tiny shreds and shower the exhibition with its destructive confetti.

Our week also included a final session with Sean, in which we discussed horror archetypes and then wrote a quick draft of our own scary stories.  My sister later dubbed my concept for the story particularly creepy, even for me, but I rather like it and will probably continue to develop it independently.

And then Friday dawned - our final day in Nottingham - which deserves its own post!

UPDATE:  I forgot to write about Wednesday!  Our friend Andy from our first week was back in town for his graduation, so he tracked us down for lunch at Thea Caffea, a tea room Bhav recommended our second week.  After lunch we had to get back to working on our projects, but we made plans to meet up after our evening activity.  This activity was a tour of the Nottingham Contemporary, led by our student ambassador Lauren (who actually does work at the Contemporary).  After that, we opted not to attend a talk at the museum in favor of food and rest.  Andy and his lovely girlfriend met us at the Pitcher and Piano for dinner, after which we all went mini-golfing.  I even got a few holes in one!  Then, sadly, we had to say goodbye to Andy for good.

Involuntary Volunteering

Monday morning found us once again gathered outside Bonington to meet a person we had never seen before.  This time we were supposed to meet the volunteer coordinator for NTU who would take us to Stonebridge City Farm for a day of “volunteering” for which none of us had volunteered.  In all seriousness, we were mostly looking forward to a day of work on a farm simply because it would be a change of pace.

Stonebridge City Farm lies in the middle of Nottingham, where a neighborhood was once torn down and the land was designated for a school that was never built.  Instead, a few chickens and allotted garden plots grew into a free community farm in the midst of the city.  Our job was to trim up the edges of the paths winding through this little idyll so that children could get right up to the fence to see the animals.

“We don’t want them to try to get close and get stung by the stinging nettles,” the Stonebridge guy explained.  Apparently it was alright if we got stung, though.  And we did.  Several times.

We moved along the path, ripping out grass and weeds and tackling the occasional nettle as gingerly and carefully as possible.  The nice thing about weeding, we agreed, is that your progress is visibly evident.  The cows, goats, sheep, and pigs in the paddocks were curious about our presence and frequently came snuffling up to the fence, hoping for some treats and rejecting our cries of, “Ooh, so cute!” when they discovered we actually had no food.

The atmosphere of the whole volunteering experience was pretty different from similar experiences I’ve had in the US.  It was much more laid back, with the Stonebridge guy encouraging us to take a break whenever we needed to, “grab some tea from the café and sit for a moment!” 

And after we received our certificates for having volunteered (random, I know), it was time for…Revolution Monday!  All told, a pretty good day – even if we were ridiculously sore the next few days.

A Day Trip to Brighton

The seashore at Brighton - like something out of Austen!

Abigail, Marissa, McKenzie, and I left the flat at 6:30, believing that the trams did not start running until 7:30 and we would need to walk all the way to the station to catch our train.  Imagine our simultaneous joy and anger, then, when a tram zipped past in the distance.  We rode to the station in plenty of time for our train but lamented the extra 15 minutes we could have slept in.

Our plans to sleep on the train were somewhat hindered by the arrival of a rather vocal family who settled just behind us and proceeded to have loud, energetic conversations which often led to raucous laughter.  The mother, to her credit, made occasional attempts to shush her daughters, but they ignored her until she joined in the chatter.  At long last, the train pulled into St. Pancras in London, and we parted ways from this noisy group.  We caught the connecting train to Brighton, dozed a bit on the way, and finally alighted in one of the UK's favorite seaside towns.

Within 20 minutes of getting there, we all noticed a marked difference in the atmosphere of the town as opposed to Nottingham.  It felt more relaxed, less hurried, more open - at least to me.  That's been something I've noticed as we visit various unfamiliar cities around the UK on this trip: each place has its own feel, sometimes for obvious reasons, sometimes just because.  We stopped at the "street diner" where several vendors had set up stalls with foods ranging from burgers to organic frozen yogurt to falafel.  I got chicken paella, which was absolutely delicious.  Then, since the sun had come out, we headed toward the beach.

My Pullman friends have heard me say this often during the school year, but there's something weird for me about being landlocked.  I grew up no more than twenty minutes from saltwater (such is the beauty of the Pacific Northwest), so it's something I unconsciously miss while I'm further inland.  I've been having similar feelings in Nottingham, so it was nice to see water again!

