Ancient Ludlow, a bastion of Merrie England.

Look, everybody, Marigold has a new coat. It’s typically understated.

Marigold Says…

Travelling ‘abroad’ seems a bit of a nightmare lately and so we’re making do with trips around Britain for the time being. Not that this is much of a bother to me. I know nothing about trains, planes or automobiles, why would I? I have a personal chauffeur and travel planner. He’s very useful. I hate driving now so I don’t know a gear stick from an ice cream cornet, or a brake from an accelerator. No, you wouldn’t enjoy being a passenger if I was driving.

We’re just back from Ludlow which is just lovely. Loved the black and white buildings and super duper shops, all different. Saw a dress in a window which I wanted. Went in and found it. ‘All colours and sizes’ said the very posh assistant. Found one like the one in the window, £310. She asked me if I wanted to try it on. I couldn’t think of an excuse, so mumbled something very lame about going to the hairdressers. As my hair always looks mad she understood.

Hotel was very old and we were very glad the mattress wasn’t made of straw. When we were in reception waiting to be booked in, we were given free tea and coffee. Now this was weird. Tea came in a tea pot made with tea bags along with a tea strainer. Couldn’t quite work that one out. Anyway it was very nice, but they only gave us two free cakes and biscuits. A few sandwiches would have been appreciated, oh and a bowl of chips.

I was talking to a lovely reception girl who used to work in hospitality all round the world, both on ships and on land. Suppose Covid had scuppered all that. I thought she might burst into a song and dance as she was in some shows on the ships.

Oh, forgot to say when we were in reception, which was a very good look out post, a fabulous looking woman was standing at the desk waiting her turn She had long hair, tight, striped trousers and snakeskin boots. Her jacket was shiny gold. Looked brill. She turned round and must have been in her late 70s. Amazing. Her bloke then came in with equally great gear on, a pair of what looked like golfing trousers with a leather biking jacket. He was really elderly as well. Loved it. Maybe two old famous rockabillies.

There was a wedding dress exhibition on at the church. There was a dress a few hundred years old which of course was a bit yellow but the beads and buttons hadn’t discoloured at all. Don’t know who it has belonged to, but somehow it seemed rather sad. It would have looked better with a grooms outfit next to it so we could imagine the happy couple.

Oh this was good. There was a market on with a good mix of antiques and junk. Saw quite a few things I could have bought, but it was the wrong place and the wrong time for dragging stuff around with us and regretting it as it jingled all the way home. Next year we will try and go to Ludlow festival, maybe with a trailer to bring back unwise purchases.

Went into a very nice charity shop like you do on holiday. I think the charity was to support sad llamas as there was a picture of one in the window. Two elderly assistants were doing the window, mucking about and being very larky.

I said, ‘lucky you, you get to buy all the best picks’.

The woman, her name was Rita, said, ‘Yes it is a great bonus, but I can never get any shoes as I take a size 10. ‘

Of course we looked down and there they were, her very large trotters, encased in masculine looking sandals. She had the body of The Queen and the feet of Bear Grylls.

She said ‘I go to a specialist shop miles away that sells ladies shoes up to a size 14 as they also deal with cross dressers.’ My mind was agog. The rest of her body was very normal, but of course she will save money on skis. Is everybody in Ludlow as interesting as this. I do hope so.

I had only gone in for a birthday card and then found a very lovely sugar pot, silver plated, £1.99. We had just spent the previous six weeks, well it seemed like it but was really only a couple of hours being forced to pretend we liked pictures in an art gallery. It was all rubbish. If I don’t like it, how can it call itself art? I preferred the picture of the sad llama to anything we saw in the art gallery.

In the hotel. We found this empty room and tried all the furniture out. The white chair in the foreground was the most comfortable.

G Says…

I know what I like…

Ludlow has 500 listed buildings, including many medieval and Tudor half-timbered buildings. The town was once described by Sir John Betjeman as “probably the loveliest town in England”.

Well, we’re not going to argue with Sir John Betjeman. He knows about English towns. Remember what he wrote about Slough back in 1937?

‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now, There isn’t grass to graze a cow’

Slough has changed a lot since 1937, although mostly to its detriment in my view, but parts of Ludlow haven’t changed much in the last 500 years. We’ve visited this ‘loveliest town’ before, but this time we were going with a purpose in mind. Most unusual for us, the King and Queen of Chaos, having a plan.

