Category: Uncategorized

Today has been a getting-ready-to-pack day. We need to submit a complete inventory of all our belongings, along with the replacement value, to the moving company. This is SO not fun. However, it is probably an excellent window into what we value. The total cost of the furniture we’re shipping is far less than the value of the musical instruments, and that is exceeded by the value of our books. (Current number of books inventoried: 1,442, including a sizable library for the children. I’m sure we’ve missed a few that we’ll find as we keep looking around. Chunks of our book collection were also left in storage in the US.)

But even more interesting, to me, was the inventory I took of my mudlarking things. I sorted, I repacked, and I chose which items I wanted to carry to the Museum of London for identification (answer: too many. Especially heavy ones.)

I won’t be taking the pottery types I feel fairly confident that I’ve identified correctly, like the hand-painted china in blue:

…and other colors. Actually, I might take these in, see whether she can give me some names of types represented:

Combed Staffordshire slip stays home (can you tell I LOVE picking these bits up?):

…but I’ll ask questions about these similar but not identical pieces:

No need to carry in the salt glazed Bellarmine potsherds, even if the little face (left, middle row) is cute:

…but I might learn a bit about these more modern (I think all 19th and 20th century) stoneware bottle fragments:

I can recognize the stripes on this mochaware and banded ware:

…but not all the swirls and spots on this assortment of fragments:

…and certainly not these. I just need a name for them, so that I can look them up and learn more:

I’m pretty confident that I’ve separated my creamware:

…from my white salt glazed sherds:

…and my pearlware (which is mostly shell edged):

I’m not confident that these are all black basalt stoneware:

…and I hadn’t realized what this piece was until yesterday (having never even heard of Chelsea sprig):

…but I figured out how to tell my Westerwald stoneware:

…from my debased scratched blue and white stoneware a while ago. Though the differences are subtle.

While I am overly fond of my roof and floor tile fragments (especially the two medieval painted ones, bottom left), I’ll leave them home – they’re heavy.
 

The transferware can stay home, too – I just don’t have time to delve into all its 18th and 19th-century variety:

…even for the extra fun colored bits. Not taking them:

…or the spongeware:

I’ll bring in my jar of delft, because I’m not terribly confident about sorting these fragments and suspect some other styles are mixed in:

The heaviest lot I’m bringing is these large chunky redware pieces (plus many more bags of smaller redware and the 14th-16th century green lead glazed bits). I just can’t resist the functional, hand-formed shapes, although clearly most people prefer to leave them on the shore:

These bits of redware are a bit more refined. Must learn more about them:

And if I’ve identified these correctly, this blackware could date from late Tudor or Stuart times:

Wow, I spend a lot of time learning about pottery, for someone who never cared much for it. Hobbies, how they change us. My real interest is more the costuming bits like aglets (left) and pins:

And more aglets (left), next to printer’s type:

Buttons and beads are always fun to find, though I don’t think any of these are exceptional:

Hooks and eyes are lots of fun to study (for a costuming geek, that is):

and some are very hard to distinguish from bits of wire and metal scrap:

My bag would be so much lighter if I didn’t haul large metal chunks like these home:

along with nails:

and glass:

The little things usually make me the happiest. Like round things…whatever their original purpose (toy, industrial tool, shot), they’re round things and I like them:

I found a lot of unidentified scraps of lead before I ever found a lead fabric seal (not pictured):

And there are still an amazing number of leather fragments preserved out there:

along with an assortment of other random items from throughout history, like wig curlers, bottle stoppers, belt buckle bits, knife handles, etc.:

Goodbye, Thames, you mysterious history-hoarding old river. I’m going to miss you.

My time in England is nearing an end, and looking back I realize that precious few adventures actually made it from my brain to the computer screen. I suppose no one who knows me will be surprised that I’ve been a bit busy.