The pebbly beach, though not as sandy as some of our group are used to, was beautiful.  The pier stretched out to our right, the water lay before us, and the sun had come out despite a forecast of thunderstorms that afternoon.  We lay on the beach for awhile before McKenzie and Abigail went to try out the rides on the end of the pier.  Marissa and I stayed behind, sunbathing and reading.  Magically, the loudspeakers on the pier began blasting Disney music!  They started, appropriately, with "Under the Sea," then played "Friend Like Me," "Breaking Free" (High School Musical), "You'll Be In My Heart," "Circle of Life," "Be Our Guest," "A Whole New World," and "Part of Your World."  We sang along, of course.

After a while, raindrops started coming down in earnest, so Marissa and I gathered all of our stuff and realized it would have been wise to have a meeting place in case of rain.  Luckily we managed to find McKenzie and Abigail before McKenzie had to leave for a wine tour she had signed up for, and we didn't get too wet in the process.  Having established a meeting place and time for that evening, the three of us decided to ride the Brighton Wheel, a Ferris wheel with enclosed pods that give you panoramic views of the coastline and city.  A really weird thing happened while we were standing in line: one of the guys behind us asked if he could have a drink from my coffee.  When I responded, "Um, no," he looked remarkably despondent for someone who had literally just asked a complete stranger if he could have some of her beverage.

Our Ferris wheel ride was narrated by a recording of a sassy British man who made references to certain, ahem, activities favored by famous but wanton guests in Brighton's history, such as Oscar Wilde's many stays in a certain hotel.  We didn't really want to look around for the landmarks the recording was talking about, but the jokes about "dirty weekends" were funny.  The views were spectacular and left us twisting in our seats, trying to see out of every window at once.

After the wheel, the sun had returned, so we chose to take advantage of it and lounge on the beach a bit longer.  We sunbathed, I read my book, and Marissa and I even waded into the water up to our waists.  A little girl was blowing bubbles that the breeze caught and carried across the beach.  After three weeks of running around cities and near constant travel and thinking critically, it was so relaxing to simply do nothing and have nowhere to be.

Hanging out on the beach

Abigail convinced me to go shopping with her, so we left Marissa, who could not be budged from the beach, and went to explore the Lanes, a twisty maze of boutiques and shops in the center of Brighton.  The shops turned out to mostly be jewelry and ridiculously expensive clothing.  But I did buy a sarong to wear as a skirt when I discovered the discomfort that accompanies putting on one's jeans too soon over one's damp bathing suit.

McKenzie's tour had gone longer than anticipated, so the remaining three of us found a restaurant for dinner where she eventually found us and we discussed our enjoyment of the day and our various adventures.  We found our way back to the station, caught the train back to London (after some confusion as to which train was actually going to St. Pancras), and got onto our connecting train back to Nottingham.

However, our train was delayed because the driver had not yet arrived at St. Pancras due to signal problems following a lightning strike in Derbyshire.  Yes, a lightning strike delayed our train.  The ride only got stranger from there.  At one point, a drunk group stood at one end of our coach, jeering at the attendant who asked one of them to put a shirt on.  (The attendant then called them children under his breath as he passed us, which amused me greatly.)  They eventually got off, and most of the people in our coach fell asleep as it was now past 11 p.m.  This peace and quiet ended, however, when a group of people about our age got on the train and one of them struck up a conversation with another passenger.  This would normally be fine, except that this young man seemed not to understand how to keep his voice below a shout.  His volume alone annoyed us, but he proceeded to go on a (still loud) political and religious diatribe.  Again, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion - but really?  Shouting not-particularly-well-informed platitudes about the Middle East while people are trying to sleep?  Grr.  And finally, at the stop where Mr. Loud Opinions departed, a hen party (bachelorette party) rather drunkenly boarded.  We gave up on sleeping through their cackling and shrieking, but agreed that at least they sort of had an excuse for being loud.

When the hens left the train, another attendant came through the coach, in which we were pretty much the only ones left, and said, "Thank God that's over then.  I was going out of my head with that noise!"

"Does this happen often?" McKenzie jokingly asked.

"Never.  This was just weird."

We arrived in Nottingham just past midnight, waited for what seemed like forever for a cab in the normally crowded taxi area, and collapsed back at our flat.

