Mammamamicium

"The moment a child is born the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never."

Rajneesh

Manchester is the only place in the world where you can get a degree in 'mummy studies'.  By happy chance that is where I would meet up with my 'mummy' and the rest of my family.  First stop would be to see my youngest brother and the mummy of their two rug-rats, Rose and Herbie.  They sound like a fluffy duo from a children's novel, in person their cute adorability makes them an instant best seller.

"Other things may change us, 

but we start and end with the family." 

Anthony Brandt

I thought Jasmin would burst from a massive rush of cousin love.  We had travelled around the world for several months to deliver that hug and it was worth every second.    

"Babies are such a nice way to start people" 

Don Herold

There was another baby born in Manchester other than the ones we were visiting.  In 1948, the University of Manchester ran the first program on the first computer and it was known as ‘The Baby'. 

Once our real live babies were fast asleep, it gave us larger people time to eat, drink and catch up on all the news until the wee hours of the morning.  I should have planned ahead and got more sleep as Rose and Herbie woke bright and early the next morning ready for a day of fun and discovery.  First up was a breakfast outing and a lesson in physics and the strength of an eggshell.  Sitting in a high chair, Herbie the fledgling physicist, was following the mighty footsteps of Ernest Rutherford.  In 1907, Rutherford took over the  physics chair at Manchester University and his team succesfully 'split the atom'.

"Splitting the egg"

 

"Cinderella is proof that a new pair of shoes can change your life" Unknown

It was a fairy tale dream come true when we took the day to head off and teach young 'cuz' the ways of big girl shopping. A family tradition handed down from generation to generation.  

Granma and grandson

Time to go a visiting and a big lunch with family is one of my most favorite things.  How is it that all my photographs have us eating?  Perhaps I am pavlovian and as the saliva begins I am 'Canon' conditioned to pull out the camera and make everyone pose while their food goes cold.  

Father daughter real ale drinking team

I have learned to order whatever real ale my dad is drinking.  He is an expert in sussing out which is the best locally brewed bitter.  Luckily non of us were driving so even bunny got in on the celebrations.

Rose and Bunny

Rose and Bunny are not the only dynamic duo to frequent the Manchester Hostelries.  In 1904 an auspicious meeting took place when Charles Rolls was introduced to Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel.

 

Dad, Son and 'Catty'

But it was all too much for Herbie and his "Catty" and it didn't take long to convince him to take an afternoon nap.  The first few days of fun flew by in a whirl of food festivities and frivolity.  However, I am a firm believer in visitors being akin to fish and that after a several days either can begin to stink.  So in an effort to not outstay our welcome we left our bigger suitcases behind and wheeled onward with smaller bags and a promise to return in a few days.

On the road again

We were not technically on the road again, rather on the rails.  We caught the tram to catch the train.  Travelling on public transport is an education in history when you are in the Manchester.  You literally travel back in time when entering Victoria Station, the original building was constructed in 1844 and then upgraded in 1909.  It is not surprising that the station was voted the worst in the UK in 2009 due to the leaky roof.  I thought it a small price to pay to walk under the Edwardian glass and iron canopy imagining the steam trains of a bygone era.  

Bye bye 

Sitting back and staring out of the window as the train gathered speed I enjoyed the watching the countryside creep back into the scenery. Viewing the rolling hills and wooded dells it was easy to see why the Romans called the city Mamicium which was derived from the Celtic name meaning ‘breast-shaped hill’. It had been a great visit to the mammas in mamicium and we were looking forward to seeing another mamma on the east coast of Yorkshire.

Big Charter Carta

Salisbury Cathederal

After a visit to such an ancient place as Stonehenge it was hard to view anything else as even historical.  Even though the building of Salisbury Cathedral began in 1220, the Gothic architecture appeared contemporary in comparison.   Legend has it that the Bishop shot an arrow to choose the site for the Cathedral.  However, he hit a deer which ran on for several miles, Salisbury Cathedral was sited where the animal died. It boasts the tallest spire in England and with religious fervor I hoped like hell we had missed the daily "tower tour".

 Happy Homeschool History Lessons

While the vaulted ceiling is impressive, the real reason for our visit was to view the Magna Carta.  Encased in glass in a dark room these 800 year old hallowed chronicles brought history alive for my homeschoolers.  They were already  expounding all manner of relevant facts and I was impressed at what they knew. The agreement for peace was sealed by King John and the barons of England in 1215.  Several copies of the medieval document were written in Latin on animal skins, Salisbury has one of the last remaining four. Addressing justice fairness and human rights, it forms the basis for modern constitiutional government.  The Magna Carta is indeed a "big charter". 

