Well, well, well

Sometimes we are so busy rushing off on tourism expeditions in other places that we fail to explore our own stamping ground.

For eighteen years, I have walked up and down Holywell Hill in St Albans without showing the proper curiosity.

Last weekend, following a Ver Valley Walk leaflet with Trisha and Duncan, I was gobsmacked to discover that the eponymous holy well still exists.

In the incongruous depths of a housing estate, there it was. Now all neatly block paved, first appearances were disappointing. But peering into its depths, there was a magical glimpse of worn brick clothed in harts-tongue fern and emerald moss. Yes, this was old.

At least three legends are associated with the well.

St Alban, Britain’s first Christian martyr in the 3^rd century AD may have gasped for a drink there on his way to be executed higher up the hill. God miraculously brought the well into being to answer Alban’s prayers.

Or it may be that following his execution, his severed head rolled down the hill and came to rest here, and the spring flowed miraculously from the ground in response.

Later, King Uther Pendragon, (father of King Arthur) had a great battle with the Saxons in the ruins of the Roman city of Verulamium and healed his wounds here by bathing them in water from this well.

Or, as the Ver Valley leaflet pointed out, maybe the well was just a feature of an eighteenth century garden which once covered this spot.

Pah! I choose to believe the myths and miracles.

And I resolve to keep an eye open for what else I have missed while living in this historic city for eighteen years.

Delayed Gratification

Covid Lockdown has deprived our senses so that going to the shops for the first time is a veritable orgy of textures and smells.

The prospect of feeling fabric between finger and thumb, of holding it alongside your face to see if the colour suits, of trying it on instead of trying to guess how it will fit from an online pic of a model who has no curves (in tiny writing: model is 5’11 and wears a size 8).

And books!  To inhale that new-paper smell and flick through a new novel, reading snatches of dialogue, to pore over a table of bright new titles and want to buy all of them.

However, Covid also means that this year teachers are assessing pupils.  Busy trying to pull together various assessment programmes, I haven’t yet had the chance to go to the shops.

Perhaps when I finally get there I shall run amok...If you see a middle-aged woman cantering through the streets of St Albans wearing six new frocks, one on top of another, price tags flying in the breeze, and hefting armfuls of new paperbacks, it will be me.

Are haircuts still allowed?

Wheeling my bike along the local shopping street I saw my friend Rob and we snatched a catch-up.

We attempted to observe a ‘social distance’.  This worked between the two of us, but because we were spread out across the pavement other pedestrians simply piled into us.

In between “Excuse me”s and “Sorry”s I announced,

“I’m just going to get my hair cut.”

“Is that still allowed?!?”

“I hope so. I made an appointment two months ago, and I’ve received a confirmation.”

“Well, if they turn out to be shut, don’t worry there’s another one just round the corner.”

This was an intriguing insight into a male view of hairdressers – rather like buses, if you miss one just catch the next one.

Mosaic Hair Studio was open.  But my lovely hairdresser slipped in the door just at the same moment I did, looking hassled.

During the course of my cut, she explained that she had not been panic buying so her cupboard was now pretty much bare.  She’d been at the supermarket trying to get some food. Any food.

She had tried yesterday evening too.  And last night.

“What am I supposed to do? Sit at home and eat newspaper?”

As she finished her saga, she took the last snip and ran her hands through my hair to pull it into shape.

“You know, after all that, I think that’s the best cut you’ve ever given me!”

“Maybe I cut better when I’m slightly stressed.”

So I’m glad my haircut was still allowed.

And I hope she got some groceries!

Lunar eclipse with badgers

Fiona and I had just been for a twilight walk along the river at St Clements and I was dropping her off at her house when I suddenly remembered,

“Ooh, there’s a lunar eclipse tonight, starting around now…I thought we might watch it together.”

“Can’t see anything here – too many trees.”

“So no holding hands in the moonlight?”

“Nope.  Sling your hook.”

So I drove back to my parents’ house, dived in to tell them I’d returned, then back out to the garden to look at the eclipse.  It reminded me of an orange smiley mouth glowing benignly over the town.

Then I noticed that something was coming towards me up the drive.

A cat?

Not unless it was a cat that had been body building.

I realised that I was being approached by my father’s arch enemy, The Badger.  The badger has for years dug up my father’s seedlings because where he watered the soil, it attracted delicious worms.

The handsome yet rather large animal caught me by surprise and I let out an involuntary shriek.  The badger hesitated, then in a leisurely manner, turned and trundled off back down the drive.

Meanwhile, the eclipse was continuing spectacular.  I Whatsapped my family who live in the South to go look.  Nigel ventured outside the pub in St Albans and texted back “Lovely”

But Perran and Carenza were so excited at the prospect of an eclipse, that they ran out into their gritty London street, Carenza without shoes, but reported,

“Oh no, can’t see.  There’s low cloud in London.”

“Never mind that,” I replied, “There’s bloody badgers in Cornwall.”

Winter’s Tales

I have this Winter fantasy of hibernation.  To sleep with the depth and twelve-hour commitment of a teenager in a soft, warm bed, lulled by the pattering of sleet on the window pane.

I do believe that once as a school girl, I spent an entire half term of relentless rain reading in bed. If only I could have known at the time what a rare and unparalleled privilege that was.

Ever since then there has always been Something To Do.

And my powers of slumber have also weakened. Given an eight-hour sleep opportunity I find myself only half submerged in shallow dreams.

So if I can’t doze the long winter nights away, I shall have to while them away with stories, as was once the tradition before TV.  Already this winter, I have read so many, including, inappropriately, The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson.

And this weekend, I shall take it a step further.  Together with my writers’ group, BeauSandVer Writers, we are gathering at nightfall and reading aloud eight tales in an hour at our wonderful local Oxfam Bookshop.  

Organising this event has been enough to wake even me up!

Please come along if you’re in the St Albans area.

God With Us

At Christmas, we have only two firm family traditions.

On Christmas Eve we attend the beautiful sung evensong at St Albans Abbey – or The Annual Festival of Coughing, as we call it.

On Christmas morning we go to our own church, St Luke’s.

At quiet moments in the services I pray for people I know who are sad, ill or bereaved.  Then I move on to considering the year ahead and praying that God be with us.

And this year, I have already received a blessing.

Let me tell you the story:

This morning we attended our church.  SO MANY people we knew were there for Christmas.  And so were their children, grandchildren, aunts and uncles. 

We circulated around the church to exchange the handshake of peace with everybody. 

We processed up in front of everybody to receive communion.

Then back again.  

In front of everybody.

But it was not until I got home that the pants which had been caught up my trousers in the wash fell out onto the floor.

As I say – a blessing.