Revolution Monday (and the Rest of the Week)

Since this week was closer to a formal class than previous weeks of exploration, I didn't feel like each day warranted its own post.  Here's a more general update (sorry there aren't pictures):

Monday - "Guys, what day is it?  Revolution Monday!"
Still recovering from our travels around and back from London, we were pretty content to simply sit back and practice "life drawing" with Gavin.  Even though I typically don't like drawing or sketching because I find it so difficult to reproduce my mental images on the page, it was a nice change of pace to have a day that involved more sitting than walking.  We also went on a lecture/walk with yet another professor (it's really interesting sampling all these different teaching styles for various activities) that evening, which was fun.

Then it was time for, as Megan had excitedly dubbed it and repeated throughout the day, "Revolution Monday."  We had plans to return to Revolution, the restaurant we had discovered on ladies' night last week, for their Mega Mondays meal deal.  This was exciting for several reasons: 1) we had not actually returned to a single restaurant yet in our time here, and doing so made us feel like we had (almost) learned our way around town, 2) we usually wander around indecisively until we find somewhere random to eat, so having prior plans was new, and 3) having received our weekly stipend after nearly going broke in London, we felt all the richer for being able to save money on a half-off dinner deal.

Tuesday - "You're hunting Byron, you're hunting Lawrence."  "O...kay..."
Gavin took us to Backlit, a gallery in an old warehouse, to chat with their marketing manager, see the exhibition they're currently running, and learn about the space.  Although I didn't really understand most of the art in the exhibition, I appreciated getting to talk with someone who has actually found several jobs in a creative field.  The atmosphere of the gallery was nice too; it's an independent place, so they focus on representing the styles and themes that are important to them.

In the afternoon we had time to work on our final projects for the week, of which we will have a mini exhibition on Friday.  There are three other students in our class this time: Aysha, who has been with us from the first week, and Annie and Sally Ann, two older ladies who recently completed another art course and are continuing to explore their artistic talents.  We've invited them all to our final (separate, in our fourth week) exhibition for our Fulbright program, so hopefully they'll be able to come and see our projects fully developed.

That evening, we met up with Sean Elliott Maher (half an hour late, after a bit of a mix-up about where we were supposed to meet) for a session called "Literary Nottingham."  He told us about Lord Byron and D.H. Lawrence, two local writers of some importance, then we compared their writing styles.  This is the type of stuff that really interests me, so I enjoyed it...but evening activities can be rather draining of brain power.

Wednesday - "How'd your photo turn out?"  "It didn't."
We spent the morning making pinhole cameras, then running in and out of the maze that is the fine arts building to take a picture, dash back into the dark room, and develop it to see if we had guessed the right exposure time.  After a few failures, I decided to start working on my actual project for the end of the week.  I printed out photos of Nottingham landmarks and experimented with a few paint techniques to get the effect I wanted.  Our evening activity had been rescheduled, so we enjoyed a bit of free time back at the flat.

Thursday - "Are you going to use that spray paint?'
We basically spent all day getting our projects ready for Friday.  I was almost mistaken for a vandal by a construction worker who heard me shaking spray paint out by a dumpster.  As he rounded the brick wall, however, he saw that I had taped up a drop cloth and was actually spray painting cutouts of Nottingham landmarks through a lace shawl I had taped over them.  He went back to work.

We had another session with Sean that evening, where we played Mad Libs and wrote for about fifteen minutes before sharing our work.  It was nice to be back in a writing workshop environment, even if it was only with first drafts we'd written five minutes before.

Friday - "This room is so hot."
Today we finished up our projects, displayed them throughout the room we've been using, and had a mini exhibition for our class.  (I actually forgot to take pictures of mine, so...sorry.)  We looked at and gave feedback for each piece, then Gavin showed us some of his own work.  It was interesting, but the room was boiling hot with no air conditioning or even good air circulation, so I was pretty relieved to finally get outside!  We also said goodbye to Annie, Sally Ann, and Aysha today; next week is just us working on our final exhibition projects.

Tonight we're supposed to go to a gallery/exhibition opening at the Nottingham Contemporary, and our group is also planning to visit the beach in Market Square.  Yes, you read that right; Nottingham builds a fake beach in the middle of the city every year, complete with sand, rides, tiki bars, and a boardwalk.  We've walked past it as they constructed it, but haven't looked around yet, so I'm excited for that!

Posts next week may be more general in nature (for example, I have a draft centered around Carson's plight as the lone male in our group) since all we're really doing is working on our final projects with a few evening activities and a volunteer opportunity here and there.  But tomorrow I'm spending the day in Brighton, so expect a post about that soon!