I am pecking out this essay on the train, the earliest I found leaving Kings Cross Station for York. Outside the sky is turning from gray to pale blue and the morning mist is clearing. From time to time we pass fields of startlingly vibrant yellow – the rape plant, from which we get rapeseed oil (rebranded as canola oil in North America), is in bloom. Last spring I had to ask a nice church warden what this plant was and I think he was quite startled by my inability to recognize it. But I’m a North Carolina girl – I can identify tobacco, soybeans, cucumbers or cotton while driving 70 miles an hour in the rain, but I’ve not seen the crops of the upper Midwest.

The train pulls into Grantham and I look up to study the church spires. One particularly tall one is currently swathed in scaffolding. My first thought is a desire to visit the church, and the second a wish to climb the spire. Whenever given a chance to climb up and take in the view, I say yes.

Today is only my second long train trip north. Though on a few of my driving trips out of London I’ve been rather envious of the rail passengers speeding past me as I trundle up the M1 at a mere 70mph, it has usually made more sense to just drive. This allows me to bring my step ladder (a really useful tool when photographing table tombs) and carry as much food as I need (I never take time for a lunch stop – daylight is too precious to waste in a shop or cafe) plus large rolls of paper for drawing the hats on effigies or for making brass rubbings.

This will be my last big trip. I’ll get a car in York and drive all around Leeds today, venture far further north and east tomorrow. Last stop tomorrow should be the final effigy on my “most important” list, the last one with an early gable hood and the frontlets worn long. I can’t believe I’ve done it, traveled the length and breadth of England (and just a tiny bit of Wales) but I have. My beloved map, my indespensible tool both for explaining and planning research, is covered now with the white dots that mark places I’ve visited.

I even made it to Morchard Bishop, a place so far out in Devonshire that it was an hour and a half drive from anything else (church, castle, or historic site) that I wanted to see. I justified the drive by sandwiching it in on a family trip to Cornwall that I’m sure I wouldn’t have undertaken (fun and interesting though it was to drive 769 miles over 3 days with three children wedged into the back of a too-small rental car) had I not known of the effigy’s existence.

I just passes a large sign beside the tracks that said Edinburgh 250 miles. Sorry, Scotland, but I don’t think I’ll be visiting you during this Adventure in London. Perhaps if you told me about some effigies I should visit….

 

I haven’t been ignoring my blog, I just keep composing in my mind while away from the computer, and no one has yet invented a method for me to transfer the results onto the screen.

I’ve been lurking in libraries and trolling online catalogs. Last week I spent two days at the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum. That museum is big, and confusing, and pieced together like a multi-story crazy quilt. I got lost and had to ask for directions four times just to find the library, and then got lost trying to find the cloakroom to check my bag, and then got turned all around trying to find the restroom. At least when you get lost at the V&A, there are interesting things to see. Distracting exhibits on silver, stained glass, jewelry, Buddhist sculpture, ballgowns, 20th century art…so I even enjoyed getting lost. And once I figure out a route once, I’m good with directions and usually get it right when I retrace it.

The staff at the V&A were quite helpful and the computer system is easy to work with. I went to the prints and drawings library (totally different part of the museum; more getting lost) and the librarian seemed genuinely remorseful that he couldn’t produce some tidbit of art that would inform my research. I thanked him and told him that it was OK, finding nothing still was a data point for me, since it meant I had an adequate grasp of what images might be available.

This past weekend I grappled with bibliography issues. I have pages and pages of call numbers and titles of books at the UNC Libraries; many of the books on them I at least looked at, others I never got my hands on. Some I have thoroughly plumbed, digitally scanning every image that might help and scanning or summarizing the text; others could not be checked out and required more time than I could devote on that library trip; still others were in storage and I never requested them, or in circulation and I never went back after they had been returned. My trips to UNC were irregular, and my research areas varied. When I was pregnant, I looked at books about birth customs. When I was preparing my Italian men’s clothing research, my sources were Italian or German. When I worked on English women’s costume, I looked at art from England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And I had plenty of tangents into other topics — learning about Margaret of Beaufort so that I could write poetry in her voice, or looking for 16th century Turkish art so that I could make the boys clothes to attend a Middle Eastern themed event. (I love UNC libraries.)

