Stories of a Different Kind

Today we had the pleasant honor of being somewhat rushed out of our house by our cleaning crew.  I think I'm awfully glad we have a cleaning crew - as they did a nice job - but it's still kind of awkward having someone clean up after me.  Like, Granville Towers awkward.  Anyway (forgive me for complaining about my former Chapel Hill life), I say that it's pleasant because it happened to be about the same time we had to get together outside on the mews street (the term cracks me up).  We took a really long walk down some rather cozy back streets to St. Paul's cathedral - which, by the way, is HUGE.  I mean, it better be, as it's the national cathedral.  And, we got a really nice tour of the place - learned a lot about the history, saw the different chapels (I started to wonder exactly how many chapels could there be in a place - there's even one in the crypt!), checked out all the different memorials... it was really quite fascinating.  The gilded nature of the place made me think that this was a white and incredibly enlarged version of an Eastern Orthodox church.

  

What really interested me about St. Paul's is that it is, indeed, a very national cathedral.  A good deal of people are memorialized there - many national heroes and that sort.  There are even memorials to Americans - for their involvement in defending Britain during the World Wars.  There was a pretty spiffy memorial to John Wesley - which I think is appropriately placed - outside in the garden of St. Paul's.  What I find is pretty cool is that he seems to be caught in the act of doing what he's known for doing - spreading the Gospel.  I mean, really - what a way to be remembered!  John Wesley's a cool dude - even if you aren't a Methodist - he can still be looked at as a sort of model of what one can do with one's convictions and passions... in Wesley's case, transform the way people thought about Christian doctrine.  Very cool.  There was also a monument to John Donne - a bit of a more stoic memorial for such a firebrand of a guy - which was startlingly life-like.  It's got a bit of history behind it - as the statue was made while Donne was old and dying, and the sketch for it was made as he was posed in a shroud lying in a coffin.  Creepy.  I guess it was sobering for Donne, but I don't know.  It would be for me.  Another monument that was down in the crypt (that I was actually surprised that the guide didn't point out) was one to John Wyclif (or, as it's alternately spelled, Wycliffe).  I mean, seriously, the dude's important.  He was one of the first people to attempt translating the Bible into English - and this was before it was cool to be a Reformationist.  Wycliffe was persecuted severely (there's some harsh criticism of him running around) for believing that we should read the Bible for ourselves.  I don't know about you, but I like reading the Bible for myself.

You know, maybe I'm just attracted to the heretics of Catholicism. 

So, I guess now everyone knows that I get my kicks from the Johns.  Ha ha.  Anyway, they're seriously cool guys, if you want to do your own bits of history on them.

There were other monuments there, too, obviously.  The Duke of Wellington was interred and memorialized there, as well as naval and air force war heroes.  It's interesting... I guess.  I don't quite know British history too well, so these guys didn't quite stick as much in my mind.

Enough about memorials - there's one other specific reason why St. Paul's is a national cathedral, and to get a good sense of that, all you have to do is look up when you're inside.  There are some incredible mosaics on the ceiling, all around the dome.  They're made with small squares of stained glass.  And how did they get up there?  Well, crowds of British people, from Queen Victoria to your regular guy on the streets did.  That, friends, is cool - when you consider that the royalty is all walled off with some pretty gnarly looking barbed wire in a palace.  Everybody got a chance to take part.  Plus, it was designed by an awesome British astronomer-turned-architect-because-he-felt-bored guy (Christopher Wren) - I mean, everything in that cathedral is there because the British put it there!

Not to say that it doesn't have its other influences: it looks rather Parisian, and right now they've got these really vivid paintings up compliments of a Russian artist of the birth, life, and death of Christ.  (On a note about these paintings: I was rather amused when our guide pointed out that the picture of the Nativity didn't look much like a traditional picture of it.  It didn't, really - you've got this unclothed boy Jesus going "check me out, I'm the Son of God!" and Mary's all hiding behind him sort of using him as a human shield from this crowd of pealing bells - which apparently are a symbol of celebration in Russian paintings.  It was kind of cool.  The other pictures portray Jesus as a really almost emaciated figure - as if He were spending His days wandering around, preaching and healing but not really feeding himself because no one would support Him.  It's a frighteningly vivid image of what might have been in comparison to these fleshy, bloodless images of Christ that we're all so used to.)

Anyway, my punny title doesn't refer to the fact that I don't talk about drinking for this post.  No - after our tour of the cathedral and the crypt, we decided to check out the Whispering, Stone, and Golden galleries.  And, where exactly are these galleries?  Well... over eight hundred steep, winding steps above the main cathedral.  I am proud to say that I climbed them all, and lived to tell about it.  I think the weird part was that I started to get dizzy while walking up those stairs - all the spiraling and moving gave me a headache.  There actually weren't any paintings up there (which I think we all thought there would be), but we managed to see some positively fantastic views of the city, and with the Whispering Gallery in particular, an interesting view of the main part of the cathedral... from four hundred and fifty steep, steep steps above it.  Phew!  Even though I'm a bit uneasy with heights, I ventured forth and stuck my head through (yeah, through - I was too short to get a good look through... actually, to get a good look, you probably have to be over six feet tall, because some of the others in the group had to stick their head through too) the guard rail's cusp and looked down.  There was also an amazing view of the statues around the interior dome of the cathedral from that particular gallery - they're so big!  I think I liked the Stone Gallery the best, as it was somewhat high, looking out over the city, and there was a lot of space for me to stick to the dome, then venture out to the edge when I felt comfortable.  There was also a lot of wind up there, which felt good after climbing a heck of a lot more steps.  The Golden Gallery had the best view - as it was the highest up, but perhaps my least favorite, as it was a) high up, and b) really narrow along the walk.  Eeek!  I pretty much insisted that we get down as soon as I got scared of the heights (which wasn't immediately, I'm glad of that) - and somehow the group decided that it was good to go down at around the same time.  Nice!  While up there, I discovered that, by gripping the bannister for my life, my hands were disgusting - so we all went down to the crypt, where the cafe and the bathrooms were... well.  I thought it was weird that all that was down in the crypt.  Apparently that's not too uncommon.

This post is getting a bit long, so I'll just say that I rode the tube for the first time.  It spoke in a British accent, and told me to "mind the gap" about a hundred times.  Fascinating and slightly annoying at the same time.  I'll probably be riding it again... but not often - it's remarkably fast, yes, but I want to see the city rather than my reflection interrupted by orange lights twice every second.  I see my reflection non-interrupted every day that I look in the mirror.

Amusing bit of information: after the group got down, we all noticed that our legs were shaking.  Mine was pretty obvious because I was wearing flip-flops - so my foot was jerking around.  It was rather amusing.

I also now know where I'm going to go when I feel like I really need to do some exercise.  St. Paul's tower gymnasium!

I really hope I haven't committed an act of sacrilege by saying that...

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