D Kendall

I’m very glad that I didn’t let myself be discouraged by the title of Christiane Bröcker and Babette Schröder’s “111 places in Stockholm that you must not miss”. It’s full of quirky, amusing and interesting locations in Stockholm that I knew little or nothing about.

My first book-inspired visit today was to the Aronsberg Cemetery (Mosaiska begravningsplatsen Aronsberg) near Fridhemsplan, Stockholm’s oldest Jewish cemetery named after Aaron Isaak, who came to Sweden in 1774, supplied equipment to the Swedish army in Russia and was, according to Wikipedia later swindled by Adolf Fredrik Munck, for a time a favourite of Gustav III, subsequently disgraced and exiled and who ended up in a pauper’s grave in Italy. Aaron Isaak wrote his memories in West Yiddish, but there is a Swedish translation Aaron Isaac: Minnen: ett judiskt äventyr i svenskt 1700-tal. Stockholm 2008. A must read for a rainy day at KB.

The cemetery gate is locked. You get a good view from Alströmergatan but, of course, not at all as intensive an experience as being able to wander among the gravestones and let the everyday fade.

I love following such threads, not knowing where they will lead. Threads that make the well acquainted strange, that work against our tendency to reduce attention once an area is known and safe, good perhaps for survival but not for our sense of wonder. My eye is not bad if I use it but I am lazy and need assistance to discover. And here not far from Café Fix and Pressbyrån and all the rest of familiar Fridhemsplan, was this atmospheric place unseen for 40 years. I am attracted by Hebrew too, consigned to the shadows by our Christian culture but as much part of our history as Greek or Latin.

Offered interviews at Durham and Newcastle universities (English and Philosophy), I didn’t immediately realise the succinct disastrousness of my “I’ve read a bit of Hegel”, neatly demonstrating in six or seven words that I had no idea about the state of English philosophy in 1964. The slipper-shod interviewer sprawled across a sofa (this impressed me at the time) replied with a laconic “We don’t concern ourselves very much with Hegel these days”.

I’m much more proud of the 17 year old who thought that Durham was very fine, with its cathedral and castle, and that he must come back on a more leisurely occasion.

And now today I’ve finally managed to do so, a mere 52 years later.

I wouldn’t go as far as Bill Bryson who is quoted in the cathedral guide as saying “I unhesitatingly gave Durham my vote for the best Cathedral on planet Earth” (Notes from a Small Island). But it is certainly among my favourites. Apart from the Chapel of the Nine Altars, it’s very largely Norman work, giving an impression of stylistic harmony and strength. But, less usual for a Norman church, the bulky pillars don’t block the light out. Especially interesting is the late Norman ceiling with its pointed arches anticipating the first of the Gothic styles. These arches could bear more weight than the earlier round Norman arches, enabling the construction of a high stone ceiling (and producing the happy combination of Norman solidity and strength and the lightness of soaring Gothic).

There are also two important graves in the church. First, St Cuthbert, his body evacuated to Durham at a safe distance from the Vikings, who were ravaging Lindisfarne. He had a lavish grave here for many hundred years until the time of Henry VIII (16^th  century) when the King’s commissioners came to dissolve the monastery and lay their hands on the gold casing of Cuthbert’s tomb. Cuthbert himself was reported to be incorrupt (body intact after about 800 years…) and they let him be minus the gold (which I suspect was of much more interest than the body anyway, corrupt or incorrupt….).

More of a favourite for me, the Venerable Bede is also buried here, one of the more substantial of the slender threads leading back to Saxon times with his history of the English people (historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum).

Information culled from “Durham Cathedral, Light of the North” (2006), John Field and “Durham Cathedral, The Shrine of St Cuthbert” (2013).

My footle tolerance is improving. I’m less and less bothered about having a low-key day after travelling and no longer experience this as a serious threat to my identity.

The day has not been without its charms, however. At Tesco, I discover (and by a supreme effort of will do not buy) hot cross buns (like Easter…) and raspberry flavoured ginger beer (the old place is not what it used to be…). I also make use of the Brexit-crushed pound to buy an electric toothbrush to be stationed in the UK (and wonder whether Farage has done anything else useful in his life apart from helping improve my oral hygiene).

Looking forward to tomorrow’s visit to Durham, a cathedral and university city a couple of train hours away to the north.

Used recently in the Economist. According to Wikipedia, “shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization”. Also used for hustlers who attempt to entice people into going into a circus or other form of entertainment.

According to the Concise Oxford, the origin is uncertain but probably related to “shillaber”, a circus barker.

Jonathan Green (Crooked Talk: Five Hundred Years of the Language of Crime) considers “shill” as possibly an abbreviation of  the Irish “shillelagh”, a cudgel (cudgelling the victim into participation) or earlier oak wood to make cudgels from  (http://www.memidex.com/shillelagh, 1670) originally related to the town of Shillelagh in County Wicklow. A person behind the bar with a cudgel to prevent disturbances may also have been known as a shillelagh, which provides some support for the term gliding to become the “shill” for a person at the door.

