Ely, Which Rhymes with Feely August 25th 2013

Day dawns with clopping feet. A horse has got loose in the yard. The gates are open onto the road, but little red riding hood appears in the nick of time to catch the wayward beast and return it to its stall. She tells me her red felt dressing gown is as old as her marriage. They don't make them like that any more - dressing gowns that is. I believe there is still a thriving business in marriages, and in cousins, especially amongst the removed ones. They are always much more productive than their parents, you can tell by the semi-detatched sprogs that follow them about from tent to toilet.

40 years is just a start

Today is the day we go to visit Ely, but first there is breakfast in a kitchen that shows no signs whatsoever there were a hundreds of grazing guests a few hours earlier. I just knew there was a genie involved. The cleanliness and order is slightly disorientating, did we imagine the whole party? I check for Le Booze, the tent is still there.

Is it a welcome or a warning?

100 cards are opened, toast consumed, invitations issued, goodbyes are said and we ask the Duchess to take us away, past balloons with wrinkly skins from their prolonged overnight bath, and on across the fens to Ely. (It rhymes with touchy feely, not the Old Testament prophet, Eli who rhymes with steel eye.)

Silly me, its a war trophy, what else in front of a Cathedral?

Although a tiny city of 18,000 souls, bodies, and attendant clutter, it supports an entire cathedral, complete with canon.(probably both kinds, but the human one was not on show.)
You feel welcomed by the free car parking on Sundays, and free access to the cathedral, and simultaneously warned by the shot that might be fired across your bonnet. It is obviously a town with a tough past. This whole area is so thick with Saxon, Danish and Invasive History you can feel it in the air. Old buildings date back a thousand years, which as I begin to do the same thing, fills me with newfound respect.
 What is it about getting on a bit that makes you want to read biographies, study local history and dig out, or dig up your ancestors? I suspect it is seeing the light at the end of that tunnel.
At ten, that tunnel is a scary black hole, at twenty it's an adventure, at thirty you're too busy bringing up baby to care.  At forty, it might be an escape hatch. At fifty it's a route to grab the best years of your life before they escape you, and at sixty there is no going back. The tunnel has a visible end so you'd better read up about places, the past and cultures along the route before you reach the terminus. There is a refreshing urgency to this quest. Everyone works better to a deadline, and this line definitely has dead at the end of it, so get a move on, cram your head whilst you still have one with working parts.

Ely cathedral is a surprise, probably  because it is the centre of such a small town. Most towns earn their cathedral after a good long apprenticeship. This cathedral recruited it's own town and remained more interested in quality than quantity.
It owes a lot to Aethelreda, virgin bride, and later nun, who founded a monastry here in 673 AD before the cathedral was a twinkle in the eye of an architect in 1170.

Aethelreda, founder of  Ely monastry

 From the outside it's somewhat like the Boston Stump, a square tower dominating the skyline for miles around. From the inside, the square turns out to be an octagon lighting the centre of the nave, all eight panels painted in the 19th century with angels,(sadly not by angels)
 The nave ceiling was subsequently, after many twists and turns of history painted by a 19th century artist, Parry, hanging from the roof so he may well have resembled an angel. He got paid nothing. He came for a year, stayed twelve years and was still paid nothing, so perhaps he was a sort

Happy Birthday Aethelreda

of angel.
Internships it seems are nothing new...

The Original Octagon - don't confuse with Sheffield

I like painted churches, not that you can see the detail of paintings fifty feet above your head, but it is vivid proof that all things, even those beyond normal 20/20 human vision, are worth doing well. To me, a large expanse of ceiling or wall is an invitation for some  giant colouring-in, as BB will attest - so it makes complete sense.  I'd probably like the Parthenon in full colour - apologies to those sucking air through their dentures. It is astonishing what detail, time, and presumably money was thrown into this one cathedral whilst its creators probably lived impoverished lives with little or no pay. I find the evidence of this both sad and extraordinary. In our own secular age such dedication of wealth, and devotion to something purely imagined is a little disturbing, but then the same could be said of our vast temples to retail therapy. What is it that we imagine these days? And what will it be next I hear you ask? Well it's funny you should bring that up because James Burke's latest predictions tell us that in 40 years there will be the most profound human revolution since walking on two feet. He predicts that nano technology will give us all the ability to produce whatever we want from a bit of earth and water in our own personal nano factories. This, he says will cause us to be able to leave the vast