Once inside, I was drawn to the moth eaten flags representing long disbanded regiments and even longer forgotton standard bearers.  Their raggedy appearance transported my imagination to the battles fought in every corner of the globe.  

The kids were more interested in the stone knight, but Chris could shed little light on the identity of this 14th century crusader.  It would remain the tomb of the unknown medieval soldier.  

We reconvened by the oldest working clock, which is thought to be over 600 years old.  I wondered if it kept better time than me?  We needed to forge onwards if we were to make the afternoon train up to Manchester. But maybe Chris had a solution, he claimed he could show us how to go back in time.  We suspiciously followed him to a dark dusty corner of the nave where he told us to search the flag stones for the grave marker of Thomas Lambert.  We scoured the floor under our feet and finally found the small and insignificant flat stone of a baby's tomb.  The words were slightly worn away by centuries of footsteps.  We could just make out that he had died in February 1683 yet he was born in May of the same year.  Chris explained it was during the period when England adopted the Gregorian calendar which reset the date backwards.        

 Halls of History

Unfortunately for us, time was only going one way and that was forward fast.  We made our way out through the courtyard and stumbled into a scene straight out of Harry Potter.  We were going to need some magic to fortify us for train travel on a Bank Holiday Sunday. Chris delivered us safely at the station, we had joined his tour as clients and we hugged goodbye as friends.  With no delays and no drama we easily caught the train to Piccadilly Station Manchester, perhaps "The Stones" were extending their ley lines along the tracks north?

Unhinged at Stonehenge

The Stones

Our cruise ended in Southampton early in the morning, so my inner tourist ramped into overdrive at the thought of what we could squeeze into the day ahead.  Thanks to Captain Ulrich's daily time changes, we had transitioned from America to England with no jet lag. With only 34 miles between the port and Stonehenge, I simply couldn't resist the chance to join the pilgrimage made by 800,000 annual visitors to one of the UK's most iconic sites.  It seemed a fitting way to return to my country of birth and crank a little ancient British history into the kids' brains.  

"England's green and pleasant land" 

William Blake

After 14 days of blue ocean vistas, the brilliant green of the English countryside, bathed in sunshine, was a welcoming sight.  We wound ever deeper into the New Forest National Park.  The name is misleading considering the forest is actually quite old. After conquering England in 1066, William I evicted the peasants from the farmsteads in the area and designated the woodland for royal hunting.  

New Forest Cottages

The commoners have made a comeback over the last few centuries and the real estate is both cute and coveted.  You're never quite sure who you might see talking a stroll alongside the farmers' fields, both Madonna and Sting have homes here.

"There'll always be an England While there's a country lane, Wherever there's a cottage small Beside a field of grain." 

Ross and Charles

But it's the New Forest ponies that are the real locals in the area, as one of the indigenous horse breeds of the British Isles, thousands run loose in the park.  

We, of course, only found the ones blocking the road and ended up in a traffic jam with a few of their long eared cousins. Although we were pretty sure that the next animals we spied were completely introduced. 

" I heard someone say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.  I decided to sculpt camels in a needle." 

Willard Wigan

Lady Chichester's camel, Therese, enjoys the run of the large estate except when she makes her annual appearance in the local nativity play alongside the donkey.  Luckily, we had our own wise man, Chris, to guide us in the direction of Stonehenge.  Only we were channelling a very different divinity using copper rods.  

"The Avenue" near Stonehenge.

We were all a little suspicious of dowsing, which finds the location of 'ley' or energy lines crisscrossing the planet.  Perhaps neolithic man was much more in tune with the mystical power of the universe and sited their ceremonial and ritualistic sites along these energy lines. 

“You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe”

 Dr. Carl Sagan

It was difficult to understand why the copper rods crossed when we walked across the Avenue, which was the ancient ceremonial pathway from the river to Stonehenge. The kids changed from doubtful sideways glances to fighting over taking their turn. I was starting to remember the questions I had mulled over last time I had visited this area 25 years earlier.  Building of the  Stones began over 5000 years ago and many theories abound about this prehistoric monument and the people that built it.  A visit to Stonehenge always creates more questions than answers.  Enough with the theorizing, my inner tourist needed some photos.  We eagerly joined the long line of cars winding their way towards the site. 

"Upon the fields of barley...As we walk in fields of gold" 

Sting

With cosmic contradiction, the Stones had stayed the same for millennium yet the original visitor centre from the 1960's had been torn down.  The new reception building had been sited several miles from the site so we would need to pay to ride in a tourist train.

