Combe St Nicholas, Isle Abbots, Huish Episcopi and West Camel

Heading down in a similar direction to the Dorset day out, we set out to our furthest point, Combe St Nicholas in Somerset, with the intention of heading back and stopping off at various points between here and north of Yeovil.

First stop Combe St Nicholas, which is in rather pleasing, hilly countryside.  The outside doors were ominously shut but luckily for us, none of the churches we visited were closed that day. Once inside the church, we were immediately faced with the creature we had travelled to see.  On the right hand side as you enter the building, what can only be described as a cow type creature looked down at us from atop a column. It was quite chunky with a definite square-faced, cow type mouth and nose, and cowy ears. From its mouth came lines of swirling pattern that looped round and about, ending in a sort of hand shape, or flower.  The carved swirling lines are a familiar design, but never before seen emanating from a cow.

Onwards to Isle Abbots / Isle Abbotts, a village nestled so deeply in the countryside that I thought we would never get there. It was almost Melbury Bubb all over again (minus the rain) as I tried unsuccessfully to figure out which of the tiny white roads (on the road map) we were now on. They never seem to correspond to what is in front of you. My sister did well to spot roadsigns as they were nestled in the growth of summer foliage, and mostly hidden from view. We thought if the Germans had landed there in the war, they would have been completely flummoxed.  Eventually we found it and had our lunch on a handy bench. The tower was huge, as were many in that area - a sign of the wealth, no doubt. Inside a delightful sandy-coloured font, four sides, the one facing us showing a rather curious creature, upside down.

Each side has a different pattern on it, quite worn, but we deciphered some animals and different patterns. I found the upside-down creature fascinating: to me it honestly looked most like a dolphin - an unsual creature for a font design, but not beyond the realms of possibility. If someone had seen one on his travels (we are not that far from water) then he might have wanted to depict it for others. It was upside down, yet none of the other sides were, making me think this was how the person had seen the creature. Perhaps leaping out of the sea. It had the bulbous head of a dolphin, with a beaky nose, and no legs but a streamlined body which ended in a sort of tail. I'm convinced anyway. Either that or it was an alien.  Or a lizard. On the other sides we made out a sort of bird and a rather fetching wyvern, most interestingly shown between/behind a column design - quite an unusual feature to show something behind something else like this.

External factors meant we were glad to reach our third stop, Huish Episcopi - so called, apparently after "hiwisc" (house) in OE, and episcopi - to do with the Bishop of Wells. St Mary's church has a very fine example of a carved door, with the added delight of its reddish brown colour, possibly the result of a fire. The door had very chunky zigzag arches, with interesting designs around the top. There were two tiny creature heads on either side, and some fabulous columns with leaves and patterns at the top. A fine example. I'm glad to say that we no longer attempt madly to draw the whole thing, as was once the case when we began on these quests, but now realise that it is only possible to draw a detail or two.  Inside the church was a rather impressive window, with a lot of angels' wings and striking reds. It reminded me of the windows by Burne Jones in Birmingham cathedral. I didn't say anything at the time but it turns out the window is by Burne Jones. Fancy that!

Moving on from Huish Episcopi, we headed back towards home and decided to squeeze in a trip to

West Camel. This time we knew where it was having been on our last trip but not having had the nerve to interrupt a singing session that was taking place inside. This time however it was open and empty and we were delighted to see not just a lovely font with pleasing archway design, but one of the finest Anglo Saxon carved stones we have had the pleasure to see. This one had pride of place up by the altar, and is nicely secure. It had two sides carved with intricate and still well defined knotwork and interlacing patterns. One side definitely had two snake/dragon heads at the end of the intertwining bits. The other side might have had but the ends were more worn. It is definitely one of the best preserved pieces we have come across. And impossible to know where to begin to draw. Especially at the end of the day when we were tired. But I did an "impression" of it which was really a cop out, but it might be fun to try and do some artwork from the photos. I pondered on how they would have done the original - you would have to have had a sketch as you could easily go wrong with the under/over alternation between the patterns.

  

fatigue

Maybe because it's only 5 weeks before Xmas or because 2 months in Catania is enough for anyone, I am beginning to miss home and am looking forward to returning. It's still mild here (where is the snow? Come on, it's November). And I am now working my maximum contracted hours, so I feel quite tired. I am spending less time preparing, thankfully, as I now have more confidence to work through things without spending hours looking at it beforehand. But still, it takes up a lot of time. Perhaps I am just workshy.

I have started doing a little Xmas shopping online - normal things that I can have sent to the UK from the UK. It is, I'm afraid, too bad if people are hoping for exciting Sicilian Xmas presents as there aren't really any, except food items and the chances of them breaking and going all over everything in my suitcase are too high. Never mind. Well it is the chance to support some favourite wildlife charities of mine, as I am really only interested in supporting wildlife because it seems it is increasingly being destroyed by morons. I follow many wildlife organisations and wildlife supporters on Twitter and so I suppose when I read their tweets about nature, etc, I see a lot of stories that are depressing all at one go. But also, it is encouraging to see how many people are equal fans of birds, bugs, animals etc and go to great lengths to help them. There are some beautiful photos of birds, animals and wild places that are a joy to see on my Twitter feed. I have recently started following someone in America who has posted lots of photos of the very colourful birds that come to her garden. At the moment they are battling with lots of snow and there have been some very snowy squirrels!

The other morning I heard a blackbird somewhere and some sparrows, so that was a welcome change. They are around somewhere, but I suppose in the noise of the day I do not hear them.

We have kind of finished doing zoos with the teenagers but I am still doing them with the higher level. They did not seem to know a lot of details about endangered animals so I am going to direct them to the WWF website and also Marwell and Whipsnade zoos, which were mentioned in the textbook. That way they will see some lovely animal photos plus find out about the endangered animals and what is being done to help them. Maybe the level of English is too high but I think they can get the gist and it will be educational.

I could not help smiling the other day when we were doing a passage called the "Helpful Dolphin" with the teens, about a dolphin that helped a girl in the water. They had to choose the correct word to put in the gap and one student gave the answer as "I was a dolphin" instead of "it was a dolphin". Now I am not laughing at this because it was all part of the student's learning experience, and it was an easy mistake to make, but what did make me laugh was his class mate's reaction, because he said, in Italian, "sei un delfino?" "Are you a dolphin?" in such a way that everyone started laughing and I had to bite my tongue because it was making me chuckle.

I am sure my teaching is going okay but I feel there is much to improve on and having inadvertently seen how much the students are paying for the course, I don't know if I feel they are getting their money's worth! I know it is an ongoing learning process but I also wish I had time and energy to think how to improve. I made the mistake the other day of assuming the students knew something, when they didn't. It was compound adjectives, so something with two words like right-handed or well-known. The example (about zoos) was "A thick-billed parrot is a parrot with a thick bill." I read this out and felt it was so obvious that it was patronising. But in fact it wasn't obvious and when I left the students to do an exercise to explain what a man-eating tiger was (a tiger who eats men, ie people) they did not get it. One of the students said to me they don't have the compound adjectives in Italian and I realised I should not have assumed it was obvious.

Probably the answer to everything is lots of fresh broccoli, fruit, water and general relaxation.