Out on the Town(s)
A late start, but a productive day nonetheless.
Got up at about 11 today - too late to get much value from the museums in London. Fortunately, when I finally got in touch with Hugh he said that next week was going to work far better for him, anyway, so I'll be better off going in tomorrow instead. Also had to finish off some ERP work rather urgently, so it all worked out well.
There was intermittent sunshine all day, so I decided to try and get some good shots of the cathedral in St Albans today. Splendid light for it, and the building was magnificent as always. Fascinating to learn some more about its history, too - particularly that it has been an active site of Christian worship for about 1700 years. St Alban, as it turns out, was the first English martyr, executed by the Romans in c.250AD for his faith (and, in particular, for sheltering a priest in his house). The site of his shrine later became the site of a church, and when the monastery was built under the Norman occupation, they took stone from the old Roman buildings for the construction of the abbey (1077-1115AD). Didn't technically become a cathedral until 1877, which date also marked the completion of about 20 years of serious restoration work. The present architecture is a fascinating mix of Norman, Decorated, Gothic and Victorian styles. But you can check it all out for yourself at their website...
Got some lovely shots, inside and out, and then as I was just leaving the cathedral, the weather made a dramatic turn for the worse. It was calm and sunny, even reasonably warm, when the first little flakes of snow started drifting down. Within two minutes there was a fierce gale blowing, hailstones and snow flurries dropped the visibility to a humdred metres. I holed up in a pastry shop until it blew over. Mmm, cheese and bacon pies...
Once things had settled down a bit, I went back down the hill and over the river to the Roman Museum. Very interesting little display of Roman artifacts excavated from the area, including some remarkable mosaics, and a history of the town from its Celtic origins through to the Roman occupation. Verulamium, as it was then called (as St. Alban hadn't even been born yet), was the third largest city in Roman Britain (after London and Colchester). It shared the honour with those two cities of being burned to the ground by Queen Boudicca of the Iceni during her revolt of 61AD.
All this history was really awesome, and stood in sharp contrast to the town I visited over the weekend. On Friday evening I popped up to Milton Keynes to visit Kevin, and it was very much the opposite of St Albans on the historical heritage scale. Far from having grown up from two thousand years of Celtic, Roman and Norman habitation, it was instead spawned, full-formed, at the end of the First World War. The brainchild of two economists (Messrs. Milton and Keynes, naturally), it was an experiment at a planned community consisting of an organised grid of self-contained villages with a high-speed road network between them. Although I can recognise the efficiency of such a system, it has about as much charm as you'd expect from a city planned by economists. Very utilitarian and lacking in soul.
It was good to see Kevin, though, and we went out for a movie ("Sideways" - definitely not for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it) and dinner at Nando's. Chose that restaurant mostly for the sake of irony, but in fact the chicken was superb. Ordered the "Hot", and it had a very pleasant tingle to it...
Then on Saturday evening I went in to Leicester Square to meet Miles and some of his friends for dinner. Awesome to see him again, and a really nice group at the restaurant.
Speaking of dinner, the bobotjie is almost ready...
Got up at about 11 today - too late to get much value from the museums in London. Fortunately, when I finally got in touch with Hugh he said that next week was going to work far better for him, anyway, so I'll be better off going in tomorrow instead. Also had to finish off some ERP work rather urgently, so it all worked out well.
There was intermittent sunshine all day, so I decided to try and get some good shots of the cathedral in St Albans today. Splendid light for it, and the building was magnificent as always. Fascinating to learn some more about its history, too - particularly that it has been an active site of Christian worship for about 1700 years. St Alban, as it turns out, was the first English martyr, executed by the Romans in c.250AD for his faith (and, in particular, for sheltering a priest in his house). The site of his shrine later became the site of a church, and when the monastery was built under the Norman occupation, they took stone from the old Roman buildings for the construction of the abbey (1077-1115AD). Didn't technically become a cathedral until 1877, which date also marked the completion of about 20 years of serious restoration work. The present architecture is a fascinating mix of Norman, Decorated, Gothic and Victorian styles. But you can check it all out for yourself at their website...
Got some lovely shots, inside and out, and then as I was just leaving the cathedral, the weather made a dramatic turn for the worse. It was calm and sunny, even reasonably warm, when the first little flakes of snow started drifting down. Within two minutes there was a fierce gale blowing, hailstones and snow flurries dropped the visibility to a humdred metres. I holed up in a pastry shop until it blew over. Mmm, cheese and bacon pies...
Once things had settled down a bit, I went back down the hill and over the river to the Roman Museum. Very interesting little display of Roman artifacts excavated from the area, including some remarkable mosaics, and a history of the town from its Celtic origins through to the Roman occupation. Verulamium, as it was then called (as St. Alban hadn't even been born yet), was the third largest city in Roman Britain (after London and Colchester). It shared the honour with those two cities of being burned to the ground by Queen Boudicca of the Iceni during her revolt of 61AD.
All this history was really awesome, and stood in sharp contrast to the town I visited over the weekend. On Friday evening I popped up to Milton Keynes to visit Kevin, and it was very much the opposite of St Albans on the historical heritage scale. Far from having grown up from two thousand years of Celtic, Roman and Norman habitation, it was instead spawned, full-formed, at the end of the First World War. The brainchild of two economists (Messrs. Milton and Keynes, naturally), it was an experiment at a planned community consisting of an organised grid of self-contained villages with a high-speed road network between them. Although I can recognise the efficiency of such a system, it has about as much charm as you'd expect from a city planned by economists. Very utilitarian and lacking in soul.
It was good to see Kevin, though, and we went out for a movie ("Sideways" - definitely not for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it) and dinner at Nando's. Chose that restaurant mostly for the sake of irony, but in fact the chicken was superb. Ordered the "Hot", and it had a very pleasant tingle to it...
Then on Saturday evening I went in to Leicester Square to meet Miles and some of his friends for dinner. Awesome to see him again, and a really nice group at the restaurant.
Speaking of dinner, the bobotjie is almost ready...
posted by Sentinel at
10:50 PM
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