One (in Eight), Two, and an Emphatic Three

My visit to Norwich, in numbers ...

ONE - an eight-sided Unitarian Chapel called the Octagon.  Harriet Martineau (see last week) came here as a child, sat in the wooden box pews and dreamed of angels coming through those small dormer windows at the top to collect her.  I did the same Sunday morning, and was warmly welcomed, but no immortal gathering-up ensued.

TWO - two poets in a cafe swapping Harriet stories.  (There aren't all that many people you can do that with these days.)  I've been twinned with University of East Anglia student Alex Hodson - note the name - this lad is going far!  Though he hasn't quite mastered Look Like A Suffering Poet for the Camera, Please ...

Try again ...

Perhaps they teach them that this semester.  Meantime, he is steaming ahead with BUSHELS of stanzas about Harriet.  Planning to follow his example any minute now ...

And THREE:  Evensong at the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Norwich

Harriet loved music but lost her hearing gradually and almost completely during her teens.  Towards the end of that time she would go to concerts and press her shoulder blades into the wooden back of her seat.  She said she could catch some sense of the music this way.  I sat in the medieval stalls, enveloped by the superlative choir and velvet organ, and tried to do the same.  Listening for Harriet.  Bittersweet.

More photos tomorrow ...