Blue

These shapes and that color are very soothing, and I'm so sick of coughing I can use all the soothing I can get.

Sunday bird blogging

(I know it's not Sunday any more, but sue me.)

A robin noshing on berries in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park on Saturday. I took the picture with my phone so it's not that detailed, but I loved the colors.

I'm not usually that far uptown, but Saturday was our class field trip, and we went to the Museum of the City of New York on 103rd Street. The students really enjoyed it, and after the visit, some of us crossed the street and spent a little time in the park.

I had fun too, but I've been fighting a nasty sinus infection for a week, and I was more than usually exhausted after a day of being a tour guide. Still am, and the ringing in my ears is like fire alarms blaring 24 hours a day, but at least the coughing only woke me up once last night. Progress!

Sunday bird blogging

I noticed this white bird on top of a building across the block this morning. I think it's just a leucistic pigeon, but I decided to pretend that it was a dove and take it as a harbinger of peace.

Oxfordshire

I was able to explore a little on my second day in Faringdon, walking to the folly (tower) that's the main landmark.

It was closed for renovations but I wouldn't have climbed to the top anyway; just walking there used up most of my energy, and I sat for a while on a bench looking out over the Oxfordshire countryside and eating an excellent cheddar and chutney sandwich from the shop next to the inn. (I somehow managed to get completely lost trying to get back to the center of town, and found myself wandering through fields instead of quaint Cotswold streets, so it was a good thing I'd fortified myself beforehand.)

All Saints

This 12th century church was around the corner from the inn in Faringdon. I wasn't able to go inside, but I did like that headstone about to topple into the path, and the oddly jaunty pennants over the graveyard.

The church lost its spire to a Royalist cannonball during the English Civil War, and I'm not sure why they haven't built another in the almost 400 years since. Maybe it's just the cachet of being able to say Cromwell did that, as two different residents asked me if I'd seen the church and told me about the cannonball during my brief time walking around the town.

One thing about that very comfortable bed

I had a nice view of the town center from my bed, except when one of the local buses pulled up outside. It was apparently the end of the line, as the bus sat there for several minutes before leaving again, and I got to watch the people sitting on the upper deck right outside my window.

I never noticed anyone looking back, and honestly I didn't care. I just thought it was funny.

Faringdon

This is the main street in Faringdon, a historic market town on the edge of the Cotswolds, about 20 miles from Oxford.

I ended up staying there for two nights after my case of suspected appendicitis derailed my plans to go to Yorkshire. I spent the last night of the Oxford program in the John Radcliffe Hospital, and when the surgeon agreed to release me the next day, it was “on a lead”—on the condition that I stay in Oxford for the next 48 hours and return to the hospital immediately if my symptoms got worse. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to find a last-minute hotel room in Oxford on a summer weekend, ideally one that wouldn't cost as much as an Uber to Yorkshire. (I had actually checked the cost earlier that morning, when the painkillers and anti-nausea drugs had kicked in and I was delusional enough to think that maybe I could still go to Haworth if I just didn't have to haul my luggage on and off the three trains the usual journey entailed. It would have cost £700, and I wasn't delusional enough to be willing to pay that, even before I'd received the doctor's orders not to leave town.)

So that is how I ended up in Faringdon. After I was discharged, I took an Uber back to Merton, where they had kindly delayed clearing out my room. I took a shower, checked out Hotels.com and decided that Faringdon, though not technically Oxford, was close enough, and more importantly, had an available room in an old coaching inn at a reasonable price.

The town is charming, the inn was lovely, and once the Uber dropped me off I crawled into the very comfortable bed and slept for twelve hours.

Sunday bird blogging

Finally, here's another one of the cygnets I saw on the grounds. Those little fuzzy wings just slay me.

Well, this was unexpected

In the midst of the furniture-paintings-knickknacks parade were these purple ice skating costumes worn by Torvill and Dean in their gold-medal winning ice dancing performance at Sarajevo in 1984. (And adding to the incongruity, Ravel's Bolero, the music they had skated to, was playing on a loop.)

This seemed a little strange, to say the least. But I hadn't realized that Newstead isn't a National Trust property; it's actually run by the city of Nottingham. And so basically anyone famous from Nottingham—like Torvill and Dean—might get an exhibit there.

This also explains why there is a bust of D.H Lawrence next to the bust of Byron in the gardens—I spent much of my time in the garden trying to figure out the connection.

Some interiors

I admit that I do get bored very quickly wandering through historic houses looking at furniture, paintings, knickknacks, furniture, paintings, knickknacks. And much of what you see in Newstead today wasn't there during Byron's time; Thomas Wildman, who had been at Harrow with Byron and bought Newstead from him in 1818, did extensive restorations.

I did enjoy the exhibit on Ada Lovelace—mathematician, computing pioneer, and Byron's daughter—in the library. Ada never knew her father; her parents separated when she was only a month old. Although her mother loathed her father (probably with good reason) Ada doesn't seem to have had negative feelings about him. She named her son Byron, and was buried next to her father in the Byron family vault. And though her mother was a less than ideal parent—in letters, she referred to her daughter as “it”—she did encourage her interest in mathematics as a way of avoiding the insanity she believed Ada might have inherited from her father.

The grounds

I felt a little like Elizabeth Bennet visiting Pemberley for the first time as I walked through the woods and gardens on the estate.

But while she was thinking, If I had accepted Mr. Darcy, I could be mistress of all this, I was thinking, How come I didn't have a great-uncle with a barony and no other heirs?

Saturday reflections

Reeds reflected in one of the pools in the Newstead gardens.