The bollard stands still
The years pass by silently
The Queen has just died
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Tag Archives: time
Day by day
Ev-er-y day
Surely succeeds yet another
Tomorrow follows
A gnomon on the esplanade
FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT know, a gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow.
In 1851, Sir Thomas Brisbane (1773-1860), who gave his name to a city in Australia, donated a tall gnomon to the town of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. In sunny conditions, this object casts a shadow on a line marked on the pavement at noon GMT (1 pm BST). Sir Thomas had spent some time in Ventnor during the mid-19th century, and sadly his daughter Eleanor Australia MakDougall Brisbane died in Ventnor in 1852 at the young age of 29.
As we are discovering during our visit to the Isle of Wight, the sun does not always shine in Ventnor (or anywhere else on the island). Recognising this problem that renders the gnomon useless when the sun is not shining, the town erected a short clock tower near to the gnomon in 1870. This clock was rebuilt in 2001. It bears a plaque commemorating Fred Blake (1924-2001), who, along with his father (Adolphus) and grandfather (James), were: “… proud to maintain this barometer for over 120 years”.
We did not see the gnomon working because of cloudy weather conditions, and the two faces of the clocks displayed different times and neither of them appeared to be working. The barometer seemed to be working. It is curious features such as the gnomon that help make towns on the English coast endlessly fascinating.
Evolution of a shop in North Kensington
I PRACTISED DENTISTRY in North Kensington’s Golborne Road between late 1994 and about 2000. When I first began working there and for a year or so afterwards, the practice faced a double-fronted, old-fashioned fruit and vegetable shop. It was run by the friendly Hicks family.
Later, Hicks closed. Their premises were acquired by their neighbour the Portuguese Lisboa Delicatessen, which continues to flourish today. Lisbon use the former Hicks shop as a warehouse. Whenever I have been able to peer inside the former fruit and veg shop, I have noticed that it’s current users have displayed e little if anything to change its interior appearance.
Hicks is just one of several shops on Golborne Road that have retained aspects of their original facades despite changes of ownership and usage.
Eating afer 9 pm in a village in Essex
WHILE ELTON JOHN was performing in front of thousands in London’s Hyde Park in late June 2022, a small ensemble was performing works by the baroque composers Pergolesi and Purcell in the large medieval gothic church in Thaxted (Essex). The superbly performed concert in Thaxted starring the Armonico Consort ended well after 9 pm. This was not a problem for the many well-healed members of the audience in the church, who lived locally and were able to feed themselves in their own homes.
We could have eaten before the concert, which commenced at 7 pm, but were not hungry before that early hour. The pubs in Thaxted informed us that their kitchens stopped taking orders for food before 845 or 9 pm.
At a pub called the Star, someone hearing us asking about food after 9 pm, recommended we should head for Farouk’s. The bar attendant and several bystander’s agreed with our informant. The bar attendant kindly said that we could bring food from Farouk and she would save a table for us at which we could sit and eat after the concert.
Farouk is the owner of a caravan parked in a yard behind a petrol filling station in Thaxted. He and his colleagues, all from Turkey, prepare and sell Turkish food in the caravan. And, his eatery closes not at 845 or 9 pm, but at 11 pm.
After hearing superb renderings of Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” and Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” (semi-staged), we headed for Farouk’s caravan and the Star pub.
While waiting for our food to be prepared at about 9.40 pm, Farouk explained he had come from Gaziantep. He said that in his part of Turkey, which is quite close to Cyprus, Turkish is spoken with an accent that is very similar to that spoken by Cypriot Turks. During the ten minutes it took to prepare our food, Farouk took many food orders over the phone, which goes to show that in Thaxted there is a healthy demand for food after 9 pm.
We enjoyed our food at the table reserved for us at the Star. This welcoming pub is popular with locals. I suspect that its lively clientele was a different segment of Thaxted’s population from that which attended the concert in the church.
A chiming pub in Cornwall
EGLOSHAYLE IS ACROSS the Camel river, facing the Cornish town of Wadebridge. The Earl of St Vincent pub is hidden away up a hill behind Egloshayle’s St Petroc church. It is housed in a building built in the 17th century as a boarding house for masons. Later, it became a pub. One of its many guests was Admiral Sir John Jervis (1735-1823).