A friend’s birthday celebration was proposed. ‘Not a party as we know you wouldn’t come,’ but a ‘gathering with a bit of culture in the mix.’ Intriguing. We were pre booked at a hotel in the centre of town. The Feathers Hotel, (Grade 1 listed, naturally) dates back to 1619 and was originally a very grand private house but converted to a hotel in 1670. The New York Times named it ‘The Most Handsome Inn in the world!’ Well, that saves us a few quid, no need to go careering off around the globe staying in any of the lesser establishments.

There was a big crowd in the lobby as every hotel guest appeared to have arrived at once. We stood at the back, looking pathetic, it’s not hard, and a waitress took pity on us and offered to bring tea and coffee over to the lounge while we waited. Even better, she didn’t offer this to anyone else. ‘Do you think she realised we’re VIPs?’ I whispered to Marigold. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. I know many of the titled nobility ‘ well, not ‘many’ and certainly not very well, but I do know two landowning Peers of the Realm ‘ and neither of them dress in great style so my occasional scruffiness wasn’t the problem. I suspect Marigold was just tired and footsore.

We sat ourselves down and the chirpy waitress brought out tea, coffee, biscuits and cakes. I must remember this ploy of hanging around hotel lobbies appearing in need of sustenance. The waitress wasn’t a waitress at all; she had a title the name of which escapes me now, but was something like Customer Liaison Officer, but with more words as well. It was quite a large name tag. No, I don’t know what all that means either, but if it’s providing (free) drinks and cake she’s obviously performing her duties splendidly. Her name badge also said ‘Jaz’ so we settled for that.

‘They just spent three million on a refurb,’ she told us. ‘Not that you’d know. The lift works though.’

Another staff member, a sturdy lad wearing a jacket that he must have taken off the peg in error as it was bursting at the seams, stopped and said, ‘2.7 million, Jaz, not 3 million.’

‘That’s three million, or near enough,’ Jaz retorted. She obviously shares Marigold’s views on accountancy.

‘Will you be booking in for dinner tonight?’ Jaz asked.

‘No, we’re going to a birthday bash later,’ Marigold replied.

‘Oh, is it local? I get off at seven.’

I looked at Marigold, seeking guidance. Were we now supposed to invite the Customer Liaison Officer to a party we weren’t even hosting? Even more puzzling, where did Marigold’s ‘birthday bash’ expression come from? Very strange. Marigold dealt with the question about party details in her usual way. She ignored it. It’s a good system.

We eventually booked ourselves in and found our vast bedroom. The lift worked, the key card didn’t. The young man who’d been given a uniform five sizes too small for him turned up, took our key card and replaced it with another one that opened the door straight away.

‘Some work, some don’t,’ he said. ‘I keep a few spares.’ Hmm!

We dumped our bags. Bags not suitcases. We no longer own a suitcase worthy of the name. Marigold draws the line at me entering hotels with my possessions in a plastic Tesco bag, but I like to have versatility in my luggage carrier.

We went for a walk around the town. Lots of cafes, lots of bakers, not as many antique shops as on our last visit, but a really good mix of mostly independent traders. Refreshing after all the doom laden rumours of dying high streets.

I’m a big fan of weird signs, we have come across lots of them lately, and Ludlow town centre has more than its fair share. An empty shop, soon to be opening as a ‘tech hub’ repairing mobile phones and laptops advised the passing public that the delayed opening was due to a ‘technicall proglem’. I hope they fare better with computer code than they do with the English language.

As Marigold walked past a house undergoing renovation I noticed a sign on the scaffolding saying ‘this scaffolding is alarmed.’ Obviously, Marigold’s visit today had caused widespread consternation.

I stopped to read the menu fastened to the wall outside one of Ludlow’s many high end restaurants. ‘I don’t know what all this means,’ I said. Marigold pushed alongside. ‘Neither do I,’ she said, ‘I suppose there’s food involved somewhere, but not sure I’d recognise it after all that faffing about.’

We’re not big fans of exotic and irrational ingredients or culinary practices. Button mushrooms, peaches and blue cheese drizzled with a strawberry vinaigrette. Really? What twisted mind came up with that? I imagine it’s a popular choice or it wouldn’t be on the menu so what do I know? Who goes out for a meal and decides ‘I really must have the mushrooms, peaches and blue cheese special? Perhaps it’s the drizzled strawberry vinaigrette that makes it irresistible.

A large, perspiring man, obviously local, was sitting on a bench clutching a can of lager with an opened packet of Doritos on the seat next to him. He advised us ‘don’t bother going in there, the soups nearly fifteen quid and who goes out for a meal and orders soup anyway? If you’re hungry, you’ll be better off going to Greggs.’ I suspect he worked for Ludlow Tourist Board and was just out in the sunshine enjoying his lunch break. Marigold wasn’t so sure.