I sorted these library lists and made a single long list on my V&A library account of books that they have that I want to see because I think they’d be useful for my English women’s costume in 1500 research. Some I know I have seen before, but it has been so long, I should look at them again. I made a smaller list of books that the V&A didn’t have, but the British Library did.

I also started a Librarything account, on which I am only attempting to list the nonfiction costume and history related books that I own. (I’ll have to list lots more once our furniture arrives from the U.S. — it still isn’t here.) I already love the feature where they recommend other books based on what you own; I certainly could spend a lot of money on books, despite my deep and abiding love of libraries and their “free books.”

This week I spent two days at the British Library. I’ve been just a little nervous about applying for a reader card there — I mean, I’ve never before had to go through an interview to prove that I’m worthy to read books in a library! But it was easy, the staff was helpful, and I got what I most came for: the searchable database of the Pevsner’s Architectural guides. Which I could have ordered, but then I would have had to pay for it AND wait for it. The software is a bit of a pain to use — I messed up the first time and I had to ask them to hold the disk for me a few more days, but the second time I got everything I wanted. Now the data awaits me, sitting on my computer in a nice spreadsheet, just begging me to go trolling through it looking for interesting churches to visit and memorial artwork to scrutinize.

I also got one image I’ve been wanting for at least a year and a half. It is a full color version of this illuminated page from the Writhe Garter Book. The British Library has one of the facsimile versions that was published in the 1990s. I wondered why I had to go to the Rare Books room to see it…until they brought it to me. It had to have been more than two feet high. Huge. Beautiful. Vibrant color. With really intelligent discussions about how to date the artwork. It was almost too big to fit onto their super-duper digital imaging scanner thingy, but it did! For 36 pence, that image was mine (with a British Library watermark across it, but I can handle that).

I’ve been reading the bibliographies of the books I’ve requested almost more carefully than the articles inside. Today after enjoying The Illuminated Page: ten centuries of illuminated manuscripts in the British Library by Janet Backhouse (really lovely book, great color reproductions, nice overview of a large span of time with just enough text to inform with bogging you down), I looked through her recommended reading list and realized that I had read every book on her list that related to my time period, except for one that I hadn’t seen yet but already had on my list at the V&A.

I looked at The Depiction of Clothing in French Medieval Manuscripts by Patricia M. Gathercole but found little there that a SCAdian with a penchant for costume research couldn’t tell me. But the book did have a bibliography, so I started jotting down titles…only to glance over to my left and see one of the listed books sitting on the top of the stack I’d just picked up from the reservation desk.

Which means that, I have really got to organize my references. Now. I believe there will be hours of playing with Endnote in my near future, since that is the software we already have sitting on our computer.

Ah, the happiness of making progress, getting things done, figuring things out. My head is so full of names of kings and queens, painters and printers, images of art, dates and places. I looked through a book with the complete paintings of Holbein today, satisfied myself that I had seen every image in there, and kept going. I wonder how many images I’m storing in my head related to this research? Holbein isn’t someone whose work I’ve delved deeply, because he worked in England long enough after my target date that the costumes really had changed and what he depicts looks radically different from what I see on c.1500 funerary art.

I also realized this week how important it is for me to be present in England, learning the real and current geography of London, for me to comprehend what I read. I was skimming/reading an article about printers, scribes, writers, bookbinders and their ilk in England between 1475 and and 1500. I wanted to see whether there were any names that I should be searching on, any artists whose corpus I had not perused. But the discussion was more about the mechanics of who set up shop where and why. To slog my way through the academic paper, I had to create a mental map, relating the guildhalls of London to the Inns of Court (just outside the City walls, and thus their jurisdiction), and thinking about the travel time between Westminster (where William Caxton set up his press) and the City.

