Salisbury fair...

[Colyngbourne]

Okay, anyone here know anything about Salisbury? Any info is useful. I've been there myself eleven years ago but I'm working on distant memories.

[amner]

One of my favourite places, Salisbury. Nearly moved there at one time. What sort of info are you thinking about?

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[Colyngbourne]

I want to know -
i) is the church sign in Harcourt Terrace indicative of the Quaker Meeting House in the road or is it another church? I've trawled for info on churches in Salisbury and they didn't even mention St. Mark's on London Road, so there's a lack of info generally.

ii) The section of the cathedral where the shop is, between the south aisle and the cloisters: what was this bit originally? It doesn't say in the website or the guide book.

iii) Would a car entering the Cath. Close at the High Street end naturally leave by the Harnham Gate or is this not a real thoroughfare?

iv) Does the old Rechabites Hall in Crane Street still exist and is it now the Masonic Lodge?

Basically I have to visit the damn (but wonderful) place and see for myself but it's virtually impossible.

Also I never clocked until yesterday how many of the Salisbury schools are grammar schools or separate sex. There hardly seems to be a normal secondary school among them.

[amner]

Goodness me, they're very specific questions!

The only one I know with any level of certainty is iii), namely that a car would enter the cathedral close (actually Choristers Square) from the High Street and exit the same way. At least, it was possible when I was there last. Choristers Square is actually a smaller-than-the-close square attached to the north end of the Close.

Here (http://www.vrsalisbury.co.uk/iview_quicktime/source/25_high_street_gate.html)'s the entrance done inna panoramic stylee. And here's the whole of Choristers Sq (http://www.vrsalisbury.co.uk/iview_quicktime/source/23_choristers_garden.html).

There is an explanation about the proliferation of same sex schools, which is touched on in the appalling Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd, but I can't remember it!

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[Colyngbourne]

That VR site is fun - I just found it myself a minute ago too!

I never got further than the first half of 'the appalling Sarum' - it was such an intriguing idea appalling executed, playing with the same archetypes in each generation. I gave up once the cathedral was built, and presumably didn't get to the section about schools.

[amner]

I struggled through it and then, because I owned it, my missus bought me London, assuming I must've been a fan. It's exactly the same.

Still, made me go out and buy the Ackroyd London, determined to read something meatier and better written, and that's a huge treat.

But I digress. I have a friend who is doing some research into Lincoln Cathedral and he had some questions - some of which he thought were absurd or even simplistic - but wrote to the Dean anyway, and got loads of useful info back; maybe the head honchos at Salisbury are similarly happy to impart info? Especially with question ii)?

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[Colyngbourne]

Yes, the cathedral website is pretty comprehensive in other respects so I'll contact them with some of it, I think.

[idioteque]

have sent your list to a friend of mine whose an artist from / in Salisbury so will report back if she can help (or she might join in herself; I've sent her the site address)

[Colyngbourne]

That's very kind of you. Any info on any of it would be useful :D

Colyngbourne (logging in from New Jersey 8) )

[amner]

Yes, the cathedral website is pretty comprehensive in other respects so I'll contact them with some of it, I think.

Did you ever hear anything back from them?
[he says just surfing palimp idly!]

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, they were tremendously helpful and provided me with an essay about certain architectural features in the cathedral.

[bakunin_the_cat]

In one of my previous incarnations I had to write quiz questions on various British towns and cities. In this endeavour, I found the following website, which is written by local people for local people, pretty good. It's full of useful and not so useful stuff that would never be allowed on the official tourist sites, and might be just the kind of info you need to give it a more local flavour.

http://www.knowhere.co.uk/313_stuff.html

[Colyngbourne]

:D Ta, B-the-C - good site. I spent a while rummaging around all my old and current towns. *Goes back to see what they say about Kingo*

[amner]

Bits of the town are really cool, old industrial port buildings, but the ghastly 60's buildings and... and... Ohhh, it's just so bloody dull! Absolutely no soul whastsoever. Really. I advise avoiding Lynn altogether, especially that f***er of a roundabout entering the city, where you have to change lane about 20 times. I'm afraid Norwich really is the capital of Norfolk, and is about a hundred times more interesting than this travesty of a city.

crikey

[bakunin_the_cat]

It must have been a mental block resulting from psychological trauma or something, but i never checked out my old home town of Stratford. Memory lane? It's more of a motorway.

[wshaw]

I think my Chester representation will be largely (possibly grossly :D ) fictional, compared to the Salisbury details.

Is yours historical fiction then?