We were very tempted by a dining table in an antique shop. It was far too large for our purpose, we had no means of transporting it and we already had a dining table at home. On the other hand, the price was very reasonable. We compromised by buying a salt and pepper set. The shop owner, who was sitting in a back room surrounded by empty packets of Cheesy Wotsits, described the condiments set as ‘whimsical.’ At that point I was tempted to abandon the purchase.

Are Doritos and cheesy wotsits, the locals’ antidote to ‘mucked about food.’ A culinary backlash?

We were due to meet our friends ‘at the back of the church at three o’clock. By a gravestone. G will know which one.’ Yes, that really was the sum total of the information provided. We have odd friends.

The sturdy lad had told us of a shortcut to the churchyard which involved traipsing through the courtyard of the pub opposite and finding a hidden staircase. We found the staircase. It wasn’t particularly ‘hidden,’ but perhaps Shropshire folk don’t get about much. We came out at the back of the church, as promised. It was only 2.45 so we decided we’d wander around to the front and look inside the building itself.

A sign on the wall told us the church we were entering was better known as ‘The Cathedral of the Marches’. A fair comment. It was easily as big as many of the cathedrals we have visited. There were a few people milling about, not particularly reverently, and we heard two separate people say, ‘It’s like a Tardis, innit?’ Whatever did we do before Doctor Who arrived on the nation’s tv screens?

An informative leaflet didn’t mention the word ‘Tardis,’ but did boast of this being one of only 18 churches given a FIVE STAR (their capitals) rating by Simon Jenkins in his book England’s Thousand Best Churches. It sounds a riveting read, so that’s Marigold’s Christmas present sorted.

There’s more to come, but first a few pics…

The Feathers Hotel. Impressive!

Even more impressive at night.

There’s been a pub here since the 12th Century. I imagine Karaoke Nights weren’t a regular feature back then.

Continuing…

Back outside we walked to the rear of the building and straight away I saw our destination, a stone plaque marking the final resting place of a prominent local, A. E. Houseman.

A E (Alfred Edward) Houseman blighted the latter period of my teenage life. The ‘set books’ in the Oxford and Cambridge Scholarship syllabus for English Literature included Chaucer, ‘The Knight’s Tale,’ two chunks of Shakespeare, ‘Coriolanus’ and ‘The Sonnets,’ Thomas Hardy, ‘Jude the Obscure’ and Milton’s ‘Samson Agonistes’ plus two collections of poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins and A E Houseman. There was another equally turgid offering as well, maybe two of them, but I have obviously wiped them from memory.

Obliged to concentrate on one in particular as a Scholarship requirement I chose Houseman. One of many dreadful errors from that period of my life.

Houseman didn’t earn a living from his poetry, very few do, being a Classics Don at Cambridge University with poetry as a sideline. I used to know a man who’d studied under him. The word he chose wasn’t ‘studied,’ but ‘suffered.’ The late Enoch Powell was a student in the same set and was treated with far greater deference and respect. My old colleague’s explanation being, ‘Enoch Powell was so damn clever, even the Professors hesitated to argue with him.’

As a Latin Professor, Houseman does appear to have been a bit of a tyrant. He frequently reduced students to tears and his respect for his fellow Dons was minimal. He declared many of his contemporaries to be ‘stupid, lazy, vain, or all three’ and said, “Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head.’ I suspect that if I had ever been one of his students his opinion of me would have been pudding for brains contained within a pumpkin.

The reason this grave marker is affixed to a church wall in Ludlow is because of Houseman’s most famous poetry work, a series of verses entitled ‘A Shropshire Lad.’ He wasn’t born in the county, never lived there and died in Cambridge. He just thought the title reflected the theme of the poetry collection.

Ah well, he did actually visit Ludlow, at least twice.

I knew instantly why this meeting point had been chosen. The old friend whose birthday we were celebrating had occupied the next seat to me in many dark and dingy classrooms. He’d also suffered throughout that wretched literary syllabus, but when we came to the poetry section he brightened up. Unlike A E Houseman my friend really was a Shropshire Lad, born and bred.

We enjoyed the birthday celebration barbecue ‘ a gathering, not a party – in the garden of a cottage very close to Ludlow Castle and met several new people. Some were great company, two in particular were tedious in the extreme. Of course, they attached themselves like exotically clad limpets to Marigold and I. This couple, who’d travelled up from either Norfolk or Suffolk (neither Marigold nor I were paying much attention), insisted we accompany them to an exhibition of their own work in a local art gallery the next day. For some reason we agreed. Politeness is so over rated.