Which I know, because I’ve walked it. Wow.

This week has been wonderful. Last weekend I met a fabulous assortment of “big names” in the field of medieval and Renaissance textile and costume research (more on that later!) and during the week Tom took off work for family adventuring, making the most of the boys’ half term break. Monday we went to Hampton Court Palace, Tuesday we left Weyland at preschool so that we could experience the International War Museum, Wednesday we saw Brave in the movie theater (an unusual treat for us), Thursday we spent a quiet day at home, and today the older boys and I returned to Hampton Court Palace.

We had a fantastic time. Hampton Court Palace is mostly about Henry VIII (especially now, when the recreated crown just went on display last weekend) which is early Tudor enough that I have a natural affinity for the place, but a nagging fear that I’m dragging my kids along on my adventure. But Tallis asked to go back there again. He asked to go back. Those not living with him probably cannot understand the magnitude of that request; we did something historic and unique to England and he liked it enough to want to do it again. I think the only other repeats he’s requested since arriving involved food.

Monday we began by taking our first train trip. The half hour ride was made more engaging by an impromptu game in which we “collected points” for things we could spot out the windows: one for a train, two for a bridge, five for a bus, ten for a church. We debarked to a day both crisp and beautiful: the bright blue sky, the swan landing on the water as we crossed the bridge, the deep red  ivy on the wall, the ornate and varied brick chimneys on the palace, and dozens of other things delighted me.

The kids went first to the historic maze, and all enjoyed running up and down its paths. A little game of tag in the gardens went fine with a morning snack, but when grouchiness impeded our ramble we realized that we’d have to stop for lunch. We left the palace to eat at Pizza Express, a much higher end joint than the name would imply, which wins great approval from our children because its kid’s menu comes with not only a pizza and dough balls, but ice cream and a bambiccino — steamed whipped milk sprinkled with cocoa powder. The adult options are worthy of repeat visits, too.

After lunch, we joined in the costumed living history activities, and the kids joined forces with the English courtiers to “play spy”. I left them with Tom and checked out the chapel with Weyland, and smiled fondly at the portraits in the gallery. Weyland delighted me by identifying Elizabeth of York in the copy of the Whitehall portrait as “Mommy”.

All three boys decorated crowns, dressed in the loaner “gowns” the palace provided, and tried out the children’s audio tour, though we made little progress through it before the next living history scene we wanted to join. (One packing failure: my camera stayed home. My smartphone can’t take good photos in a dim castle.) While I made crowns Tom  checked out galleries about Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar and the young Henry VIII, but when we finished enjoying the theatrics in the Great Hall and had to leave — the palace was about to close! — it felt as if we had hardly begun to explore.

I still feel that way, as our return today deepened our experience more than it broadened it. The train ran smoothly, the weather was nearly perfect, the maze hadn’t rearranged itself at all (which Tallis proved by leading us through unerringly on his first try) and the living history experience was even more magnificent now that we knew what to expect.

Museums and historic sites all over London advertise special  half term activities, but those at Hampton Court are unlike any I’ve ever enjoyed. Seven costumed interpreters play out one day in August 1546, when the ailing Henry VIII welcomes French ambassadors to his court, hoping to sign a peace treaty. The degree to which the youthful audience is included in the script amazed me and delighted my children so much that almost all that we did today was to participate in this reenactment.

We joined an English gentleman and his lady wife, relatives of the deceased but still lauded third wife Jane Seymour, in the courtyard to greet the two noble Frenchmen, heralded in fine style by the costumed musician. The Spanish Ambassador was hanging around, cracking snide jokes but downplaying his presence. The entourage moved into the Great Hall, and then the Great Watching Chamber, where we met Henry VIII and his sixth wife Catherine Parr.

