the intention is to leave Devon, stop at Cheddar to photograph the Cheddar egg-cup I have brought, go on to Bath where we have a lunch date with Karen and Bill, call in at Gloucester Cathedral to see the installation created by Elpida, artist-in-residence, and then meet Gav at the end-of-year-show at the University of Gloucester in Cheltenham .... hmmmm ....
we are late leaving Peter's house and studio ... its very difficult to tear oneself away from such a beautiful creative spot ... but we do ... eventually ...
this means that we have left ourselves 2 hours and 15 minutes to get from 20 miles west of Exeter to Bath ... and as we sit somewhere near Taunton in a constipated convoy of holiday makers heading north it becomes apparent that (one) we will not have time to "do Cheddar" and (two) we will be late for lunch ...
and then the perennial motorway-traffic jam question arises - do we stay on or do we leave at the next junction ... of course the attentive reader will say well it doesnt matter because whatever route you "choose" is already decided - or you might say that if the multiple universe theory is correct, we will take both routes and somewhere in a parallel universe Benedict and John end up taking the photograph of the Cheddar egg-cup in Cheddar and ... but this is going to far - we decide to leave the motorway and head for Bath along the Ablah-de-blah ... and a very pleaseant route it turns out to be, weaving through the Mendips (or are these the Quantocks? or the Bollox?) ... we arrive in Bath only 15 minutes late ...
Karen and Bill live in a small cottage which was once part of the garden and land belonging to a large house on the edge of Bath ... In the Second World War the house was the residence in exile of the Emperor Haile Selassie and his family - after the war he left the house and land to the Council to provide housing for the elderly ... so, on the Emeror's birthday, there are gatherings of respectful Rastafarians, the air thick with ganga and reggae, at the end of K&B's garden ... today it is not the late Emperor's birthday and we are able to park without damaging any dreadlocks ....
Karen cooks a delicious lunch and once Bill discovers I am an archaeologist, conversation turns to the Roman villa under the cottage and then to an archaeologist, one WF Rankin, with whom Bill's father excavated a site just after the war ... or rather, Bill's father was charged with supervising a team of what were little more than navvies ... however a visit by a very young Bill to the excavation with his father and the translocation of collection of Roman potsherds and tile to his bedroom left Bill with a life-long fascination with archaeology ... and inevitably when an actor and an archaeologist talk about archaeology, it isnt long before the blessed Tony Robinson is mentioned ...
it turns out Bill recorded the AN Wilson biography of Betjeman, and I get a fascinating insight into how an actor approaches reading a biography, how he tries to identify the point of view and voice of the biographer ... we both agree that Wilson's portrayal of the "voice" of Penelope was extraordinairily condescending, and that Betjeman must have been exasperating to live with ...
it is now 4pm and we havent seen the wooden web site or Karen's Studio ... and we are not going to make it to Gloucester ....
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