When I woke up, the malaise had left Keith and he was checking my latest blog writings and selecting photos to go with them. I often nominate photos if I have looked at them but just as often I write from memory and he is left to match my thoughts with a selection from sometimes over a hundred photos. Actually, sometimes from many, many more. He worked on while Rachel, Adrian and I took a stroll into the town. Rachel had been trying to find a hairdressing appointment for me without much success so we decided to give up and spend our time in the town. The plan was for her to cut my hair later, pooling our very small knowledge of hair cutting techniques and agreeing not to be stressed if we made a mess of it.
It was a perfect summer’s morning to be out and about, and we met and greeted a neighbour, soon to travel to Australia, on our way down to the bridge over the river and then down to the canal. We examined the locks and I had a go at opening one gate, so well balanced that it hardly required any strength to make it swing back. A lane took us past the theatre where some down at heel, gap toothed people were asking actors to sign books. I had thought that they were taking down names of people who wanted to extras in a film, and if the shooting had been that afternoon I was going to sign up. Instead, these most unlikely of groupies had a whole series of books for current television programs, and had made it their life’s work to track down the actors when they appeared on stage anywhere in the country, and beg entries for their books. They claimed not to be going to publish the books so it seemed to be a very strange and private passion, harmless in itself and one that would provide a structure to life and a simple pleasure.
The name of Guildford was Gyldaford in Saxon times and it is thought to have come from the golden orange sand which still lies near the ancient ford. It is a busy market town with a castle to one side and car-free central streets on the weekends. A sculpture of the ‘Surrey Scholar’ racing to lessons, was placed in the town in 2002 to celebrate scholarship and culture, and represents a bygone age, with the student wearing a mortar board and long gown. It is charming, if not terribly representative of the current student body.
Guildford castle’s dignified grey stones contrast magnificently with the extravagance of the colours that the gardeners have created, with sweeps of flowers, with their vividness a reminder of the standards that would have flown here in the days when this was an enormous, luxurious royal residence for Henry 111 and his Queen, Eleanor of Provence. They particularly liked to come here at Christmas time, with Eleanor introducing colonnaded gardens and tiled pavements to Guilford. I am actually writing this section in Avignon, in Provence, weeks behind with the task, and I can imagine Eleanor missing her homeland under the grey English skies and longing for the vivid blues and sunshine colours, and a bowl full of delicious multi-coloured olives. When Henry died in 1272, the castle gradually fell into disrepair. In 1888 the grounds were opened as a public garden, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee of the year before. The gardens were thronging with people enjoying the flowers, the grass and each other’s company and the atmosphere was lively. In fact, the whole of the late Saturday morning crowd in Guildford seemed to be relishing the sunny day and treating it like a holiday.
We stepped through a portal from one of the main streets into the courtyard of the Abbot’s Hospital, which still operates in the old sense of a hospital being an alms house, where the elderly are housed and looked after by a charitable organisation. I read that to become a resident you needed to be born in the borough, have lived here for twenty years or have been resident for the two years prior to the application, be of modest means and not own your own property, and be over 65. The courtyard setting is lovely and the position very central so it shows a wonderful commitment to age old aims that the buildings have not been allowed to fall into the hands of developers who surely would have transformed into trendy flats far beyond the means of the elderly poor.
By this stage Rachel and Adrian were ready to relax with a cup of coffee, so we tried for a seat inside a very old building which is now a hotel and café. It was cool, dark and cave-like after the bright light of the summer’s morning on the street, with little nooks and crannies set up with low tables and comfortable chairs. The books in the many shelves were not real, but gave the place the atmosphere of a favourite great uncle’s library, and this would certainly be the right place for the meetings of the literary appreciation group that Rachel is toying with initiating. I overcame my disappointment at the fabulous old books only being an interior decorator’s ploy, when a bride, swathed in white, and her many attendants in pale green, descended the staircase from the floor above. They trooped out of the door and down the crowded street towards the church. Rachel told me that, on one occasion in her early days here, she had come into town for an errand and had been surprised to see lots of people arrive and line the roadway, and even more surprised that they were carrying and waving flags. Eventually all was explained as the Queen herself passed very close by, on one of her trips to visit her loyal subjects. It is certainly a city that lends itself to parades, whether it be of queens or brides.
There was no room in the inn for us so we tried a café in a small walkway, enjoying a pause and a drink along with many others. The florist shop in the corner of the tiny square was selling the brightest of flowers and created an island of colour. It was matched by the beautifully presented fruits and vegetables and more flowers in the market which filled the next street. There is something so different about shopping in a market compared to the utilitarian context and usual impersonal rush of a supermarket. It is a visual feast to peruse the stalls and a pleasure to compare and consider all the variables of price and culinary possibilities. It is also a place to exchange ideas and pleasantries and to learn about a region and its specialities. By the time we had made a few purchases, buying eggs at the regular stall despite seeing them elsewhere, the morning had flown and we rushed home to have a quick bite to eat and to collect Keith. Actually, the pace was interrupted by passing a sculpture of Alice and her sister on the first occasion when Alice sees the White Rabbit, from the book ‘Alice in Wonderland’, by Lewis Carroll, reminding us that it was here in Guildford that George Dodgson died at his sister's home and he is buried at the local cemetery.
After a delicious lunch of fresh market bread with cheeses that Rachel and Adrian brought back form Denmark on their recent visit, we set off on the afternoon’s excursion. It was a bit like being in Alice in Wonderland but in reverse, with us climbing up out of the rabbit hole of the blocks of flats on narrow stairs and finding ourselves at the top, out in the country. We had a good view of the Guildford Cathedral, a very modern building in the context of English cathedrals, having been started in the 1930s but not completed until the 1950s.