[Colyngbourne]

deleted

[John Self]

Set, perhaps, in a world where CONFUSED PENSIONER SLAMS BBC would refer only to Mary Whitehouse?

[Colyngbourne]

Take it you're not happy with the Hutton summation :wink:

[John Self]

This (http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,13822,1133932,00.html) seemed a better summation to me.

[bakunin_the_cat]

Hear, hear!

It's so reassuring to know that we live in a free and fair democracy with freedom of speech and an independent judiciary. In certain other, shall we say, less developed countries, judges can be bribed or bullied into producing a particular verdict, but here in the seat of democracy these men are white as the driven snow.

[Wavid]

It was a pretty poor show, wasn't it? A classic case of the British establishment looking after itself. What really galls is the cynicism of this government - they truly believe that as long as they get away with things, then they are 'right'.

The undoing (well, alright, one of the thousands of undoings...) of the Major government was the pursuit of power without any idea about what to do with it. This government more than any other seem to be about the pursuit and retention of power and nothing else. The crowing after Hutton was shameful - and missed the point (and the mood of the (interested) public) entirely.

[John Self]

A few years ago in conversation with Blunkett's Principal Private Secretary (his Bernard Woolley to you and me), I asked him what the word in Parliament was on Blair's plans for his second term. "Getting a third term," was his response.

[Wavid]

I think this is the serious problem with Blair - he is stuck with a party which he must hate, and which rightly mistrusts him. I think that were it not for the lack of a credible alternative, they would be in serious trouble.

Mind you, I note that Michael Howard has started to sport a rather snazzy blue shirt / gold tie combo, one which I am particularly fond of myself. I'm not sure what this means - but mean something it must.

[John Self]

Haven't seen that combo myself, but one of my sartorial rules - man, I could write a book - is never wear a tie that is a lighter colour or shade than your shirt. Trust me.

[Wavid]

Oh, really? <Thinks for a bit> Oh shit. I think that covers all of mine.

Where did you get this nugget? One of my mates at Uni treasured a book from the '40s about male dressing, especially the point where it was stated that "Gloves are nice, but they can be too nice."

Ah. Of course.

[John Self]

It's a rule of my own devising. Just think - yellow tie on navy shirt - mobile phone salesman. White tie on black shirt (have you seen Next lately?) - Lebanese pimp. Probably there is an element of the fact that I hate dark coloured shirts generally because they don't suit my pallor. I loved the Ozwald Boateng range in Debenhams but lots of them were shimmery purplish brown etc. which looks great if you're a cool black dude like him but not if you're a wan Celtic drip.

[bakunin_the_cat]

While we're on the whole tie debate, why is it that men wear ties and women don't? Is it a symbolic substitute for the other long dangly thing they're no longer allowed to display?

[John Self]

Google for "why do mean wear ties" (with the quote marks intact) and you will get a plethora of reasons, from it being a throwback to men in battle needing a free piece of cloth to wipe their sword on (hence stripes ... apparently) to it being a pointer to the groin, just as David Brent told us that a woman's necklace points to her breasts.

A more mundane, and probably accurate, answer is this:

Absolutely no good reason is, first of all, a perfectly good answer, but there is, of course, some history to the necktie. It seems that members of a regiment of Croatian militia serving in France wore them as part of their military uniforms in the mid-seventeenth century. Whether they served a practical purpose (dampened for heat relief) or were an adornment is not certain. The French called them 'cravats,' which was their word for Croats, and that term stuck as did the fad. Because of the fashion-conscious British monarch Charles II, and the flair of Beau Brummel, the trend swept Britain. Ultimately, more than three dozen options of knots were developed, and variations that ranged from the ascot to the bow tie were introduced. (Thanks to Charles Panati and his fun book Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things.)

[bakunin_the_cat]

Makes sense. From then it could have become a symbol of nobility, a sign that you didn't have to work. Artisans and manual workers would only find the damn thing getting in the way as soon as they tried to do anything practical. Gradually the middle merchant classes develop, copying the aristocrats as they vie for status and power. Their money is made with their mouths rather than their hands so the tie is no longer the hindrance it was for their working class forbears.

Two-hundred years later and it's part of the standard male white-collar worker uniform, a uniform that still sets them up apart from people who actually make anything, A sliver of status.

Luckily for some of us, the tie's days may be numbered. Dress-down Fridays become casual weekdays. Hip young companies started by hip young people are no longer straightjecketed by orthodox convention. Finally after so many years, necks have been liberated once more. Whoopee!