During a lull while the actors retreated for negotiations, the boys discovered the game Fox and Geese. We played it quite a while before meandering down the hallway toward the next reenactment, pausing only to enjoy the portraiture and pose Garrett in the Page’s Room.

When the French unexpectedly demanded the return of Boulogne (a place on the continent that Henry’s troupes captured at great cost) the peace seemed derailed and we were treated to one of Henry’s famous tempers.

After lunch the boys, having noticed that the spying parties split and followed three different actors to interrogate different suspects, wisely selected an alternate adventure to the one they enjoyed last time. On Monday they asked the French Ambassadors about the reason for the changed demands, but today they asked Princess Mary what she knew of the whole affair. When the spies convened in Henry’s council chamber to advise the king, Tallis boldy reported the findings of his contingent: Princess Mary knew that the Spanish ambassador opposed the peace accord, and yet told no one.

Soon after, the children again called on Mary and found her fretting. Her lineage, half English and half Spanish (her mother was Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon), made her suspect, since it was logical that her kinsman the Spanish emperor might wish to disrupt peace between France and England. The English courtier summoned from their number advisers for the king. Henry truly asked them about how to repair relations with his daughter, listened to their suggestions, and spoke with feeling about the complexities of being a king. My children, now comfortable with the actors and with scenario, were of course sitting in front and quite vocal.

After an awkward attempt at reconciliation between Henry and Mary, we proceeded to the Great Hall where the children rehearsed a masque. Garrett and Tallis participated in this on Monday, too — they had been in the chorus and had danced the simple celebratory Pavane. Today they knew to volunteer more enthusiastically, and Garrett got picked for one of the main rolls: Saint Denis. The story was simple, told in rhymed verse by one of the Frenchmen: Saint George (England) and Saint Denis (France) were friends but when a terrible worm (dragon) showed up it cause such a stink by farting that each country blamed the other and seemed near to war. Saint George and Saint Denis rode out looking for the worm, but it hid until Saint Denis challenged it to a farting contest. The contest went fine until Saint Denis soiled himself (as you know, when you work hard at farting, you “risk the follow through”). Saint George rode to his friend’s aid, put his sword “where the sun don’t shine” and the worm, full of gas but unpleasantly plugged, exploded. This play was a PERFECT level of potty humor for most of the children in attendance. Tallis again joined the chorus and dancing. Henry entered wearing his fantastic jeweled crown, a peace was worked out — the French agreed to pay a great sum for Boulogne — and the play was performed.

This whole story took the entire day — we arrived just after the palace opened and left as they were closing. Today I brought my camera, but due to the complexities of our still not having all our furniture, the computer that has the photos does not have internet. I will have to share pictures later.

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.

I haven’t written recently because the strongest feeling now is “waiting to start.” Even when we get out and explore, it feels like a holding pattern, not an adventure. We’ve paid money toward our flat, but don’t have a contract yet. Without that, I can’t start applying for the boy’s schools. We haven’t figured out how we’ll furnish our flat for the month before the rest of our belongings arrive, and move-related paperwork still demands our attention.

We feel unsettled, which is wreaking havoc on everyone’s mental and emotional states. Weyland suffers least — he has preschool-targeted TV, has his family to snuggle him or play with him, gets carried out and about in his familiar (rather worn) Ergo carrier, and gets fed. We ride trains and buses to visit parks and museums, all of which delight him. He pushes buttons in the lift and plays preschool games on my Android phone. With his mommy nearby, he’s his usual happy self.

Garrett is clearly stressed but trying to stay aware and helpful. He heard our conversations about the difficulties transferring money from our US banks, how expensive things are, and how annoying/expensive it was to get cash (we now have UK debit cards and everything is easier) and began to freak out when Tom and I discussed ANYTHING financial. I finally got through to him that we are fine, we just have to think about money a lot more than we used to. Leave it to the adults, we’ll be OK.

