Month: October 2012

Last week Weyland started preschool and I started research. Finally!

I joined the The Medieval Dress and Textile Society and will attend their Autumn meeting Saturday. The topic is linen undergarments, including those German bra-like garments everyone has been buzzing about. Since I have been known for my reconstruction of undergarments…or at least the display of said product…I have great interest in the presentations.

I joined the Monumental Brass Society, and will attend their November meeting. I need to decide which of the many books about brasses I wish to buy. UNC’s Art Library had a good collection, so I checked out what I wanted. Now I want to own some of the books. My next difficulty is to figure out where to preview copies of the books, because even ones I’ve seen — and there are many that I have not — I need to open to know whether they contain material relevant to my research. So many incredible libraries around, and yet I don’t know where to start.

I need to pay for membership in the Church Monuments Society, because I’ve already gotten a wealth of information from members (I emailed my research proposal to the main contact person, who forwarded it). I have seen images of a great many memorial brasses from 1480-1520, but the art on them is not only a flat line drawing, it often poorly conveys a three dimensional perspective, and proportionally crafted human figures were clearly not a primary concern. Carved tombs, if I can find them, are a better source for costume information. Because the images I want are not the standard “pretty view of the face” and because printing photographs is more difficult than black and white artwork (like a brass rubbing), I haven’t seen many useful images of monuments. I’ll have to go out and see those tombs myself, which means figuring out which churches have carvings I’d like to see. This is quite a daunting task, since I can only name one place with women’s tombs of my era: Westminster Abbey, which has both Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort. I can’t take photographs there, and I have to pay to get in, so I’ll let that visit wait a little while. Some day when I need to soak up beautiful architecture, I’ll go.

But since the point of being in England was to SEE THINGS I also went out last Thursday to the National Portrait Gallery. The image I wanted most to see, Elizabeth of York’s portrait, is off display. However, I walked into the early Tudor gallery just after a class of 11-year-old students, and their teachers were leading a most interesting and in-depth presentation. So I lingered, and lingered, and listened. I was impressed by how much the children knew about Tudor history and how many visual cues they were able to read from the paintings.

I read all the wall plaques in the room. I stood really close to the cartoon of Henry VIII so that I could see the pin-prick holes they would have dusted chalk through to transfer the outline onto a wall. Then I went downstairs to the digital area and read ALL the information online about the portraits of Henry VII and the young Henry VIII. And then I went back upstairs and looked at everything they mentioned, found the little daubs of paint and the irregular gilding they had described. I just LOVE these details, when people analyze pigments and tree rings to figure out when painting were painted! Makes me wonder why I wasn’t an art history major. I noticed (for the first time, which is sad, as the information is on the NPG website) which of the “early Tudor” portraits are actually copies from the late 16th through 18th centuries — and immediately these images got mentally marked “less reliable” in my mind.

Then I sought the other object I’d come for, the reproduction of the effigy from Elizabeth of York’s tomb. It took help from two staff members to find it, perched high in a recess above the front stair, but once I found it, I stared at it. Stood, and stared. Thanks to the stairs I could view it from many different angles, including from above. So I stood, soaking it in, describing the angles of the gable hood in my mind until I couldn’t focus any more. And then I’d move to another spot. I even left, wandered idly through other galleries, other centuries, and returned.

I made a few connections about how the hood goes together. I am also getting a sense of why the French hood and gable hood could be contemporary styles that switched back and forth depending on who was queen. I have always looked at them as being SO DIFFERENT…and I think this is because I’ve seen far too many portraits that were painted late 16th century or later (and thus painted by people who had never seen the actual garments) and because I didn’t reject ENOUGH of the design that the Tudor Tailor proposed for reproducing the early style hood. I’ve always questioned their pattern a bit, differing on how far this edge should extend, or what angle these two pieces should join…not just completely saying “sure, it looks good, works on stage — but it is just plain WRONG if you’re trying to reproduce the actual bonnet.” Need to adjust my head…sort out the images I know and put the ones that aren’t painted by contemporaries further in the back…. Which is why I’m bopping around doing all this looking at stuff!