“archipelago” is derived from the Italian “arcipelago” originally meaning “the Aegean sea” deriving in turn from the Greek “arkhi” (chief, as in “archbishop”) and “pelagos” (sea). (Concise Oxford Dictionary). For the Greeks then just the major bit of water around them but the meaning wandered to mean any sea with many islands.
We have “skerry” in English too, a small rocky island (from Old Norse via the Orkney dialect) but it’s perhaps now too narrow to be used as a synonym for “archipelago” which includes more substantial islands (otherwise it would be rather satisfying to refer to the skärgård as the Skerries).
“gård” has also made its way into English as “garth” – COD gives the meaning of “close” or “yard” as archaic but “cloister garth” is used (an open space within cloisters and perhaps a neat translation for “klostergård” without having to go burbling on about small courtyards, though yard too is related to “gård” through Old English “gearth” enclosure).
“Skerry garth” is tempting and there is in fact the odd usage of “skerry garth” in the Shetlands but we’d probably better stick to the Stockholm Archipelago for the time being.

The week’s new words for me

antsy (antsier)
restless, impatient, nervous. Origins stated as 1838 US English (rural southern), perhaps from the expression ”having ants in one’s pants”. Probably an urban buzzword but it didn’t get over
DK’s attention threshold until the Economist started using it.

After an unsuccessful attempt to ignore the presence of a step during a nocturnal ramble, I have flown in a helicopter for the first time (not so exciting if you’re lying on a stretcher but it had its moments), talked to an English doctor for ten minutes about Brexit (perhaps to establish whether I was confused or not, not sure what conclusions she drew…), and explored the delights of computer tomography, to eventually be given a clean bill of health and equipped with a pair of crutches for further exploration of the world (I am surprised by my technical finesse at handling crutches and suspect I may have (well) hidden talents). No long-term harm done then, apart from messing up our planned quality week with the grandchildren. I probably have to sit down quite a bit and read…lucky my character is sufficiently strong to deal with this

Coping with the challenges of the night (copied from Facebook 20 May)

I sleep well despite multi-hour blue light drenching but wake up far too early before relapsing into a dream. I am on a train, strangely an express train as Gunilla and I are packing to leave a conference hotel and I have only popped out on some minor errand. Stumbling back to my seat from the WC, I resume work on my I-pad, only to discover that it’s not my I-pad and not my seat, which is a few rows further on (and looks more or less identical, this is a weak attempt at mitigation). Fleeing from the unfamiliar statistics flashing past on the screen, I rapidly withdraw and crouch, hopefully invisibly, in my own seat.
I become aware of turbulence from the direction of the alien I-pad, where two men have returned from wherever. Unfortunately (and untypically), I decide not to lie low (in accordance with my life motto of “never try to explain what you have done or why”) but go up to them and make a clean breast of it.
The I-pad owner appears to accept my apology, his senior companion less happy and tending towards cross-examination. I think about offering him a non-disclosure agreement but feel it might complicate matters besides not being fully compatible with my principle of non-explanation.

Arriving at a station, we disembark and change to some local train (which seems oddly to run within the conference hotel) reminding me of the Docklands light railway, a kind of scenic route around the local architecture, which I introduce the I-pad man and his companion to as compensation for my mistake. Things seem to be developing quite well and I look forward to wrapping up this particular complication when I sneeze violently and uncontrollably and a large amount of very visible sneeze product of the gooier, yellowish kind lands on the I-pad owner’s sleeve. Despite my weasel quick mopping up, it’s not exactly a happy ending but they anyway disappear at this point, leaving me to get the lift up to our hotel room. Somehow I manage to press the wrong button and the lift deposits me directly inside a rather upper class lady’s room. I have seen her at the conference and start to withdraw making hasty apologies. Explaining that she is being bothered by a man, who is about to visit her, she asks me to stay, which I reluctantly do. A few minutes later, the man (much younger than her and very well tended with the charm of pre-silver temples) arrives (conventionally) at the door; she opens and he looks surprised to see me there. A complicating factor in this situation is that I seem for some reason to have taken my shirt off although I am wearing a T-shirt. I am worried that my quasi-undress might create the wrong impression but I can’t seem to find a particularly stylish way of putting it back on. Maybe the lady has nothing against her visitor jumping to conclusions.
I expect him to rapidly withdraw but he doesn’t. In fact, he’s joined by a couple of other people, who appear to be trying to make him apologise for bothering the lady. They all come in wanting to talk over the situation. I woke up at this point after becoming more and more concerned about missing our plane as the popping out to post a letter or whatever the pop-out reason was has clearly miscarried.

I feel refreshed and in a good mood but am unclear about the significance of this dream:- Is it (a) just the routine coming to terms with the chronic complications of steering David Kendall through life (b) working through age-related increasing stupidity (I bear just now a burden of guilt for calling out a washing machine repairer for a fully functional (but disconnected) washing machine or (c) a message from God that I should stop all this blue-light wallowing in the arcane and get on with my real mission in life of writing light comedies of the frothier sort where people lose items of clothing and hide behind screens and all that sort of giggle (if so, please review, God, so that I can get through life with a shred of human dignity intact…).