Maybe Garrett is slightly happier now that I have an established pattern for getting our groceries at a discount — I’m sure that feels familiar to him! About every other evening we all go down to the Mark & Spencer Simply Food and pick up an assortment of items that are marked down because they must be sold that day, and it’s close to closing time. We sometimes get fruit, milk, bread, and prepared food items like meat pies and pre-breaded chicken (never would buy them normally, but they’re working for us now), but always an assortment of pastries, donuts, and cookies. The kids LOVE that part.

Garrett is a bit worried about going to school, but he’s sick of my pestering with spelling lists. He’s engrossed in Harry Potter — just finished the fifth book today. He wants to read it everywhere, even carries it on the tube when I let him. Garrett bickers with and picks on Tallis a bit more these days — it would be hard not to, we spend all our time within steps of each other, and almost never see any other kids to play with — but otherwise, he’s holding in there.

Tallis is not. This move was horrible for him, and this extended wait for our permanent housing excruciating. He hated the London  adventure as soon as he realized that friends and home would be left behind. He worried while we were in the US, but since we’ve arrived, he’s been almost impossible to be with, much less please. He’s moody, angry, picks fights with us constantly, has no sense of humor, cannot be patient (and yet is constantly asked to be as we establish ourselves here and learn how to navigate London), and refuses to take delight in any adventure we can conjure. Our situation got so difficult that we sought professional help designing behavior management techniques for him, and we are seeing improvements, but oh, this has been a hard road to travel.

Tallis’s moods overshadow every outing, every meal, every day. Some mornings I have offered him breakfast and had my greeting returned by a surly bear certain that there is not a SINGLE pleasing thing to eat in the entire flat. No fantastic museum, no interesting bit of architecture, no historic “oh wow” moment, no novel experience, no familiar entertainment, no beautiful view will get past his stubborn resolve to NOT HAVE FUN. He wants to go to school, make friends, and start playing football. Which I cannot provide, no matter how I want to.

Tallis concocts his own misery, but he is a master at the art. For example, he refuses to try English foods. Garrett and Tallis took quickly to fish and chips, roast, meat pies — unfamiliar things that we find everywhere here. Tallis persists in ordering the most American foods he can find on the menu (burgers, pizza, waffles) and they are consistently sad imitations of the food he desires.

Tallis’s moods swing so widely, so rapidly, that I cannot keep up with him, much less anticipate his needs. One day last week he entered a museum with us fairly fuming, spewing a hatred of all that he saw and demanding to be taking home immediately. He would not engage the exhibits, would not remark on the ornate architecture, would not select some other exhibit he would prefer to explore. I dragged and coaxed and ignored, and we sped through many a hall in which I would rather have lingered. Then we stopped at one of those hands-on carts with two silver-haired ladies behind it. He and his brother fully engaged the activity, tested themselves, probed for answers, learned things. Before we made it to the cafeteria for lunch, he expressed such delight and joy in this museum that he wanted to donate all his pocket change to it.

One ray of sunshine with Tallis: he loves having STUFF. His desire to accumulate toys cannot be satisfied (at least, not as long as he has parents like us who are so opposed to the prevailing consumer culture) and is a frequent source of conflict. Just before we flew, he discovered his friend Eleanor’s bottle cap collection. Bottle caps are free, can be found all over the ground, are shiny with diverse colors and designs, and make a fantastic sound when rattled around in a pocket or a bag. So he now has a new hobby: collecting bottle caps. He has also experimented with other entertaining refuse, but bottle caps are the most reliable source of delight. Childhood memories of enduring my brother’s and father’s soccer games and road races by playing with nearby trash (the stuff you can score under the bleachers at a high school is AWESOME) make me rather sympathetic to his new hobby.