Right now I’m seeking portraits in museums. No good telling everyone that I have to work from funerary monuments because there aren’t any portraits if I don’t go LOOK at the museums with the most likelihood of having such early Tudor portraits. A family trip to Hever Castle should happen soon, just so that I can check out the Tudor paintings they have there. Because THOSE aren’t available online in any decent size!

I’m at the point where I can say: I’m sure there are things out there that I want to see, but for the most part I don’t know where they are. This is particularly true of sculpture — I do know vaguely where to find many of the brasses published in books. I need to comb libraries and websites to figure out where the churches are that I want to visit, and then secure permissions and plan trips to see them.

I got a great thrill during the visit two weekends ago to the Tower of London. In the chapel, built early in Henry VIII’s reign, is a tomb to a husband and wife. Although I couldn’t linger long — had to clear out for the next tour group — I was able to walk up to within inches of the monument and study it. Garrett asked me as we walked out whether I had learned anything, and I gave him an enthusiastic yes — the monument shows two pieces of embroidery down the lappet on the hood, one along the front edge, the other along the back. Different patterns of embroidery. I couldn’t take photos, but I got the address that I should write to request permission to photograph.

Having a great time. Learning lots. (Learning more about living in London than about costuming, but still, learning lots!)

Weyland loves trains. He has loved them with a passion ever since we visited Tweetsie Railroad a year ago. Show him paper, he asks you to draw a train. Favorite board book? Freight Train by Donald Crews. Favorite toy? Wooden Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks. Favorite Android app? Rail Maze. Favorite thing to do in London? Ride the train (subways count).

Tuesday I took Weyland to a museum just for him: the London Transportation Museum. It doesn’t usually show up on lists of child-friendly things to do about London, but it should. I thought of it because I used to take toddler-Garrett to the Wilmington Railroad Museum, a low-budget place that is really just an excuse to house model trains in a building with a few historic items, and a couple retired railroad cars outside. He’d push buttons, start trains, watch the figurines go round and round, and play in the toddler corner.

Though I went with little knowledge of the exhibits available, the London Transport Museum did not disappoint.

We started the day with Weyland’s most-requested activity: riding the tube. We live by the first above-ground stop on the Jubilee line. After dropping off the older boys, we hopped on the tube headed north (away from our destination, but through an above-ground section that gives plenty of entertaining views). I took Weyland off my back and let him ride in his own seat, and he exclaimed with delight over the sights. “Look! Railroad! Look! Train! Look! Tunnel!” After a while we got off at a small station that makes no connections with other lines. We walked across the platform, waited a minute, and got on the next train south. Weyland always counts how many different trains we ride, and since we had to transfer from the Jubilee line to the Piccadilly, we enjoyed THREE trains that morning.

Inside the museum, we started with the 19th Century transportation exhibit. Although climbing into the antique conveyances initially appealed to him, the talking (and sometimes slightly animated) mannequins unnerved him, and we left. The exhibit about the history of the London Underground was perfect. Here were familiar sights (escalator models, tunnels, historic versions of tube cars) and the best sort of museum feature: buttons and levers. Below he is pushing buttons that send out models of underground trains.

The museum is in a lovely old warehouse that used to be the flower market. Three levels have been carved out around the edges, but the center portion remains open. When we walked into the middle of the ground floor Weyland spotted the model subway train going back and forth on the edge of the first floor, and this required that we dart back and forth the length of the room to watch it for a while. Eventually I lured him up to the first floor and showed him where he could see it much closer. He really was happy to sit on the floor, nose pressed to plexiglass, and wait several minutes for the train to complete its trek to the other end of the line and return to the rail just feet from him. The actual full-sized train behind him, while worthy of notice, simply could not hold his attention like this miniature animated one.

There was, as I’d expected, a train table. But this one, instead of being mass produced, is a miniature version of London! There is the London Eye (the huge ferris wheel that my children could see so clearly from our City of London apartment), the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, the River Thames, the Transportation Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and some skyscrapers that I have to admit I recognize but cannot name. There is even a recessed portion that represents the Underground.