The Tower of London: Dreams Do Come True

The Tower of London

I was so excited to see the Tower.

My second day in London began bright and early, since my friend Chris and I had agreed to meet at the Tower of London at 8:30.  I checked out of the hostel, walked to Paddington Station, and took the Underground to Tower Hill.  From the second I first saw the Tower, I couldn't stop smiling.  I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to visit the Tower of London, and now I was finally here, with a whole day to explore it.  It just seemed so surreal.

The space in front of the Tower was deserted, since it didn't actually open until 10:00 (not 9:00 like Chris and I thought), but the Welcome Centre was open.  I got my ticket from the attendant and asked about a place to leave my overnight bag, since I didn't want to lug it around the Tower all day.  Probably assuming I didn't have a pass for the tube, she kindly gave me a map and showed me how to get to Liverpool Street Station, telling me there was a luggage hold there where I could pay to leave my bag.  Now, London is not laid out in a sensible grid, or anything resembling a grid, unlike most cities, so I got lost several times on the "quick walk" to the station.  Having checked my bag in, I discovered that Liverpool Street has a tube station that is a mere two stops from Tower Hill.  Needless to say, I took the train back to the Tower.

Chris was waiting for me at the decidedly more crowded Welcome Centre, having arrived shortly after I left for Liverpool Street.  We haven't hung out much since his graduation last year, so we had plenty to catch up on while standing in line to enter the Tower.  Once inside, we made a beeline for the Crown Jewels; one of Mom's friends currently living in London had advised me to see those first and avoid the lines.  Chris agreed that it was slightly disappointing that the display was not set up as shown in a certain episode of Sherlock, but the jewels (and banquet dishes, including the biggest punch bowl I have ever seen and a ladle that looked like a scepter in its own right) were spectacular and well worth visiting.  We weren't allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would have many sparkly things to post.

The Yeoman Warder who led our tour

Having oohed and ahhed, we ran back to the moat for the next Yeoman Warder tour, where one of the uniformed "Beefeaters" had just stepped onto his podium to begin.  He told us about the history of the fortress itself as he took us under the arch back into the Tower, showed us where the national mint used to be, pointed out the Bloody Tower and Traitors' Gate, and told us of various nobles and criminals who had met their tragic (or almost comedic) ends on Tower Hill or Tower Green.

A memorial near where our tour ended marks where the scaffolds were once built for executions such as those of Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey.  Tragic and eerie though it may be, there was something fantastic about walking across the same place they had walked.  This feeling continued throughout the Tower - it's simply saturated with history.

Ravens!

For example, the ravens are living traditions.  Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the White Tower will crumble, the monarchy will fall, and a great disaster will befall the whole country.  So the Yeoman Warders keep eight of the birds around just in case.

Charles I's armor

The guided tour over, Chris and I found our own way through the Bloody Tower, which told the story of some of its famous prisoners, including the two young princes who died mysteriously at the supposed command of their uncle, Richard III.  Then we went through the White Tower, where the princes' bodies were discovered under the stairs.  This tower was also home to the Line of Kings, one of the world's longest running tourist attractions.  Royal armor from past kings was shown off here to impress visitors, complete with decked-out life-size figures of horses for jousting displays.  Weapons adorned the walls, including guns, swords, and a few fearsome looking axes.

Henry's bedchamber in St. Thomas's Tower

After the White Tower, we went through St. Thomas's Tower just over Traitors' Gate.  Here were the rooms Henry III and his son, Edward I, had used as a royal residence.  One room was set up as it would have been when King Henry lived there, as well as the chapel where he would have received visitors and even conducted affairs of state.  Up and down a few more spiral stairs, and we were out on the top of the Tower wall, looking over the Thames on one side and looking into the Tower on the other.

By this point we were both getting hungry.  Chris found out I still hadn't tried fish and chips and insisted that I must experience the dish in a true London pub.  So we found The Hung, Drawn and Quartered, ordered our quintessential English food, and talked.  (I don't normally like fish, but the food was actually really good!)

Normally I don't take pictures of my food.
But this was my first fish and chips!

Chris had plans for the afternoon, so we parted ways after lunch.  I headed back to Liverpool Street Station to retrieve my luggage, then went to King's Cross St. Pancras to drop it off again at another luggage hold.  Having no WiFi and therefore no way of contacting my group members to discover their locations, I decided to seek out the Royal Veterinary College on behalf of my sister.  It was closed when I found it, so I took a few pictures.  I then proceeded to get lost while trying to find the nearest Underground station.

