On our way here on Wednesday we passed through Winchester, all too briefly. After some time spent on errands, including an extensive but fruitless search for a good internet connection, we toured the city museum (another with a fine Roman collection) and the cathedral. The cathedral lawn, though liberally sprinkled with tombstones, was sprinkled even more thickly with picnickers, many of them presumably local workers on lunch break.
The cathedral itself has a rather undistinguished nave (left) but a pair of fine Norman transepts (right). Other features we appreciated included a rare survival of medieval ceramic floor tiling, and some latter-day ecumenical gestures including a Jain statue and a row of icons, specially commissioned for the place and done by a Russian Orthodox icon-painter in the tradition of Andrey Rublev. At both ends of the row were icons of sainted local bishops of the Saxon period, whose portraits had presumably never before been painted in that Byzantine fashion.
Yesterday's main item of business was taking Stas to an appointment in Tunbridge Wells, but on our way there and back we got to see a little of Brighton. We got agreeably lost, and dined outdoors, in the dense warren of pedestrian streets and passageways known as the Lanes. (The children and I had toured the somewhat similar Pantiles neighborhood in Tunbridge Wells earlier in the day, but the Brighton Lanes area is much larger and more complex.) We saw the two great seafront hotels, the Metropole and the Grand (now both taken over and vulgarly branded by large chains, I noted with a pang); the seafront itself with the Palace Pier (left), a kind of offshore amusement park and casino; and of course the wildly improbable Brighton Pavilion (right). This last is a palace in early-nineteenth-century pseudo-oriental style (Mogul on the outside, Chinese on the inside), built by the playboy Prince Regent for his lady who lived here. (They were married, but in a somewhat peculiar fashion so that none of his rank rubbed off on her.) Elsewhere we savored the fine town-house terraces in both Brighton and Hove that sprang up in the Regency period (for where the Prince Regent went, fashion naturally followed, transforming "Brighthelmstone" into Brighton); and I savored a good many memories from my twenty-first year, when Brighton was just a quick and cheap bus ride away from the university.
Today Ariadne and I went swimming at Felpham. (The others merely waded and/or watched.) I found Culver Road, where we had lived 1968-69; and I discovered that we could park right by the row of cabanas that still stand between dear old number twenty-two and the sea wall. I was quite delighted to be able to swim just exactly there, with the tide just right and the sun bright and warm. I found the water absolutely wonderful, and the stiff easterly breeze dried me almost immediately afterwards with no need for a towel--though of course that left me rather salty all over for the afternoon.
After swimming we walked along the sea wall to the dear old tawdry sea-front resort of Bognor Regis, where we lunched and treated the children to bumper cars, some carnie games, and candy floss (cotton candy to Americans). A great time seems to have been had by all.