An aside, because it is too funny not to share: while living in the City, Weyland learned to recognize St. Paul’s Cathedral from all its angles. Besides its being one of the more distinctive parts of London’s skyline, seeing it up close meant that we were nearly home! Recently I noticed a depiction of St. Paul’s on a small cartoon and showed it to Weyland, saying “do you see St. Paul’s?” He told me, “No. One St. Paul.” Oh well, I laughed, and I’m positive he understands the plural S.

The museum also has a considerable collection of antique trams and buses that Weyland completely ignored, choosing instead to fixate on this animated model tram. He stood by it, followed it back and forth, exclaimed every time it went into its “tunnel”, sat on the floor by it, made ME sit on the floor by it. I have read every single exhibit within sight of this annoying little tram, I’m sure.

When Weyland started to get tired, the only way I could pry him away from the museum is the promise of a tube ride. We will be going back!

Another train story to tell: in Durham, we have ridden the small train at the Museum of Life and Science a handful of times. At first Weyland liked it, but one morning this summer we rode when the train was full of elementary age children. When they went through the galvanized steel tunnel, they followed the driver’s suggestion and screamed. Loudly. Shrilly. Terribly. I had clapped hands over Weyland’s ears, and my unprotected ears were literally ringing for minutes after exiting. Weyland hated it, cried, and was scared to ride the train from then on. A couple weeks ago, though, he began narrating while playing his favorite Rail Maze game on my Android. Every time the train went through the tunnel, he said, “people say aaaahh!” When we ride the tube, every time we go from light to darkness, or even under an overpass, he will — quietly, smiling, so that only we notice — say, “aaaahhh.”

The boys have survived, even enjoyed, three days of school. Enrolling them was such the adventure that even they are relieved to have started. Weyland soon starts preschool, and I will have something I’ve not experienced for ten and a half years: regular days without children.

To understand our schooling journey, one must know how we learned in the U.S. When the transfer opportunity opened in late June, I had already planned — luckily not paid for! — activities six days a week. Garrett would have Shakespeare, Latin, and musical theater. Both boys would have swim team, tap dance, Team Time at the YMCA and Chapel Hill Homeschoolers “Friday Enrichment” classes. Sundays we’d be at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Religious Education; I was stepping up as co-chair of the RE Committee. It would have been our busiest year ever, and even though most classes wouldn’t start until September, in June I had playdates and carpools and teaching swaps (you teach mine, I’ll teach yours) arranged around them.

Homeschooling does not necessarily mean staying home or doing schoolwork. Our approach is unschooly and eclectic — I owned (but seldom used) curricula only because I accepted hand-me-downs. So the kids are nimble with mental math and slow at pencil and paper exercises, advanced in reading comprehension but slow to blossom as independent readers, intensely knowledgeable about things that grab their interest and sadly lacking in other fields that just never came up.

If they never went to school, they didn’t need to be on grade level. But an international move changes things. Adult friends shared their childhood memories of living temporarily in the UK. School, meeting the local kids and doing what the local kids do, was central to their universally positive experiences.

I tried to picture life if we homeschooled. Where would I find liberal homeschoolers without a prescribed religious dogma or distrust of unschoolers? Where would we find the park days, playdates, clubs, and classes that are usually advertised by email lists? How would I know which teachers’ philosophies I could embrace? Would I drag three boys along to churches and libraries while I pursued my historic research?

I spent years gradually learning from and growing into the homeschool communities in Durham. I couldn’t recreate that quickly, and I also knew that activities would begin with the school year, in early September. Without time to assemble homeschool activities and friends, putting the boys in school became, clearly, the expedient option.

We spent the summer “torturing” the boys with math and reading lessons, trying to better align their skills with their age peers. The boredom of the six weeks in London without schedules really readied them: Garrett and Tallis were EAGER to be out of the house and in the company of kids.