A cool bench at the British Library

With no other ideas, I headed back to King's Cross, where I found out that the British Library was right next door!  I meant to look at the manuscripts and exhibitions in this wonderful building, but I was so happy to have WiFi and a place to sit down that I ended up on Pinterest until they announced that the building was closing.  Since they kicked me out, I figured I might as well head to Westminster Abbey to try to find the others for an organ recital they had mentioned.  We did, in fact, find each other, and we managed to edge into the back of the Abbey to hear the free organ recital.  Even though we didn't get to properly tour the church (or even really see much of it over the heads of the other listeners), it was interesting to experience Westminster Abbey for the first time with deep, swelling music from an unseen source while I marveled at the vastness overhead.

Westminster Abbey

Once the recital ended and they shooed us out of the church, we took the tube back to Paddington to grab Marissa's luggage from the hostel, then proceeded to St. Pancras so we would be there in plenty of time for our return train.  I retrieved my own bag from the luggage hold, we all bought some dinner, and the last remaining members of our group joined us at the station for our return trip.  As wonderful as London was, we were all very, very happy to see our familiar flat back in Nottingham.

Traitors' Gate

Another Update
Sorry this post is already so long, but I realized I didn't write anything about last Thursday or Friday.  This was mostly because nothing really happened; we presented our iPad photo projects to Bhav, tried Pimm's at lunch, and toured Bromley House Library (Google it, I'll write another thousand words if I let myself gush about it here).  There are also very few pictures from those days, but we all agreed it was nice to have a few less intense days between Oxford and London.

A Little London Music

London Bridge (not falling down)

We spent Saturday morning dozing as the train zoomed across England toward London.  Our energy levels lifted somewhat with the excitement of actually arriving in the city, especially when we ran over to King's Cross Station to see a certain magical platform.  The line of tourists was ridiculously long, and it wasn't even actually between Platforms 9 and 10 anyway, so we decided to come back another time.  Gavin, our fearless leader for the next two weeks, took us down into the depths of the Underground, which we rode to London Bridge.  After pictures (and me humming about the bridge falling down) we headed for the Tate Modern, an art museum at one end of the Millennium Bridge, facing St. Paul's Cathedral at the other end.

Looking up at St. Paul's 

Gavin encouraged us to wander the exhibitions for an hour or so, pointing us toward one in particular entitled "Poetry and Dreams."  I liked the atmosphere of the building, but the works were mostly surrealism, which I frankly don't understand, so they were only impressive in the sense of "I couldn't paint like that if I wanted to."  I did, however, enjoy several of the photography pieces.

"Early each day to the steps of St. Paul's..."

Soon we all started clamoring for food, so Gavin led us across the Millennium Bridge to eat lunch on the steps of St. Paul's (at which point I started singing "Feed the Birds" under my breath).  The cathedral was breathtaking from the outside, but we only got to go inside for a minute because Gavin hadn't known we had to pay to tour it.  Instead, he took us to the London Museum, which shows the history of modern-day London and the surrounding countryside starting from prehistoric days of flint axes and nomadic tribes.  My favorite part here was the mock pleasure gardens where videos projected on the walls showed tales of Victorian flirtation and intrigue.  There were also a few other things that reminded me of various Disney songs which I subsequently hummed to myself as I walked through the exhibits.

My favorite spot on a mock Victorian street

Our official instruction for the day was over at 3:00, but we'd been given open tickets in case we wanted to stay in the city until Sunday - which of course we all did.  So when we finished up at the London Museum, we found our way to our hostel in Westminster.  Having never stayed in a hostel before, and having heard many horror stories about them, I was pleased with the cleanliness and atmosphere of the place, but I couldn't help feeling that we had somewhat overpaid - especially since there was no WiFi included!  We had booked an 8 bed room with an attached bathroom, so it was just our group.

Despite the heat and tiredness, there was a flurry of activity as we all got ready for our respective evening activities.  Three people went to a concert in Hyde Park, two others went to see Wicked, and Marissa, Ali, and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera.  