We crossed an old cemetery on our way to the rolling hills and public paths that would lead us to the Watts Gallery at Compton.
The gallery opened in 1904 and was built specially to display the works of George Frederic Watts who was a painter and sculptor. He was a prodigious artist with an enormous output, many being private commissions, some, like his work on the Tennyson memorial, being public works, and others being allocated by him for the national heritage.
The collection in the Watts gallery is accompanied by notes and more information on sheets which provide not only an understanding of Watts as an evolving artist and his interests, but also a social commentary of the times. Born in London in 1817, he started his career well by winning a ₤300 prize in the Parliament House decoration competition and used it to set off for Florence, where he studied and worked for four years. He had the assistance of English diplomats there and was a great ‘favourite’ of Lady Holland. He returned to England and, although ill and depressed, produced huge pictures and portraits which show the influence of the Venetians on his work. I may be out of line here, but there seem to have been a lot of euphemisms used in England in Victorian and early Edwardian times, so I wonder if ‘favourite’ could imply more than just the relationship between an artist and a patron. Whatever happened for him to return so down in the dumps, he certainly picked up on the social ills of that time in his paintings, with some very powerful ones depicting the Irish famine, a woman dragged dead from a river, and a very poor woman sheltering from the rain under the arch of a bridge.
In 1851 Watts visited his friends, Mr and Mrs Thoby Prinsep, and must have worn out his welcome a little because Mrs Prinsep is quoted as saying, ‘He came for three days and stayed for 30 years.’ She was instrumental in encouraging his marriage to the 15 year old Ellen Terry when he was 47 – and it sounds to me like the desperate act of one who wanted to reclaim the guest room. The marriage was not consummated and lasted only a year.
At 69, he married a much younger and very talented artist called Mary Fraser Tytler, who adored him and supported his creativity in every way. She gave up her career as a painter but she had also trained in ceramics and she set about cultivating a wonderful project for the whole community. Watts was stuck in Compton for a long time working on his sculpture of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and although removed from the cultural centre of London, he and Mary established a new centre in Compton which welcomed artists and resulted in the Gallery to display Watts’s work. Mary saw the many social ills in the community relating to unemployment, excessive drinking and the decline of many artisan skills due to industrialisation. This was a common aim of the times, with the ‘Home Arts and Industries Association’ having been set up in the 1880s to achieve social improvement through creative enlightenment. She decided to teach the people of the village skills in ceramics which would be used in building a chapel in the Compton Cemetery. She established the Compton Pottery Works and personally trained the populace in all the practical skills but also in sculptural and decorative works which would be used on the chapel. She must have been an amazing dynamo of a personality and also a brilliant designer and artist because the chapel is first and foremost a work of art. Watts was working away on his enormous (and by now less gloomy) works, and Mary created not only wonderful art works but also a local society which prided itself in its new and much valued skills. Even children were involved in painting colours on some of the flowers in the chapel. We were immensely impressed by both their works and, of course, by the chance to understand a little of their lives.
Our next adventure involved a little trespassing, since the stately home at Loseley Park, which we had intended to walk past and view, was hidden behind a closed gate and a notice showing that we were there much later than the proclaimed visiting hours. People were around, apparently setting up for a function of some kind, so Rachel took this as the cue to join them, climbing the gate at the spot directly in front of the surveillance camera mounted in a tree. We all followed, although I was worried that a crime such as this could lead to us being sent to the colonies. Empty fields stretched in front of the enormous house façade, and walls hid the gardens from view.
We declined Rachel’s suggestion of heading off across the meadows to take a cross-country approach to returning home, particularly since Adrian was telling us of some misadventures under her leadership in the past, and stuck to the road. We came upon an ancient church, now part of a private home, nestled into a tangle of neglected garden, near Littleton.
Eventually we reached our destination, St Catherine’s Hill, where St Catherine’s Chapel once provided an alternative for those who lived too far out to attend the Church of St Nicholas in Guildford. Permission to hold a fair here was granted by King Edward II in 1308, and apparently there was a close connection between piety and profit in Medieval times. A young man seemed to me to be preparing to celebrate some kind of cult, and to others to be preparing to feed his drug habit, but was in fact exercising and preparing to practise an act with burning torches.
A drink in a cosy little pub, old of course and with the low, heavy-beamed ceilings that we still notice, but which are taken for granted here, and a short walk and we were home. Rachel and Adrian have walked a section of the Chemin de Compostelle which crosses the border into Spain and they were very enthusiastic about it. We are in a quandary about when and where we will be able to walk, since our original thought to fit it in before Tanzania didn’t allow for any break or travelling between Spain and the walk. Now we were canvassing the idea of walking after Tanzania, at a time when the weather would not be good enough for us to leave from Le Puy. It was quite late when we sat down for my haircut and we had a lot of laughs as it proceeded. The result was surprisingly good, and so if the job at the University loses its appeal, perhaps Rachel could start a new career.
It was a great pity to be packing our bags again ready for a flying morning start to Luton Airport, because it was so lovely to be with Rachel and Adrian in this beautiful part of England. On the other hand, we would be flying to Barcelona to meet our sons, Rohan and Joel, so we were looking forward to that. Travelling is full of moments of mixed emotions.
We then enjoyed a very short stroll to the Café Napoleon for a settling drink and some spicy potatoes to try something Spanish. Time was ticking on and we were worried that, if we had problems finding the apartment during the day, it might be impossible for Joel at night. Keith went back to the apartment to wait in case he found his way there and Rohan and I walked about on the station and decided that if Joel came on the train, we would be able to see him exit from a vantage point in front of the Arc de Triomf. It was a balmy evening, with many people out and about and a genial group of backpackers waiting for some of their comrades to arrive. Maybe it was the influence of the Arc de Triomf but it had the feel of our first night in 
