August for the people
Aug. 8th, 2011 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millionreasonsSaturday, to Charleston (which, as it turns out, is not ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
charleston's country house, but the old mating stomping ground of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant). Dave cycles from Hawywards Heath and I spend an hour in Lewes. Last time I was here, it was for the bonfires of Guy Fawkes' Night with parading fiery crosses, religious persecution, kids throwing bangers: pagan anarchisty Wicker Man style bacchanalia. Today it's a middle class county town. Polite pubs, farmers market, book shops. You can do a Tom Paine tour after the tea shoppes.
We carry on to Glynde, me bitching about cycling up the hills (a sad strop in a sheep shit covered field in Firle) until the house which is by guided tour only; we're taken around by a floaty scarved Vanessa Redgravey lady who finds that Charleston is very "freeing". Fortunately, she doesn't try to sell us an of the watercolours that I reckon she does on Sundays. A woman in the cafe is outraged that Vanessa failed to tell her daughter, Angelica, that she was Duncan Grant's, and not Clive Bell's, child until she was 18. "That poor girl...." I know much of the Bloomsbury Group's lasting attraction is their funny personal lives rather than their art (come on, who has read Eminent Victorians? Be honest now), but this seems to be taking it a little far. No-one mentions that Duncan Grant's boyfriend lived with them at Charleston or that Angelica later married him or that the Bloomsbury Group, when it was the Cambridge Group, was basically a group of gay male intellectuals. Would ruin the chintz and heritage ambience.
The garden is nice though.
We cycle back along gravel lanes and more hills and more crying tantrums from me. I am not an all terrains, all weather cyclist. I hate muddy lanes and hills and cowpats. Back on the Kingland road, despite the buses cutting me up and cars trying to kill me, I feel at one with my bicycle once more. In Sussex, I was sorely tempted to throw it into a hedge and walk the seven miles back to Lewes.
Sunday, Dave's birthday in The Snooty Fox. Dan buys him a penguin's head which is duly modelled by everyone. 8 hours passes rather quickly in which I manage a pathetic two pints. Outside, there's rain and riots, but we're sealed in a hermetic Canonbury shell where the only problems are lack of vegetarian food on the menu (veggie lasagne? Really? Is it 1988?).
charleston's country house, but the old We carry on to Glynde, me bitching about cycling up the hills (a sad strop in a sheep shit covered field in Firle) until the house which is by guided tour only; we're taken around by a floaty scarved Vanessa Redgravey lady who finds that Charleston is very "freeing". Fortunately, she doesn't try to sell us an of the watercolours that I reckon she does on Sundays. A woman in the cafe is outraged that Vanessa failed to tell her daughter, Angelica, that she was Duncan Grant's, and not Clive Bell's, child until she was 18. "That poor girl...." I know much of the Bloomsbury Group's lasting attraction is their funny personal lives rather than their art (come on, who has read Eminent Victorians? Be honest now), but this seems to be taking it a little far. No-one mentions that Duncan Grant's boyfriend lived with them at Charleston or that Angelica later married him or that the Bloomsbury Group, when it was the Cambridge Group, was basically a group of gay male intellectuals. Would ruin the chintz and heritage ambience.
The garden is nice though.
We cycle back along gravel lanes and more hills and more crying tantrums from me. I am not an all terrains, all weather cyclist. I hate muddy lanes and hills and cowpats. Back on the Kingland road, despite the buses cutting me up and cars trying to kill me, I feel at one with my bicycle once more. In Sussex, I was sorely tempted to throw it into a hedge and walk the seven miles back to Lewes.
Sunday, Dave's birthday in The Snooty Fox. Dan buys him a penguin's head which is duly modelled by everyone. 8 hours passes rather quickly in which I manage a pathetic two pints. Outside, there's rain and riots, but we're sealed in a hermetic Canonbury shell where the only problems are lack of vegetarian food on the menu (veggie lasagne? Really? Is it 1988?).