Our first challenge lay in navigating the Underground, which actually went quite well despite a line closure or two.  (I was also excited by the fact that we were right by Paddington Station, although I found myself having to explain the nostalgia connected with that name to most of my group who had never read of that charming little bear.)  Then we had to find an affordable dinner near the theatre, and finally the theatre itself.  We ended up just buying food at a Marks & Spencer, then eating it in an arcade next door to Her Majesty's Theatre, where a nice waitress let us sit at an unoccupied table until the cafe got busier.  At the theatre, we bought souvenir programmes and brochures, then steeled ourselves to climb the many, many stairs to our seats in the balcony.  When we got up there, however, the view (both of the stage and of the Irish boy showing us to our seats) was pretty good.  

A hush falls over the crowd...

The chandelier lay under a cloth onstage, waiting.  The prologue scene commenced.  And when they raised the chandelier to the crashing chords of the title song, I got chills.  I will also admit that I cried during "All I Ask of You" and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again."  Every principal singer hit notes that left me in awe and gave me goosebumps.  The sets and costumes were spectacular.  Hearing the music live with such a phenomenal orchestra was intense.  It was, in a word, amazing.

Singing snatches of the songs all the way, we took the Underground back to Paddington and walked back to our hostel.  The Wicked crew returned shortly thereafter, then the Hyde Park group, and we all collapsed into bed.  Exhausted though we were, we did spend some time chatting in the dark about our respective shows and various other things, "like a slumber party!" as one person exclaimed.  Eventually, though, sleep beckoned.    

Hogwarts, Narnia, and Middle Earth

We awoke relatively early Wednesday morning; we had agreed that we wanted as much time as possible to explore Oxford before our guided tour at 1:30.  Besides, we had to return our room keys by 10.  After cramming our luggage in a cabinet in Magdalen College's lobby, we set out to find breakfast at a little cafe we remembered seeing the night before.  It turned out that the Grand Cafe was in fact the site of England's first coffee house!  Needless to say, I became rather excited about this, and proceeded to exclaim over the quality of the coffee and the decor and pretty much everything else about the cafe.

The first coffee house in England!

Delicious breakfast over, we went our separate ways.  I browsed an antique shop right next to the Grand Cafe, where I found jewelry, clothes, trinkets - and books.  Old books from England that end up in used bookstores in the US tend to be pricey, so I was eager to find less well-traveled volumes.  I also found a more modern bookstore in which I purchased a biography of C.S. Lewis and a book about the "Inklings" (as Lewis, Tolkien, and their similarly intellectual friends christened their little group).  Wandering up and down High Street and in and out of shops and churches took up most of the morning before I went back to the Grand Cafe for lunch.  This time I took out my notebook to take notes on the atmosphere of the place, thinking it would make a good setting for a story, but I think I made the waitress nervous with my observing and scribbling.

I met up with everyone else back at Magdalen College, where we now shoved our shopping bags into the cabinet with our luggage.  Bhav and Adam joined us for a biking tour of Oxford, but three of us who can't ride bikes took a walking version of the tour instead.  The guide was quite knowledgeable about funny little stories behind various buildings, but I was more impressed by her ability to navigate the cobblestone streets in heels!  I don't have the time, memory, or inclination to rewrite everything we learned, but here are some of the highlights: the most hidden (and yet famous) tavern in Oxford; the Bodleian Library; the towers that inspired Tolkien to write about the Two Towers; several Harry Potter filming locations, including the bouncing ferret scene with Malfoy and Mad-Eye Moody; the garden where Alice Liddell became friends with Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll); and the pubs where the Inklings spent their time.

Above: the Bridge of Sighs
Left: the Divinity School

 My favorite part, however, was St. Mary's Passage, the alley leading from High Street to Radcliffe Square between the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and another building.  In this passage stood a door with a fierce, lionlike face carved into it and two golden fauns holding up the lintel.  Not far away, in the middle of the walkway, not at all where you would expect it, was a solitary lamp post.  Here, just outside the church where he delivered his "Weight of Glory" sermon in 1942, were the things that inspired C.S. Lewis to write Aslan and other aspects of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  It gave me chills.

 

After our tour concluded, we went back to Magdalen College to wait for the rest of the group.  And wait.  And wait.  Finally Adam drove up, the others spilled out of the minibus, we all grabbed our luggage, and we angered several drivers by dashing across the street to meet Adam where he had pulled the bus over.  Despite these efforts at speed, traffic and construction stretched our drive out over nearly four hours (according to Carson - I wasn't keeping track).  But we had a play to get to in Nottingham!