Last tango

cities where the jobs currently are, and live wherever we want, atop a mountain. He predicts society moving back into smaller groupings, as in medieval times, and life as we have always known it - the struggle for sufficiency, for endless stuff, that either keeps us alive or keeps us in luxury, will be a thing of the past. ( The struggle that is, we'll be awash with stuff churned out by our individual little factories.) Self-sufficiency lies ahead on a mammoth scale according to Prophet Burke. I just wish his name inspired more confidence. Ironic really that this plethora of 'stuff' will be created by things too small to see. I find it hard to imagine such a condition of existence. Every part of my life has been dictated by what I can and can't afford. That scarcity has defined my choices, provided the end of the pool to kick off - although sadly not the pool itself. Earning money will be a thing of the past.

Walking in the air

Will it stop wars? He didn't say. Currently they seem to be as popular as ever. Will the different gods still influence our stuff-choices, so we limit what to make for ourselves, or will everyone go nuts and stockpile weapons of mass destruction just because they can? I can't help feeling that Mr Burke speaks for how we might distribute ourselves geographically in the UK reverting to the countryside, especially as earth is the main ingredient for all the stuff we'll be manufacturing, but will it work with sand? And what about old rivalries, tribes, ancient behaviours. Hands up who wants to let go of a perfectly seviceable five hundred year-old vendetta?
I won't be there to see it even if the nano factories could re-manufacture every single part of the Duchess including her engine, bodywork and bathroom  and every single organ of my current body - especially knees.  Echoes of Moses here. The Promised Land and all that. His idea of the Promised Land was milk and honey, mine is replacement body parts.
How about a five thousand year-prediction for mankind Mr Burke?

All this rumination, plus the after-effects of being social animals the day before, have sapped our strength for any further adventures today. What we seek is a place to pull over and chill. We set off in the direction of Cambridge across the fens, aiming for The Five Miles From Nowhere Pub. It sounds just the job.  It is certainly five miles from anywhere, but unfortunately so are the combined populations of Ely and Cambridge. The car park heaves, so do we and we leave for quieter pastures.

There is a tiny road ahead that should do the trick. We take it. After a mile, grass begins to poke through  the tarmac. Quaint. The Duchess is high off the ground so no worries. Then we remember the exhaust pipe, a finer candidate for nano-replacement I cannot imagine - and it lurks only a few inches above even a high-spec road.  This track is now a series of interlinked potholes. We lurch from peak to trough and ahead lies an infinite stretch of pits, pots and patches. As far as Molly Navigator is concerned we are floating above unmarked virgin soil, she's even given up telling us to do a U-turn - a serious state of affairs.

The fields have recently been harvested, so we could perhaps drive across the stubble, but the soil is thick black peat, the sort that John Innes sells in bags, soft and yielding to the tyre, not that we often drive across our compost. We daren't go further, but dare we return? This place is too exposed, no trees for miles, it is not a place to relax. We turn and bump back from whence we came, and somehow that dangling tube - self-evidently very exhausted - remains attached to the Duchess. It isn't even stuffed with peat. Perhaps the Old Girl was a Sumo Wrestler in a past incarnation and retracts it when threatened.

Cambridgeshire Ent Gives the Duchess the Once Over

We find a lay-by, overhung by friendly trees, alongside a field of leeks. One of the Ents checks us out through the side window...

Bikes at the ready - shame we're too tired to use them

Half of the leeks have been slain, and lie like dying soldiers on the killing field. White stems shine as if covered with a light dusting of snow. The caravan that sits in the field centre is eerily empty. Have the inhabitants met the same fate as the leeks? Ent fodder? Good thing we're a bit on the tough side.




This is the place to chill. We curl up with books and enjoy the simple pleasure of the cessation of all things, bar breathing, eating and drinking.