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moonvoiceFor a few years now, Glen and I have been planning to go to the UK. Just the two of us. We mostly wanted to go to Scotland and Orkney (the latter because I want to set a book there, and do research, but ultimately we just wanted to go on a big holiday).
Then a surprise!cancer diagnosis put everything on hold. Okay, we thought. We'll wait a year. And as the year crept by and we discovered I wasn't about to Imminently Die (TM) we started properly budgeting a holiday. The flights. The accommodation. The places we'd visit. Then at the beginning of the following year, the tumours had grown, I needed surprise!radiotherapy of the head and neck, which promptly decked me out of the race for another year.
So cue my Mum coming to me (who has also gone through her own surprise!cancer journey) and she was like 'we're going to the UK, do you want to come with us.' And I said 'can we do our own thing after, we're getting our own hire car, we'll very much be doing this our way' and she said EXCELLENT and I said EXCELLENT and then proceeded to micromanage what was the most exhausting thing I think I've ever done in my fucking life. Yes. More exhausting than head/neck radiotherapy. I said it folks.
But so, so worth it.
And so so amazing.
We hit England, Wales (surprise day trip not on the itinerary!), Scotland and Orkney. We stopped off at 27 places and slept in 15 of them. We packed a car onto a ferry, we patted penguins at London Zoo, I met 4 people I'd never met before (but knew from the internet) and none of them were serial killers.
But let's start with Chichester, a place I'd been before because we have much extended family here. And let's start with Chichester Cathedral, okay? Because it's everywhere. It looms in every shot, no matter where you are. So we might as well go straight to the source.
All photos taken on my iPhone unless otherwise stated.
A Cathedral! Specifcally, a Cathedral founded in 1075, with Norman and Gothic architecture. I'm going to be honest, a lot of it was actually under shrouds and being renovated, which is why all my Grand Cathedral shots are taken from really weird angles, lol.
We spent a lot of time calling this guy Jean Luc Picard. We are very reverent. I am not at all pagan.
Very grand. Much wow.
Surprise Art Deco clock! Or Nouveau? I'm looking for sources but nothing's helping me here.
Here it is again!
I was Extremely Tired when we walked through the Cathedral. I genuinely thought my energy levels would recover, but they never did. So much so, halfway through the trip I began to worry that I had secondary cancer (and my worries haven't yet been put to rest, I have an MRI in June, so we'll see then I guess.) This trip has been extraordinarily confronting re: how sick I am, how much I can't access when I'm sick, and how much I probably need a mobility scooter, and how much internalised ableism I apparently apply to myself but not other people.
I loved the brickwork so much, that's why you're getting so many shots of the same thing.
It's hard to explain how narrow this door is, how much it looks like it's being sucked into the masonry and brickwork, how high it was off the floor. But if any place was a door to some liminal Narnia (or alternatively Scrooge McDuck frolicking in gold coins), this place was it.
I'm sure the stained glass looks very nice from the inside (I didn't go in), but I kind of like how dark and intricate it looks from the outside.
These details enchanted me.
Vault. I just...1702. "To be diligently instructed in Reading, Writing, Arithmetick, and so far in Mathematical Learning as may fit them for honeft (honest) and ufeful (useful) Employments with a particular regard to Navigation."
Another vault.
Serious.
I loved wandering through all the paths. I don't remember being half so adventurous when we visited over half a decade ago. This time I just went wherever I wanted, and got to see so much more because of it (including the Bishop's Palace Gardens, which is so beautiful it gets its own post).
This, down a narrow laneway, past the Treasury, was the Dean's House.
One of the houses attached to the series of Cathedral buildings.
Interesting way to close off a section.
These little cold lanes filled me with joy, and still do.
The muddled, changing brickwork. The narrowness. The style speaking to times much past. The sense of history clinging. These little back ways in Chichester speak to me more than some of the other more historical places we visited (like Hadrian's Wall).