If only we could have gotten them there sooner. We got to the UK as fast as we could, two weeks in advance of Tom’s start date (coincidentally, the start of school). We hoped our children could start with the school year, but no such luck! Although we paid a deposit on our flat before the first day UK children were in class, our boys were delayed a month. We needed a rental contract and copies of utility bills with our address — which of course you can’t get until you move in. Then we submitted paperwork to the Camden school office (that’s our borough in London) with a list of preferred schools. I dropped it off in person Thursday after we moved. I know nothing about the Royal Mail, and maybe it would have made it there overnight, but I wanted to be SURE! The lady on the phone told me to expect 20 days to assign the boys and the lady at the desk where I dropped it off told me 10 business days, so I was thrilled to get a call on Friday afternoon with our first choice school assignment.

Our requests were simple: we wanted something not church-run (there are both Church of England and Catholic state schools quite near us) within walking distance. Why did we get assigned in one day? According to a friend of my mother in law, the date to tally up students for the sake of getting next year’s budget is near, so they would want my kids’ included in the count. Also, I requested a non-church school (I hear that church schools are considered better, even if their rating scores aren’t superior. I wonder if they have fewer minorities and more students of English descent? Hmmmm….) and one in which I knew there were plenty of openings in year six for Garrett. Once Garrett gets in, his brother has priority if they have any way to fit him in — and they did, so Tallis got a year three spot. They also give priority to children living nearby, and their new school — Kingsgate Primary — is a 0.7 mile walk away.

So Monday morning I called the school to schedule our initial visit, Tuesday morning we completed paperwork in the head teacher’s office and paid for school uniforms (white polos with embroidered school logo, and green sweatshirts with the same) and Wednesday was their first day of school.

Tuesday after Weyland’s nap we had a terrible time hunting down the required gray trousers. When I asked, the lady in the office gestured dismissively behind her; of course the Marks and Spencer on Kilburn High Street had them. Wrong. They probably had them back in July and August, but by October, they had Halloween decorations, no clothing. We trekked up and down the street five times before, standing outside yet another unsatisfying clothing store while typing queries into Google maps trying to figure out what to do next, an older gentleman stopped to ask if I was lost. He told me to go to the Marks and Spencer downtown on Oxford Street and helped me look at the map to be sure I got the right place.

Four tired people — Weyland was riding on my back, protesting “no go shopping!” — hopped on a bus. Tallis entertained Weyland, Garrett paid careful attention to the sign announcing the next stop so that we wouldn’t miss ours, and I texted Tom: come meet us, we’re tired out and I need help, and before you do figure out something near there that will do for dinner. He suggested pizza, I said perfect. When Tom found us I was in the school uniform section — in the basement, in the back of the children’s department — trying in vain to find reasonable sized clothes for my kids. They aren’t obese, but they aren’t skinny, either. Would they need something two years larger than their age year? Three? More? Did I want pleated front or flat? Adjustable waist I wanted for sure, and even though I dug through the “short” section I knew there would be hemming in my immediate future.

With a swath of sizes and cuts in our arms, we trekked back upstairs (the children’s changing room was closed due to a leak) where thankfully children were allowed in the women’s dressing room. Eventually seven year old Tallis ended up in size 11, and ten year old Garrett in size 15 (he really needed 14 but there was not a single pair of gray 14s left in the entire store). After a lovely dinner at Pizza Express and a nice simple tube ride home, I was too tired to hem the trousers. I marked them, I trimmed them, I rolled the hems and pinned them, but I could NOT sew them before sleeping. Next morning I stood in the kitchen for half an hour sewing hems into four little legs, with gray silk thread I’d brought over for weaving medieval laces. The running stitch I put into Tallis’s trousers (I keep typing “pants” and then erasing it because I’m trying to learn to use “pants” in the British way to mean undergarments) was so bad, I thought that it probably looked like a normal person sewed it.

Sigh. At least I got a decent hem stitch into Garrett’s, and we were just barely NOT late for school.

Internet again buzzes through our house, and with it a chance to write. Where to start with the recap? We’ve moved in, gotten boys into schools, celebrated birthdays, learned about living in and getting about London. I’m not yet pursuing research or meeting people, but I can feel it, I’m getting closer.