The interior of the pub has timber roof beams and a delightful feeling of times long gone by. It is a great example of many people’s idealised vision of a typical ‘olde worlde English’ country pub. Soon after entering the dimly lit establishment, and your eyes adjust to the low light levels, it becomes evident that the pub is full of clocks, mostly differing in design. Most of them appear to be in working order, but not many of them show the same time. A great number of the clocks chime at least once an hour, but not all at the same time. This being the case, there is usually at least one clock chiming at any given moment. This produces a lovely background symphony of chimes.
I asked one of the pub’s staff why there were so many clocks in the pub. She replied:
“Some people like children. We like clocks”
Later, I asked the landlady about the clocks. She told me that when they took over the pub some years ago, there was no clock in it. She and her husband bought one clock for the pub, and this became the start of their collection. They could not stop buying timepieces. She told me that there are over 200 clocks in the pub and winding them up every day is quite a huge task.
Apart from the fascinating clocks, the pub can be recommended for the delicious, excellently prepared, unpretentious food that can be eaten there.
Sun, shadow, and telling time
The earth moves slowly,
So does the sun’s shadow
Over the sundial
Time to time
From time to time
The clock keeps on moving hour by hour
Now becomes then
Look, no hands
WE VISITED TWO churches in Suffolk, and inside them we spotted three things that particularly interested us. The first church is in Cavendish, The Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin. Standing on a hill above the village, its construction dates from 1300 and was largely completed by 1485. Some restoration work was carried out in the 19th century. One of the two things that fascinated us in this church is affixed to the inside of the north wall. It is a bas-relief depicting the Crucifixion. It is a reredos of Flemmish make, created in the 16th century. It is framed in a Victorian surround designed by Ninian Comper (1864-1960) in 1895. The sculpted reredos was brought to the church from the private chapel of the hymn writer Athelstan Riley (1858-1945) in London, following his death.
The other curiosity in this church, which has memorials to the philanthropists and local parishioners Baroness Sue Ryder and Baron Leonard Cheshire, is on a wall just behind the 19th century wooden pulpit within arm’s reach of the preacher. It is an hourglass, looking like a large egg-timer, which the priest could use to time his sermon. I had never seen such a thing in a church. Less curious but also fairly unusual are the 13 wooden crucifixes on the interior walls of the bell tower. These were made from wood salvaged from the Western Front during WW1 and each one commemorates one of the men from Cavendish who were killed in the conflict.
The other church we visited on our recent trip to Suffolk was St Mary in Stoke by Nayland, which was sometimes painted by John Constable (1776-1837), who was born nearby in East Bergholt. Built in Perpendicular Gothic style between 1300 and 1481 it is very majestic, like a small cathedral. The church is full of interesting monuments including many fine brasses. It was one of the funerary monuments that particularly intrigued us: the Lady Anne Windsor monument. Anne lived from about 1568 until 1615. A stone carving depicts her lying with her head on a pillow. At her feet, there is a carving of a kneeling man, Anne’s son. By her head, two carvings depict a pair of kneeling women, Anne’s daughters. Look closely at this pair and you will notice that their hands have been broken off. Their arms are merely amputated stumps. What is going on here?
The answer is that in 1643, Parliamentary Commissioners visited the church in Stoke by Nayland and destroyed 100 religious images and 7 funerary items. Part of this over-zealous iconoclastic behaviour was the removal of the four hands of the two women on Lady Anne’s monument, as well as those of the recumbent figure of the deceased. All the hands of females on the monument were removed but those of the kneeling male figure were left untouched. Apparently, the female hands were removed because the Commissioners considered them to have been in “a superstitious attitude of prayer”, whatever that meant during the Reformation.
The three items I have described are but a few of the things worth seeing in the two churches. I have chosen to describe them because I have not seen such things in the many other parish churches I have visited in England.
Time stands still
It makes me wryly smile
Looking upon a sundial
For, if clouds the sky fill
Then time must stand still
yamey 