When it comes to art, I agree with Orson Welles: ‘I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like.’ When we turned up at the art gallery, rather a smart place with ‘nibbles’ and glasses of somewhat undistinguished ‘fizz’ on offer, at noon the next day we were immediately accosted by the couple we had met for the first time yesterday.

‘Wasn’t it odd how everybody there kept saying it was a gathering, not a party?’ They had mentioned this, twice, yesterday evening. ‘I gather there were people there who may not have attended if it had been billed as a party.’

‘Really?’ Marigold trilled blithely, elbowing me in the ribs. ‘Yes, it does seem strange.’ We agreed the people responsible must have been very peculiar, inwardly rejoicing at the ‘in joke’ subterfuge being so readily accepted as fact. My old friend and I, along with our wives, are fairly party averse. I’m obviously only referring to those parties where over dressed people stand around for hours making awkward conversation while loud music assaults the senses until someone decides it’s time to play childish games for an hour or two. Hence the decision to insist on the term ‘gathering’ with plenty to eat and drink in an idyllic setting.

We were dragged off to marvel at the genius of the artist in whose presence we were privileged to be. Shamefully, we never found out which of them possessed the creative force. It took mere moments before I felt a renewed assault on my rib cage from Marigold’s elbow.

‘Such variety,’ I said.

‘I’m lost for words,’ Marigold added and both of our companions beamed.

The ‘art’ covered two whole walls. Landscapes, portraits, even a section devoted to abstract themes based on only two colours, red and blue. Every single one was hideous. Obviously, Marigold and I have distinctly plebeian attitudes or are simply too dense to appreciate genius when we see it. As for the far from discrete price tags’ ‘No sales yet, but you never know,’ the female genius whispered in my ear. I nodded.

The lowest priced offering, a snip at £350, was a landscape. I took a closer look. ‘The River Thames viewed from Richmond Hill,’ it said on a card. Marigold joined me and I pointed out the title to her.

‘Of course,’ she said, brightly. ‘Unmistakeable.’

We lived on Richmond Hill for three years, our viewpoint directly overlooking the River Thames. What we were looking at could have been a pictorial depiction of the surface of an undiscovered planet, but certainly not what was claimed on the card.

‘What are all those red splodges,’ hissed Marigold. I shrugged. There were lots of splodges.

When the great artists dashed off to pounce on new arrivals we studied a section devoted to ‘child prodigies.’ One child genius, aged eleven, had supposedly ‘wowed’ the judges at a prestigious National Competition. It looked like the work of a precocious three year old to me. I have no pretensions to artistic skills, but I am sure I could have produced something, even at age eleven, that a casual observer would know whether they were looking at two dogs, two donkeys or, Marigold’s suggestion, two camels, in a field.

Philistines, both of us.

A woman standing near us was far from impressed with the venue. ‘Why isn’t there a gift shop?’ she asked, plaintively. Her companion, a very tall man, was wearing shorts, black ankle socks and sandals ‘ rarely a good look ‘ and also had legs which were begging to be hidden away from public gaze shrugged his bony shoulders and muttered, ‘I need to find a lavatory.’

When he added, ‘urgently’ we decided it would be sensible to move a bit further away. Some bloke with a paisley patterned cravat draped around his neck, which never was a ‘good look’, turned up. Even worse he was holding a clipboard.

‘Remarkable, aren’t they?’ He had an odd voice, recognisable speech but with a built in warble. Maybe it’s a Shropshire accent. He tried to persuade us we should be buying art, not merely sipping warm fizz while browsing. Unfortunately, for him, we’re both adversely resistant to the ‘can I help you’ brigade. Even more so when nothing we had seen in here had even remotely taken our fancy.

It was getting busy by now and floor space was getting scarce. Noisy too. I’m fairly deaf in crowded areas, too much background noise is a problem , and was struggling to follow what cravat man was saying. He spoke at 100mph and I was soon struggling, still processing three sentences behind the current one. The gist of it was how fortunate we were to be surrounded by the early works of gifted young artists. I confess I wasn’t really convinced, even when he began to talk about values and investment. ‘Just imagine, if this young man wins The Turner Prize ten years from now, what will these early works be worth?’

Well, a pile of bricks can win The Turner Prize, I still don’t want them in my front room. We decided to walk away from this investment opportunity of a lifetime.

‘I can’t see much evidence of genius in this room,’ said Marigold. ‘It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes, isn’t it? Those pictures are supposedly painted by a genius because someone else says so and we’re all supposed to go along with that.’ I usually agree with Marigold. She’s very perceptive. This occasion was no different.

Mundas vult decipi, ergo decipiatur is a Latin phrase meaning, ‘The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.’ Those ancient Romans weren’t easily fooled either.