The UK permits you to drive with your native license for 12 months after you immigrate. After that, you have to get a UK license, which is far more difficult than I imagined it would be. But I’m working on it. Because the car clubs I belong to know exactly when I entered the country, they won’t rent to me again until I get a license.
I’ve had to live without independent wheels since August. Mostly this means I’ve been in London, which is not much of a limitation on learning: being here means access to a never-ending source of interesting exhibits, talks, classes, and conferences. It amazes me how many places nearby are still on my list of “you should go see that” when I think of how busy I’ve been and how much I’ve seen.
Most recently I’ve been working on updating my beloved map of effigies and brasses:
https://1500stitches.org/map.html
I added a few more effigies that I found listed in Arthur Gardner’s Alabaster Tombs of the Pre-Reformation Period on England, effigies that didn’t turn up in my initial search of the database of Pevsner’s Architectural Guides. I worry that I may be missing more effigies in Wales…I only found three relevant locations with alabaster tombs (plus one where I assume the effigy is ruined or inaccessible, since the church apparently fell into abandoned disrepair in the 20th century and I can find no images of the effigy online). But how am I to locate any freestone or wood effigies that might be there – besides reading every single church guide and hoping I notice the ones that list a monument from around 1500?
I further subdivided the color categories on my map, allowing me to display the butterfly headdresses separate from the truncated hennins and gable hoods. I also separated out those monuments with a wreath, padded roll, or crown displayed over either a simple veil or (more commonly) long hair. I only see this style on effigies, never on brasses; what does it mean?
This left a pleasingly small pile of “other” hat styles, mostly variations on widow’s veils. Many of the hats that I couldn’t identify from the photos I initially found online, I have since visited and can now more accurately describe.
I smile seeing the places marked “visited”. I have learned and seen so much in the last year. But there are still so many more to see…and many of these are the difficult ones. The churches for which I cannot find a keyholder, the places where I must write in advance for special permission to photograph, the church that is condemned and is now a hard hat area, the chapel that is gated and locked because they’re doing a long-term study about the effects of bat guano on effigies (really!), and the many churches that are just further away than I have yet driven. I will spend the next two months planning trips, researching routes, calling church wardens and vicars and volunteers, and perhaps finding a few friendly couches on which to crash.
This fall I only managed two trips via train and bus: one to Carlisle and the Lake District, another to Bristol and surrounds. My mother joined me on those excursions while my mother-in-law stayed in London to help Tom juggle the kids. We had quite a good time and no shortage of fascinating things to see! But just describing why we missed the bus to Greystoke is a post unto itself…so I conclude with happy thoughts about the enjoyable plotting, planning and organizing ahead.
And Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in America! I believe that we will, as last year, simply ignore the holiday. No point cooking a huge meal for just my family when it is a regular school and workday.