Of course, to board the landrover pulled wheelie carriage I needed a ticket.  To buy the ticket I had to join a line, a long line.  Its always hard to convince the kids that they aren't hungry when lurking next to an overpriced cafe.  I tried to distract them and utilize our wait time by taking turns to visit the bathroom, where we encountered yet another long line.  I began to ponder the merits of evolution and the planning consideration of ladies toilets by male architects.  Luckily, a stall came free before I squatted down Neolithic style in the potted plants.

Almost unhinged by the commercialization of it all, I tried to tune into the information echoing out of my 'press 1 for English' tour guide headset.  Crawling slowly along the public road which was closed off to anyone without a ticket, I saw hikers walking on the public bridleway just the other side of the barbed wire fence.  They were making their way to Stonehenge without a ticket, without a map and without a crackling headset.  Was the wire keeping me in or them out?

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK

The wire got me thinking about the all the different groups that have become involved in the modern day melee over protection and access.  Over the last several centuries, archeological digs and restoration projects have excavated and unearthed some of the secrets of Stonehenge.  Some of the blue stones may have come as far away as Wales many miles away.  One idea suggests Durrington Walls may have been the centre for the living, with the River Avon connecting  it to Stonehenge - the centre for the dead. 

Stonehenge is indeed the centre of a concentrated network of burial mounds.  The disinterment of these graves have helped unshroud the mystery of Neolithic and Iron Age humans.  I was starting to grasp the Druid reverence of nature and ancestors.  

"it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it."

Ronald Hutton

As I approached the stones, I pushed back the headset and allowed the silent shadows of the past to haunt my ears.  I was walking the path of my forefathers, although my own DNA probably holds an ancestral story of a few thousand years of invasion from all manner of Europeans.

And now here I was surrounded by the full spectrum of humanity, tourists from all four corners of the world lined up to take photos and document their own private pilgrimages. The stones had witnessed eons of visitors just as they had seen the passage of time wrinkle its way onto my face.  The voices of the present pulled me from my contemplation, the kids were ready to move on.   

There was just time to listen to the headset explanation of the heel stone.  Standing in the circle, at sunrise, on the summer solstice the sun rises exactly over the heel stone.  A celestial calendar still drawing the faithful every 21st of June, the longest day of the year.  But today was just another day for the tourist mecca and the only souls allowed in the centre were the crows.  They perched high on the plinths ready to swoop down on any loose tourist crumbs.  Just like my last visit I left with a sense of awed wonderment at the tenacity of man and how the enigma of Stonehenge continues to pull us back along the path of our mortality. 

These are a few of my favorite things

"To the question, "When were your spirits at the lowest ebb?" the obvious answer seemed to be, "When the gin gave out."


Sir Francis Chichester

The last two days on board the boat were filled with melancholy moments of conclusion.  From Miami, 25 degrees North and 80 degrees West, after a fornight at sea we finally reached our journey's end, 50 degrees North and 1 degree West - Southampton.  A grand total of 4815 miles.  But the journey was better measured in the countless friends we met along the way. 

Our nightly dining companions at Vivaldi Restaurant 

Never having cruised before we had conquered the Atlantic effortlessly and created wonderful memories along the way.  There were so many favorite things to remember from the last two weeks.  I am eternally grateful for the endless food that I didn't have to cook, for kindly waiters clearing my plates and never having to wash up.

Tiered formal dining room

It was fun to see the kids rise to the occasion when they joined me for the formal dining option and figure out the heirarchy of cruising.  They endlessly discussed the points needed for a platinum membership and debated the value of a 'Royal Replenish' drinks package.  It was even more amusing to see them hop out of the hot tub, free feed at the frozen yogurt stand then jump back into the steaming swirling water.

Main Deck

The countless activities were an added bonus to our homeschooling program from the watercolor painting class to climbing rock walls and mini golf.  We watched ice skating shows on a rink the size of a postage stamp and viewed theatrical shows almost worthy of Broadway.  On the colder days playing shuffle board conjured up titanic moments of windswept recreation.  

I loved shopping on the promenade deck during the 50% off sale, where even half price is still ridiculously overpriced.  Yet there was a high sea camaraderie in being shoulder to shoulder with other boutique predators starving for retail therapy. 

Towel Art

The towel apes downsized into donkeys and our finale cotton creation was a dove.  Perhaps it represented our impending freedom from the ship or maybe just a lack of time on the last night?  

We had lasted 2 weeks with no internet or phone communication.  A rare opportunity to leave my world of responsibilites behind and for the kids and I to concentrate on each other and the things that are important.  I had contemplated my small existence on this big planet and learned to embrace my tiny place in the universe.  Captain Ulrich had brought us safely across the ocean, the crossing had been calm, but the cruise had still lived up to its name and been a grand "Adventure of the Seas."