That’s our life these days: stress, paperwork, delays, boredom, and a steady stream of learning, exploring, discovering, understanding, experiencing, deciding. Most of my effort is focused on living: dressing children, potty training a toddler, moderating screen time, concocting meals, picking up and cleaning up, soothing raw nerves. I rely on Facebook for connections to people and things I care about, and on hope that we will soon move into a flat and find a routine in which we all can blossom. It’s an adventure all right.

This past week has been an exercise in rapidly changing direction and otherwise not knowing what I want to do. Tom has been at work each day and is getting settled into a routine, but the kids and I have nothing of the sort.

Monday I thought I’d take the kids to the park, but inertia and ill tempers kept us from leaving until after Weyland had his afternoon nap, so all we managed was half an hour on the playground at Regent’s Park before our evening appointment. Tallis, true to his normal style, quickly managed to organize a game of tag with other similar-age kids at the park, and Garrett joined in. Weyland explored the equipment and wanted to play in the sand, but when I pointed out that sandbox time would mean an obligatory bath, he skipped it.

Tuesday Tallis had a playdate with his new friend from camp, Sam. They live in the complex near the fitness center, so this meant some tennis and swimming time, as well as drooling over Sam’s Warhammer figurine collection. Before heading out Tallis repeatedly emphasized that he wanted this playdate to be for just him, not Garrett — and he got his wish. Time away from his brothers! Garrett, Weyland and I instead checked out a small playground and a street market.

After nap I twisted Garrett’s arm enough that he consented to go back to the Museum of London to look at the Medieval collection. Weyland wanted to push buttons, and there weren’t many for him, so he was distracted and irritable. I got to read a few things, point out some items to Garrett. I enjoyed a few small shocks whenever I’d see, sitting right in front of me in the case, some medieval or early modern item that I knew perfectly from its photos in books.

There were some mannequins you could dress in a replica leather jerkin (pretty good replica, I think, especially since the real thing was in the case immediately adjacent) and a Henry VIII era gable hood. I refuse to say that it is “early Tudor” when it is a style popular approximately 50 years after the beginning of the Tudor era, even if it was labeled as such. Garrett asked me whether I’d complain to the museum about how inaccurate the headgear was. No, I didn’t say anything negative, he looked at it and decided by himself that it must not be up to my standards.

I loved looking at the details and layers on the transitional gown painted on the dismantled altarpiece c. 1500. I’m always happy to see a source I’ve not seen before, even if the artist was (sigh) German, not English. And the memorial brasses on display…even if they were from 1525…I got to see a real memorial brass. So despite the unwilling company, I enjoyed my tiny taste of seeing real medieval artifacts in museums. Already thinking of questions I’d like to ask the curators.

Wednesday was the first day of school for most districts around here, and even though we’d paid a great deal of money to secure our favorite flat at 50A Greencroft Gardens, it still isn’t our address yet and I can’t register the kids for school. To Tallis’s great frustration, he would miss the first day of school. All the rushing we did to get here, hoping to be here and ready for this day, and we just couldn’t make it fall together.  Sigh.

Instead, we rushed out of the flat at the last minute to meet Tom and open a bank account. Which is still useless to us, as we have no money in it, and I have yet to get the wire transfer from our US accounts to work. Grrrr…

Since the bank is adjacent to Tom’s workplace, we toured the Google offices and ate snacks in their Coffee Lab. Tom couldn’t make me any interesting coffee since he hasn’t taken the class on how to use the equipment. Seriously. Google engineers get such cool snack areas, they require classes to learn to use them. It was interesting seeing a larger Google office, not the tiny one in Chapel Hill, but Tom had work to do, and we came home.

We tried three different stores looking for pickles, because dinner that evening was hamburgers, and Tallis believes that pickles are a required condiment. Even learning that I should be asking for gherkins didn’t help — the stores nearby didn’t have what we wanted. Alas. He ate the burger anyway, after I set off the super-sensitive fire alarm simply by cooking real food in our flat.

