Leicester

We've been learning lots of interesting things over here - things we would never have known before like where certain towns are, what famous person were born, married or buried somewhere and so on.  But we are also learning more about the personalities of famous people like Constable, Dickens, George Bernard Shaw and the Beatles.  Part of this is looking around their home towns and reading all the brochures etc and some of it is because there seem to be lots of movies on at the moment that are biographies.  We've seen two lately...

Amelia - that movie about the woman who wanted to fly - so much so that she did not only fly but the first woman solo across the Atlantic and then in her attempt around the world went missing somewhere over a very small island in the Pacific.  I always wonder what drives some people to do what they dream of, while others sit and dream and never do it. Although, dreams are free there are a lot of people out there that achieve their dreams without initially having the money.  It was quite sad to think that Amelia and her navigator were so close to achieving her dream - yet so far away on that day in 1937 when they stared across the ocean looking for a hunk of land that is less than 2 square kilometres and only 6 kilometres long.  The island has no economic activity, probably only a few inhabitants if any, and is "perhaps best known as the island Amelia Earhart never reached". Apparently they built airstrips on the island for her planned stopover but they have never been used and time has slowly made them disappear once again.
And then there was Enid Blyton - another woman driven by some strong inner will to write stories for children.  As a primary school child I enjoyed reading her books about the Famous Five without being harmed by the current debate on the themes of homosexuality and racism that some think were included in her books. The story of Enid's life was fascinating as the film depicted her to care more for her imaginary children than for her own little girls. In fact we got the impression she was quite child like in a way.  If true, quite a sad story that she could give so many children pleasure - but not be a good parent (we've seen some really good examples of parenting by famous people here eg Constable and Darwin).  Some say that this is reflected in many of her stories they were about children - but included no interaction with their parents - and I seem to recall that true of the Famous Five.
This week we also went to Cabaret. I didn't really know the plot that well, if at all if I tell the truth, but reading on the web the description  "A female girlie club entertainer in Berlin romances two men while the Nazi Party rises to power around them" seems to describe it quite well - a sad story - but professionally sung and acted.
And on my train trip to Swansea this week I had an interesting start to the day.  Temple Meads is quite a large station and you have to walk along subways and climb stairs to get to the platforms.  As I headed up the stairs a young girl asked me to carry her coffee as she had forgotten about the stairs when she bought it and had her bike to take up as well. Then while waiting in the cold an elderly man started chatting to me about his trip to Cardiff  "Do they tell you what station you are stopping at?" he asked.  I began to wonder if he was going to a specialist or something and would receive some 'not so good news' as there was an aura of what I thought tenseness about him.  But no - he was going to the Malaysian Embassy to get visas for himself and his wife.  There daughter lives out there and this is their annual visit to see them.  Normally he would drive but with the road works (they had started when we first arrived and are still going) he decided to take the train - the first time in 20 years and with a sparkle in his eye he said "he felt like a five year old taking his first train trip" - not tense but excited I realised.  When I sat opposite him in the train I noticed he had a canvas bag - stitched with flags he has been to more countries than we have and obviously wasn't going stop in the near future.
And now for the weekend.  We were off to Leicestershire to spend Saturday with Mike and Barbara (Northampton is only a stones throw away from Leicester) and Sunday doing who knows what!!
We started off at Newton Linford, where we found the right carpark this time, to meet Mike and Barbara and were in time to take a few photos of some little or really big thatched cottages before taking a walk in Bradgate Park.

It was a cold day and on came our hats, gloves, leg warmers and warm jackets (I had handed round a packet of tea cakes before all the palava of getting dressed - and have some quite good photos of tea cakes in mouths while clothing was put on - I haven't put any photos on the blog cos I just wouldn't do that to my friends).  It was our first longish walk this winter and we enjoyed it.  Bradgate Park is rather a lovely landscape - bracken covered hills so at this time of the yearare frost bitten and brown - with lots of deer foraging for food.  Charles Bennion who died in the late 1920's gifted the park to the people just before his death.  Obviously, a wealthy man, after growing up as a farmers son and then spending time working on the railway and as a ships engineer before becoming interested in the manufacturing of shoe making machinery manufacture.  He was a founding member of the British United Shoe Machinery Co. Ltd. Charles Bennion was managing director of the company. He purchased the 800 or so acre park from the ancestors of the Grey family.  Mike said it was a quiet day at the park, and with more than 1 million visitors a year, I could imagine sometimes the hills might look as though they are moving.  Up the top is the Old John Tower and the Charles Bennion memorial which has a plaque with  "In grateful remembrance of Charles Bennion of Thurnby in this county who in the year 1928 with the helpful concurrence of the heirs of the Greys of Groby purchased from them this park of Bradgate and presented it in trust for the city and county of Leicester that for all time it might be preserved in its natural state for the quiet enjoyment of the people of Leicestershire. His true memorial lies around." The Old John Tower is shaped like a beer mug - and you can imagine the stories that go around about why a beer mug is at the top of the Bradgate hill.  Anyway, moving on down the hill we came to Queen Adelaides oak where the Queen, the widow of William IV enjoyed a picnic one sunny day in the shade of the oak tree "The venison was good, so were the trout.." wrote the Queen in her diary.  I have also figured out why so many pubs are called the Royal Oak - the trees play a significant role in the history of England (eg Robin Hood and his merry men met under one, other princes hid in them, and Queens picnicked underneath them).  This one, had a 'baby' tree planted beside the old one so that when one dies which unfortunately they do, the new one will be there to remember the important occasions. 

