Friday, July 24, 2009

10 minutes from home

Its strange to live in a city... um, ok town, for those of you who might get offended - the population of Durham is 43,000... maybe thats a village... anyway, the numbers aren't the point... What I was saying is that it is strange to live in a place where there's little to do for city-lovers. Durham has one cinema hall-plus-theatre. It has a decent number of restaurants and pubs, which is good but doesn't make up for the fact that there's little else, though I hear that many of the pubs hold quizzes in the evenings. Sounds strange but I'm willing to check this pub-quiz-culture out. And it has quite many shops: mostly clothing and stuff, I know one of them is a bookshop, about three small shops have fresh vegetables and fruits (which, by the way, close at 5:30 pm everyday and are closed on sundays) and one shop has lentils (the uncooked and uncanned ones, which are the kind I'm interested in). So I sometimes wonder how I landed up here. But there are days when I go for an evening walk, and then its quite heavenly. I never thought I'd be living 10 minutes from grassy fields with sheep grazing in them.

durham cathedral


Durham Cathedral is a massive and beautiful Romanesque (or Norman) church (its a World Heritage site). It was built in the 11th century not only as a church but also as a shrine to St. Cuthbert who was an Anglo-Saxon monk and bishop of Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria (today, north-east England and south-east Scotland) in the 7th century. In 875 when the Danes took the monastery of Lindisfarne, the monks fled carrying the coffin of Cuthbert. They roamed around (with his coffin) for a pretty long time, eventually settling into Durham in 995 where first a small church was built and then the cathedral. Cuthbert was one of the most important medieval saints of England, apparently attracting quite a cult following.

Trivia for Harry Potter fans: the Durham Cathedral has been used for some of the interior and exterior views of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter films.

durham

Ok, it might seem that I'm overstretching the "beyond" of the "bits on bombay and beyond." But how was I to know when I started the blog that I'd end up in Durham (UK) some months later. I was settling into the idea of being in Bombay for quite some time. Well, life always turns in directions we don't anticipate. Still, Bombay is present for it is a research project in Bombay that has brought me to Durham in the first place. When I'm back in Bombay in October, perhaps there will be opportunities to write here about Bombay and maybe the research project. For now, I'm exploring Durham and its environs...


GREY TOWERS OF DURHAM
YET WELL I LOVE THY MIXED AND MASSIVE PILES
HALF CHURCH OF GOD HALF CASTLE 'GAINST THE SCOT
AND LONG TO ROAM THESE VENERABLE AISLES
WITH RECORDS STORED OF DEEDS LONG SINCE FORGOT

Durham is the site of the Durham Cathedral, a majestic church and a shrine to the medieval saint, St. Cuthbert. Since the north-east (of England) was so far from Westminister (well, at least it seemed so in the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries...), the bishops of Durham enjoyed extraordinary powers: they could hold their own parliament, raise their own army, etc, etc, and the city played an important role in the defence of England against the Scots. Thus, HALF CHURCH OF GOD HALF CASTLE 'GAINST THE SCOT...