1.3.26

Since we arrived there has been a constant thrum of complaints from the children about the proportion of their weekends spent traipsing around looking at buildings. Their grievances ratcheted up after Christmas, when their new Bey Blade arena and Lego beckoned, and T taught them how to play Halo. I gave in for a few days- it's not like much was open anyway- but by the Saturday after New Year's I couldn't take it anymore.

I got an email about discounted tickets to The Moonwalkers, which is a sort of 360 degree video experience narrated by Tom Hanks about the Apollo missions, and thought that might be an easy-ish sell. In this audience full of British people, I wondered what it was like to be a non-American listening to Tom Hanks talk about we achieved this the triumph of the human spirit. As for me, I started crying during the clip when Kennedy says we're going to the moon for the same reason Rice plays Texas. It is a sad state we're in today if the rhetorical impact of a football metaphor was enough to move me to tears. What is the British equivalent? What would be the specifically British triggers for the combination of pride, disappointment, and blinding rage I was feeling? Not at you, Tom Hanks, I could never mean you.

After the show, we went to the Manchester Museum. There were many cases of taxidermy, a vivarium with (live) reptiles. Every museum with a natural history element has got to have their Big Ceiling Skeleton, it seems.

There were also some mummies and a handful of rotating anthropology exhibits. Any time there is a video at a museum my kids are going to stop and watch raptly, regardless of the subject matter.

1.10.26

Chester is about an hour west of Manchester near the Welsh border. That means that some buses show stop names in English and Welsh. Would you rather tell people you live in Mold, or in Yr Wyddgrug?

The major site of interest is the Cathedral, which was really lovely.

A constant low-grade gripe I've had since we got here is that there seems to be no amount of food I can bring on an outing that will have a noticeable effect on the amount of food we end up buying. Case in point: As soon as we got on the train the children claimed ravenous hunger despite having finished breakfast at home less than an hour previous. I brought out the sandwiches I'd made, thinking that if we had a substantial snack maybe that would last us well into the afternoon and we'd just get a late lunch before going home. Nope! An hour later we were in the Cathedral, where our first stop was the cafe. But if we hadn't eaten there, we would not have seen this very cool contemporary stained glass window. Maybe I should just tell myself that lugging around snacks is still worth it, because no matter how much we buy anyway there's always the chance that we might bought even more if I hadn't brought anything. Anyway. Curmudgeon time over.

There was a model of the church in Lego which the kids were very excited about, although they were disappointed that there was not a tiny model of the model inside the model. As for the church itself, I can't tell you much about the transepts and naves and so on, but there were some very interesting decorative elements.

Many of the stained glass windows had recent (relatively speaking) dedications, including one to Cheshire native George Mallory of the ill-fated Everest excursion. A depressing number of them were for twenty year old lordlings mown down in the flower of youth during WWI.

I probably spent 45 minutes just looking at all the plaques on the church walls. Some had left space for inclusion of future descendents who must never have materialized, while others had family members crowding in for centuries. So much fodder for the imagination, like this man who wanted to be memorialized along with the two wives he outlived.

Maybe a little hint of passive aggression here below?

And doesn't it seem like the last line here is directed at a specific individual?

This one deserves full size. The late Rebellion in North America! The Usurped Legislature!

The city center is very picturesque, and judging from the retail options they must get fairly upmarket visitors. Chester's Christmas markets are supposed to be great and we'd thought about going, but like York I think I would have found that crowds dimmed its charm. The walls built by the Romans are restored and intact. T reflected that a shivering Roman soldier on duty, probably feeling like he had been sent to the desolate edge of creation, would be bemused to see the coffee shop and Clarks store now operating on the wall. We proceeded to the ruins of the ampitheater, where the kids horsed around and got Quavers crumbs all over the spot where some gladiator probably bled out. History!

1.11.26

Went back to the Elizabeth Gaskell House for their monthly book sale. T is going back to Medford in a few weeks, and I'd been packing up all the stuff he needs to bring back. When he went in October the flow was mostly forgotten items from home that we needed here, but now the direction of objects is reversed. This time it will be mostly salvage fabric from the scrap store, the yarn I got in Shetland, and books. A lot of books. It's a real problem because there are so many books in this country, and I'm going to need all of them. In my defense: a. they have nearly all been paperbacks, b. they have nearly all been used, and c. of the ones that I actually read since I've arrived, I've given all but one away. But still, it's a lot. Anyway, I bought four more.

Afterwards in the tea shop, I heard some elderly patrons discussing the state of the world today. Can you believe about Venezuela? And what's this about Greenland? "It's like if we went over to America and said 'You used to be ours, now we're taking you back!'" I felt like going over to them and saying "Honestly, you would hate that so much more than we would?" but I thought maybe that might just make them worry that now Britain was going to be the next target on the takeover list!

Later that evening I was on eBay trying to buy more cutlery in anticipation of imminent houseguests. The dinner knives, according to eBay's interpretation of UK law, place silverware in the category of purchases that require age verification. For tedious reasons I cannot complete this process. Will have to look in the charity shops where presumably I can just show ID. I think of the people I heard in the EG Museum tea shop and can imagine them contrasting this mild inconvenience with the 75 school shootings that took place in America in 2025.