Allie and Lauren were waiting for us outside Nottingham Playhouse when we drove up.  The usher let us stash all our overnight bags behind the bar before we slipped in the back, only about twenty minutes late.  The play, "The Full Monty," may be familiar to some of you, but I'll summarize: six out of work men decide, for various reasons, to become strippers for a one-night-only show in which they will go one step further than the Chippendale's dancers, i.e. "the full Monty."  The best part was watching how the lone guy in our group reacted with every sexual innuendo and pelvic thrust (sorry, Carson).

Lauren had called a restaurant at intermission to make reservations for after the play, so we all went out for Indian food and dissected the play, our visit to Oxford, and the inevitability of a group music video starring Carson.  When we finally returned to our flat around 1 a.m., we agreed that going away made us realize how much this place has come to feel like home.

To Oxford! But First, Blenheim Palace

Tuesday was an early start (by our standards, anyway) since we had to meet Adam and Bhav to drive all the way to Blenheim Palace, about two hours away.  We piled ourselves and our overnight luggage into the minibus and several of us promptly fell asleep again.  About an hour into the drive, we stopped at a services station, which included a small grocery store, two Costa coffee shops, a Burger King, and some slot machines.  It seemed essentially like a mini mall, which I thought was weird, but apparently they have these at intervals along major roadways.

Security making sure we don't bother the film people.

When we arrived at Blenheim Palace, our first priority was food.  On our way through the main courtyard, we noticed a film crew and security officers; it turned out they're filming a new series called "Royals" at Blenheim.  The security guy who told us this added, "Yeah, the guy from the Chronicles of Narnia is in it too."  In unison, us girls blurted out, "Which one?!"  (It was William Moseley, who plays Peter, but we didn't actually see him.)  Gaping at the gorgeous courtyard and comparing opinions on the Narnia movies, we found our way to the Water Terraces and sketched while we waited for lunch to arrive.  Bhav gave all of us sketchbooks, pencils, and pens so we could try to draw the architectural aspects that interested us most.  Some of the group are pretty good artists...myself, not so much.

The Green Writing Room

After lunch, we took a tour of the public wing of the palace (the current duke and his family still live in private apartments in the east wing).  I almost didn't know where to look, between the furniture brought over from France, the 24-carat gold on the ceiling, the chandeliers, the portraits, the intricate tapestries and the bronze statue of the current duke's father as a baby (yes, it's just as awkward as you're imagining - apparently he hid it in a closet, but his son found it and put it on display for millions of strangers to see).  So I just snapped a lot of pictures and listened to the tour guide's stories about the battles the first duke won.

And then.

We proceeded through yet another doorway into yet another room, but this one did not have gold on the ceiling or a dozen oil paintings of deceased nobility on the walls.  This was the Long Library, and it was blessedly filled with beautiful, beautiful books.  I squealed, took pictures, wished desperately that I could spend a month or two perusing the collection without the pesky glass between me and the shelves.  It was absolutely breathtaking.

 

The tour ended here, at the foot of a (very flattering, according to our tour guide) statue of Queen Anne, so Bhav and Adam told us to explore on our own and meet back at the bus in a few hours.  Some people went to the Winston Churchill exhibit, others to the gardens, and a few of us wound up down by the lake.  We saw sheep, crossed the picturesque bridge, and marveled at the vastness of the palace from afar.  Our afternoon finished with a visit to the gift shop and some sketching time in the courtyard before heading back to the bus.

Blenheim Palace, looking back from the bridge.

Once the group had assembled, we were off to Oxford!  Well, sort of.  An accident somewhere in the city center brought traffic to a halt almost as soon as we got there, and then Adam went past our lodgings somehow.  Eventually we just got out to walk instead, and Bhav led us through town, weaving through umbrellas and puddles (did I mention that it was raining?  This was also when I discovered that I'd left my jacket at the flat in Nottingham).  At last the spires of Magdalen College came into sight and we huddled, dripping on the flagstones, in the lobby while Bhav checked us in.  The rooms were like any dorm room in the UK or the States, which was a bit disappointing considering how picturesque the college looked from the outside.

Oxford through the rain.

At this point, I had personally reached the angry stage of hunger, so we set out to find a restaurant Bhav had pointed out on our way there.  Blessedly, it had stopped raining, but Abigail very kindly lent me her coat just in case.  We had dinner at a burger place after much indecisive wandering, then found a pub in which to watch some of the Germany vs. Brazil game.  It will surprise very few of my lovely readers to hear that I was among the small party that left this sports-crazed venue early.

More on our adventures in Oxford in the next post, which should be up shortly.