December 23rd Carols and Song in Ottawa

It seems that our Harris-family tradition of December 23rd carol-singing continues wherever … this year for the second time in Ottawa (first time, 3 years ago, when Colin and Janet were just home from their Boston adventures - and I was there!).  Rachel and family came too.  Douglas and family were some thousands of miles to the east - with Eric and Anne-Francoise in Lille, France.  Here, it began at 6pm with wonderful food by Janet and crew - more eating than singing for the first 2 hours.  I played carols for the "littles" and whomever else didn't have a mouthful.   Christmas music in the air.

At 8pm the carols began to ring.  Led by Rachel and egged on by Janet, the house shook, especially for "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and "The Twelve Days of Christmas North" - sung in parts by birthday month (Jan + Feb, etc.) for the days-of-Christmas 6-12.  So fun.

At 9pm, the crew and music changed.  Duelling keyboards - Megan Jerome on piano, Mats Lindeberg on electric keyboard - facing each other at an angle across the living room.  (photos anyone?)  Songs from two song-books by Janet, Rowan, and Colin - one created in 2011, another completed and copied an hour before the party.  ABBA, the Beatles, Elton John, Johnny Cash, Grease, Meghan Trainor, Adele, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Megan Jerome, and and and …   All enthusiastically sung for hours by several generations.  Somewhere in there, Doco invited his eldest grand-daughter to dance, and they weren't alone.  A splendid pre-Christmas night!  (and a wonderful birthday for me!!!)

Doco, Cathy, Rowan, Eric

Rachel, Doco, Rowan, Zeus, Eric
(with Koko's flower triptych on the wall)

Rachel, Cathy, Rowan, Ella, Eirc

on our way back to Canada

After a glorious Douglas-and-family time in Oxford, Doco and I are off to Heathrow and Montreal for Christmas and New Year's with Rachel and Colin and families.  Thank you all!

Douglas's digs

Douglas's academic corner-for-the-year in New College, visited on our last-day-in-Oxford walk with Douglas, before our ascent of the New College tower.

the "new" part of New College

Douglas's grotesque on guard ...

… and his room-with-a-view

New College tower views

Douglas with the key from the New College porter, to unlock the Tower door

The spiral staircase, up and up, and then down and down - 312(??) stairs (I counted but I forgot)

Views from the top - colleges and more colleges - something like 30 in all!

New College Chapel, Queen's College

Harris Manchester College - Unitarian

Radcliffe Camera, All Souls' College, Sheldonian Theatre, Hertford College

Bath Place Hotel, Turf tavern, Holywell Music Room, Wadham College

last day in Oxford

On our last day in Oxford, Cole and I met Douglas by the Radcliffe Camera library, for a cafe lunch at "the Vault" under St. Mary's University Church and a tour of New College, including Douglas's room and the New College tower (separate postings).

early gothic arches in "the Vault"

New College chapel

17th century window in New College chapel - where Douglas, Candy, Ellen, Cole and I had been to the glorious Advent Carol service on Nov 30th, sitting near the wall covered by the names the 228 New-College British men killed in WW1, with a separate memorial to the three New-College students who had returned home to fight for Germany (and been killed).

Remains of the Oxford city wall, seen from within the New College grounds

a Doco and Ellen Oxford expedition

Returning expeditioners

Photos by Doco and Ellen from their climb up the tower of St. Mary's University Church
in the middle of Oxford

All Souls' College

Radcliffe Camera (library)

Winchcombe in the Cotswolds

Doco and I, on our one over-nighter from Oxford, took the train northwest to Moreton-in-Marsh, were met by Cole's second half-cousin Peter Harris and his wife Carol, and driven west up into the Cotswold hills to their home in Winchcolme - with one stop at the 17th-century Stanway great-house and church.  Rolling green fields, stone fences, hedge rows, sheep, and buildings made of warm pale-yellow "oolitic limestone", quarried from a band that crosses the Cotswolds.  After lunch, a drive west down the steep escarpment out of the Cotswolds and into Cheltenham, a spa town on the Severn River plain, to the museum of Arts-and-Crafts furniture (for Cole and Peter).

Stanway church

three "grotesques" in the warm pale-yellow "oolitic" limestone of the Stanway wall

Stanway great-house of Lord Wemyss (pronounced "weems")

Stanway gate-house (plus Peter, Carol and Cole)

Supper in a Winchcolme pub, and an evening pouring over Harris-family photos from Calne (Peter and Cole share their great-grandfather Thomas Harris of "Harris Bacon" - Peter from wife #2, Cole from wife #3).  Carol knows all the Harris-family history, as well as all the Winchcolme-area history - a fascinating guide.  She also had seen, in a Harris exhibit in Calne, a pair of diaries by Thomas and Elizabeth Colebrook (wife #3 and mother of JC Harris of New Denver) that Cole didn't know existed.  To be followed up on!

Winchcolme ("in the corner of the hill"), a sheltered bowl with defensible high land around three sides and a good supply of spring water, was the home of the Saxon kings of Mercia.  Also of a Benedictine Abbey (796 AD) - destroyed in 1540 in "the dissolution of the monasteries".  Not much sign now of either Saxons or Benedictines.  Only the "people's church" next to the abbey site, St. Peter's (1460), remains and is a large part of Carol and Peter's lives.

St Peter's Church gate, designed by Peter (Harris)

Gothic revival teacher's house next to St Peter's churchyard

Alms house, Winchcolme, 16th century, with warning to more-recent dog-walkers:
"It is an offence for a person in charge of a dog to allow it to foul the footway"

Finally, a visit to the "Winchcolme Pottery" (where we did a fair bit of damage) before being delivered back to Moreton-in-Marsh for an Oxford-bound train.  An intense glimpse of English countryside and its history.

abandoned late-19th-century kiln
at Winchcolme Pottery

looking into the active wood-fired kiln, licking flames at 1200 C