The majority of my time the last three weeks (other than housework and raising children) disappeared into moving into our new place and getting it suitable for habitation. The week prior to our move was intensely stressful. When would the rental company get the contract to us? Could we get the money wired from the U.S. bank in time for the contract signing? When we moved in, what furniture would we have? How long would we be able to stay in our temporary flat in the City — would we have to check out the same morning that the movers came to pick up our boxes? When could we go shopping for the little things like sheets that we hadn’t needed in the temporary flat but would need in our unfurnished permanent one? Because the relocation company canceled our temporary flat before resolving the question of whether we’d get into our permanent place on schedule, I was wryly contemplating whether my family would be made homeless in a foreign country by the idiocy of the people who were supposed to be making our move easier.

In the end, not only did all this resolve satisfactorily, but we had a generous dash of good fortune: the weekend prior to our move, one of Tom’s colleagues bought a flat in which the previous owner had abandoned five beds, a couch, and four tall narrow wardrobes. They are hand-me-down junk, but they work. We all have beds (so what if they creak a little?) though we’ll get rid of most of them once our furniture arrives from the U.S. (Expect to wait another 2-3 weeks for that.) Same for the couch — it will do for the moment.

The wardrobes will be living room shelves, because once that sea shipment arrives we will have a house FULL of stuff and we’ll need storage. This irritates Tom, who was looking forward to a year of living minimally. But because we packed the Durham house with the intention of leaving the contents in storage, we did not worry overmuch about how the packers labeled things haphazardly. The box labeled “clothes” really had clothes in the first third, and then towels and then blankets, but it didn’t really matter: I knew which room to set the box into before opening, and I’d sort it all back out in a year. Or so I thought. Now because of the vague labeling we will have a large number of items shipped over that are of absolutely no use to us: electronics that will not work on the UK power grid, scrap fabric that is not worth the effort of hauling around (and yet to toss it pains me too much…I winnowed my fabric stash quite well before the move but to toss more…I’m not ready yet), books that we’re unlikely to open, clothes that won’t fit any of our sizes during the coming year, tons of photos and art we can’t hang (no nails in these walls unless we want to patch and paint when we leave!), shower curtains that we don’t need because these showers have doors…unwanted STUFF.

But at the moment it feels as if we are rattling around in here, as if the place is way too large for us.

We acquired more necessities via our SCA connections: we have on loan or for keeps many of the items it takes to outfit a kitchen, such a stock pot and frying pan and ladle, and enough beer glasses to make me laugh, since no one here drinks the stuff. I could buy these things, but all of our own cooking utensils will arrive soon…and I’d hate to spend all that money for one month or so of use. I am deeply grateful to the community mindset that the SCA inspires, the collegiality that motivates someone to offer their personal (spare) belongings to someone else that they have met two times just because she put out a request over an email list. I realize that other hobby communities are also supportive like this, and yet…the SCA seems special.

The day after our move the entire family trundled up north a bit to IKEA, where we bought plates and silverware (for about the same price, or less, than London thrift stores) and bedding and small lamps and a heap of other small but necessary items. We left with everyone but Weyland well laden. I returned today, just myself with Weyland on my back, and spent much more to buy the furniture items that we’d determined were worth the money, but which we did not own. Odds and ends like laundry bins (we have one built into the Durham house), lights for the living room, door mats, trash cans, book bags, and extension cords all went into my basket. Then there were the larger things: we gave away our bed before we moved (we wanted a smaller one), we are buying a dining table rather than waiting 3 more weeks for one (I am sick of sitting on the floor to eat!), we need a TV table (we have a built in shelf for it in Durham) and a computer chair for Garrett’s room.

With walking the kids to school, walking to the tube, walking from the station to IKEA, trekking all through the store (with loops back to bathrooms whenever needed), racing home, picking up the kids from school (late, but they forgave me easily) and returning, I walked more than 20,000 steps, twice my daily goal. I’m TIRED.