Then a surprise!cancer diagnosis put everything on hold. Okay, we thought. We'll wait a year. And as the year crept by and we discovered I wasn't about to Imminently Die (TM) we started properly budgeting a holiday. The flights. The accommodation. The places we'd visit. Then at the beginning of the following year, the tumours had grown, I needed surprise!radiotherapy of the head and neck, which promptly decked me out of the race for another year.
So cue my Mum coming to me (who has also gone through her own surprise!cancer journey) and she was like 'we're going to the UK, do you want to come with us.' And I said 'can we do our own thing after, we're getting our own hire car, we'll very much be doing this our way' and she said EXCELLENT and I said EXCELLENT and then proceeded to micromanage what was the most exhausting thing I think I've ever done in my fucking life. Yes. More exhausting than head/neck radiotherapy. I said it folks.
But so, so worth it.
And so so amazing.
We hit England, Wales (surprise day trip not on the itinerary!), Scotland and Orkney. We stopped off at 27 places and slept in 15 of them. We packed a car onto a ferry, we patted penguins at London Zoo, I met 4 people I'd never met before (but knew from the internet) and none of them were serial killers.
But let's start with Chichester, a place I'd been before because we have much extended family here. And let's start with Chichester Cathedral, okay? Because it's everywhere. It looms in every shot, no matter where you are. So we might as well go straight to the source.
All photos taken on my iPhone unless otherwise stated.
A Cathedral! Specifcally, a Cathedral founded in 1075, with Norman and Gothic architecture. I'm going to be honest, a lot of it was actually under shrouds and being renovated, which is why all my Grand Cathedral shots are taken from really weird angles, lol.
We spent a lot of time calling this guy Jean Luc Picard. We are very reverent. I am not at all pagan.
Very grand. Much wow.
Surprise Art Deco clock! Or Nouveau? I'm looking for sources but nothing's helping me here.
Here it is again!
I was Extremely Tired when we walked through the Cathedral. I genuinely thought my energy levels would recover, but they never did. So much so, halfway through the trip I began to worry that I had secondary cancer (and my worries haven't yet been put to rest, I have an MRI in June, so we'll see then I guess.) This trip has been extraordinarily confronting re: how sick I am, how much I can't access when I'm sick, and how much I probably need a mobility scooter, and how much internalised ableism I apparently apply to myself but not other people.
I loved the brickwork so much, that's why you're getting so many shots of the same thing.
It's hard to explain how narrow this door is, how much it looks like it's being sucked into the masonry and brickwork, how high it was off the floor. But if any place was a door to some liminal Narnia (or alternatively Scrooge McDuck frolicking in gold coins), this place was it.
I'm sure the stained glass looks very nice from the inside (I didn't go in), but I kind of like how dark and intricate it looks from the outside.
These details enchanted me.
Vault. I just...1702. "To be diligently instructed in Reading, Writing, Arithmetick, and so far in Mathematical Learning as may fit them for honeft (honest) and ufeful (useful) Employments with a particular regard to Navigation."
Another vault.
Serious.
I loved wandering through all the paths. I don't remember being half so adventurous when we visited over half a decade ago. This time I just went wherever I wanted, and got to see so much more because of it (including the Bishop's Palace Gardens, which is so beautiful it gets its own post).
This, down a narrow laneway, past the Treasury, was the Dean's House.
One of the houses attached to the series of Cathedral buildings.
Interesting way to close off a section.
These little cold lanes filled me with joy, and still do.
The muddled, changing brickwork. The narrowness. The style speaking to times much past. The sense of history clinging. These little back ways in Chichester speak to me more than some of the other more historical places we visited (like Hadrian's Wall).
no subject
Date: 2019-05-17 08:38 am (UTC)And getting the mobility scooter would be its own challenge, getting me to actually *ride* one when I'm worried about how other people will treat me and don't actually know if I have the spine to handle that is like...the first challenge. :/
no subject
Date: 2019-05-17 03:00 pm (UTC)Yeah, I hear you. That's quite the pile of stuff.