Thursday morning we decided to see how painful it would be to furnish our flat from Ikea. This meant a long tube ride, the last four stops or so above ground, out to Wembley. I enjoyed the overground portion, looking at the perfectly normal — but still novel to me — London architecture. Why DO they have all those chimney pipes, anyway? Garrett asked, and I can’t answer with any but a guess.

We passed the tube ride playing 20 questions. Sometimes I feel like the only person on the entire train who is speaking to someone else. I wonder if I irritate or amuse nearby passengers? Well, I guess we did meet one chatty lady this week who asked friendly questions of Tallis, who instantly turned shy. And people are often nice and offer me a seat, although with Weyland on my back, standing is really easy enough.

It is a bit of a walk from the tube stop to Ikea, although the path is well marked and there is a pedestrian bridge over the train tracks and over the highway. Garrett commented that this area looked “more like home.” We were out of the skyscraper district. There was a large (in my opinion, normal sized) grocery store. There were highways, and overpasses with bags of trash underneath. The cars we saw were normal cars and trucks, not bright red double decker buses and distinctively shaped cabs. (I am amused that Weyland refuses to call a cab a car — they are different to him. No matter what interesting color or advertising might adorn the cab, it is still a cab to him.) There were old warehouses that have been converted to offices (so very Durham!). Only the houses, small and crammed in tight little rows, look distinctly English to me.

Garrett has been to Ikea in Charlotte, but Tallis and Weyland have never been. We started our trip by playing on the outdoor playground, and then eating lunch at 11:00. No crowds in the cafeteria, and everyone got food they liked — a good way to head off meltdowns! I also stashed a chocolate bar in my bag for future emotional emergencies.

After lunch, we wandered the storeroom floor. The boys helped me test out futons and chairs, and thought about what sort of lamps and decorations they liked. I really wanted their input, but even engaged like this, I was asking them to GO SHOPPING. You know it can’t last too long without incident. Around about bedrooms, after maybe 45 minutes, Tallis had “had it.” But you can’t just exit Ikea, we had to keep walking, even if we sped up. I asked him to take all his frustrations and upset feelings and dump them onto my hands. Then I pretended I was holding a piece of paper, which I wadded into a large ball. I handed it to him and told him to throw it as far away as he could. It took two tries of this trick, but with it, we made it through the rest of the floor’s displays.

Both Garrett and Tallis are the right age for the Smalland at this store, so they enjoyed an hour of playing in the ball pit and watching a movie while I sped through both floors, taking photos of items I thought we’d need. Weyland, too young to play, grabbed a way-too-short nap on my back. But I accomplished enough, when their hour was up, I was ready to leave.

Ice cream on the playground made a perfect ending to our Ikea trip. I bought nothing at Ikea — nothing! — except food. Tallis thought is was great, and he wants to go back. Which is good, because I came home with quite a list of what we’ll need to buy — AFTER we get access to the flat.

Today I finally did what I had planned to do every day this week, and took the kids to Coram’s Fields, a private playground that Sam’s mom recommended. The greatest barrier to getting there was that I had to figure out the bus system. I’d tried to use the official bus trip planner, but it kept giving me different results from Google map’s “public transit” option. I wasn’t sure which to trust…but would it surprise you to learn that Google was right?

We caught a lovely double decker bus (what fun to ride!) in front of St. Paul’s and rode to within two blocks of our destination. Our short walk included a stroll in front of Goodenough College. Really? That exists? I am so amused.

The playgrounds were a good choice for the morning. Weyland loved the sand (although he kept insisting that he needed ME to do the shoveling, he couldn’t do it himself), Tallis organized a game of tag, they all climbed the assorted playground equipment. We ate an early picnic lunch and headed home at noon. Since the cleaning lady was here this afternoon, if I just do a tiny bit of pick-up, the flat should be in perfect shape for the weekend. I’m not used to having so few chores and obligations. The kids aren’t the only ones who don’t know what to do with themselves!