Not far from the tree is Bradgate House and it is where Lady Jane Grey (great niece of Henry VIII and grand daughter of Mary Tudor) was born and lived most of her short life, before she reigned for nine days and then got beheaded. The house is now a ruin but it wasn't hard to imagine it as a great mansion, with people all dressed in the clothing of the day enjoying the countryside and picnicking in the warm summery days.

And then it was into Leicester for an explore of the Roman Wall I had seen on the web and some dinner. The Jewry Wall (which was part of the Roman public baths) which is thought to be one of the tallest Roman walls still standing and is not like in most a wall to protect the residents.  The baths were a place where people came to wash and socialise - I'm assuming the water was warm. The name comes from the name of the Roman council that consisted of 12 men (jury comes from the same source - Jurat) who used to meet just down the road.  Beside the wall is St Nicholas Church - where when trying the door (it was 4.00 and dark so we assumed it would be closed) we were welcomed warmly and treated to a quick talk about the church, a bell ringing exhibition and then a song played on the organ.  All very special in the oldest church in Leicester partly made by rocks from the ruin next door and now kept by the 20 or so parishioners. So after saying goodbye, we wandered into the centre of town looked at a few shop windows, before Barbara and I had a ride on the merry go round and we found a nice Italian restaurant for dinner.

Sunday morning we didn't hurry but ended up outside the Snibston Discovery Centre right on opening time - well the opening time on the notice board.  We spent our time while waiting finding out about the National Forest - there are a number of them around England and the purpose of them is return the  land that has been farmed for centuries back into forests - hence a lot of them are called 'new forests'.  This one has 7 million trees planted but they hope to get up to 30 million target - a nice place to sit and have a cup of tea while watching people fishing for carp.  Snibston is a museum built on the site of an old colliery where George Stephenson did a lot of his work building railways.  It also has rather a good collection of fashion and costumes, as well as a number of aeroplanes, trains, tractors, cars and so on.  A few things took my fancy while wandering around...There was a display of people wearing aprons - all of them female I might add.   I discovered that aprons had more purposes than just tying them round your waist to protect your clothes when cooking.  They were initially for both sexes while they worked doing what they do, but it was around the 1950s they began to symbolise 'good wives and good mothers' ie they wanted to look fresh and presentable when their husbands came home from work.  Ok so aprons mean food...and it was in 1445 that a local housewife was so busy making pancakes that she'd forgotten about going to church.  When the church bells rang she ran out of her house, frying pan still in hand with her apron still on.  And that is how Shrove Tuesday came about - and every year woman now run a race with aprons (and I assume pancakes).  There was one man wearing an apron in Snibston and that was the man that made the icecream in what was the first mobile icecream van.  But Mr Whippy is getting a hard time at the moment.  The officials that can do these things, is now enabling schools to stop ice-cream vans from operating near school gates.  They aren't allowed in pay-and-display parking spaces anymore and there are “ice-cream-free”exclusion zones around lots of busy retail areas (where presumably there are other places that sell ice-cream like McDonalds).  So the soft freeze (which I have never really liked compared to a proper icecream) may slowly begin to reduce from the 5,000 there is today to only a few - a similar number to the horse-drawn vans that sold ice-cream to the children playing in the cobbled streets back in the 19th century.  Perhaps playing Greensleeves as they drive along the streets is appropriate after all...

"Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company".

And after that visit down memory lane there was another - one of the first fish and chip shops with the cook - yes wearing an apron.  No one really knows where this traditional English delight came from but even Charles Dickens mentioned a “fried fish warehouse” in Oliver Twist. Anyway, it is official that the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach - I'll have to think about that one!! Apparrently 90% of woman recently surveyed said that a man should have at least basic cooking skills. And what's more they reckon that fish is the seductive food (successful in about 30% of romances to put the 'woman in the mood.)

And is it any wonder after thinking about food all day we stopped at that little pub in Droitwich we had found once before for an early dinner just as the rain set in.
The other day I saw a milk truck coming up our street - he was delivering milk in glass bottles.