Bartimaeus

Little Women, has all the surviving daughters matched off neatly by the end. Love  sisterly and romantic abounds throughout, with a fair sprinkling of loving God and all humanity thrown in. We thought it well done.

Meanwhile I had made a match of my own. A pair of not quite identical fingerless gloves from the left over wool used in stripes in my previous cardigan, with a multicoloured wool called Love Your Wallpaper. The wool varies throughout so they couldn't be the same and I made a mistake in the first one which I did not repeat, so they differ there too. They fit well, which is the main thing.

It hasn't been quite cold enough to need them much but I  have worn them once -it is definitely cooling and autumn is arriving with acorns, berries and conkers falling everywhere.  The weather has been unpredictable so having access to lots of museums has been handy. We have lucked out in managing to avoid the heavy showers and also enjoy some gardens. At Shakespeare's birthplace we could see the gardens planted out with plants that would have been around in his time.

We nipped into the museum during a shower. We found his father had been a glove maker, but not a knitter, he made leather gloves. As we looked at the display of glove making tools and a replica ornate glove, a museum volunteer came over and talked about it and encouraged us to go to the house where there would be a glove workshop set up in one of the rooms. It had stopped raining so we went outside and caught the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet being acted, with Juliet at a window in the house, Romeo in the gardens and the audience being encouraged to do the line of the nurse within the house, calling on Juliet.

We joined the queue to go inside the birthplace. We were told that in the next room, while many items were replicas, and the house was later used as a pub  the floor in the next room was the same floor he would have walked on.

The house was interesting and each room had people happy to explain more about the furniture of the time or what they knew of the family or building. The man in the workshop was very happy to chat. He didn't demonstrate but gloves in various stages of assembly were on display. Unlike mine the position of the thumb was different on right and left gloves, with an offset cut to add the thumb. One glove had a thumb and two protrusions where fingers could snuggle in pairs and keep warm.

A keen young woman explained about truckle beds and showed us the rooms where the family slept. Two beds, a boys' and girls' bed, in one room. The next had a bed where we might imagine John Shakespeare and Mary Arden shared, which had a pull out truckle bed beneath it perhaps for a young child, with tools used to tighten the ropes on the truckle base and to hold the large straw or hair mattress in place on the large bed. There was also a cot for a baby.

We had bought the combined ticket at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust so we could visit various other Shakespeare related buildings. His birthplace was in fact part of a row of houses. Many people were interested in being photographed outside the house, so it was quite hard to get a picture with nobody there, but I also liked that there was part of the wall showing the wattle and daub that had lasted for hundreds of years.

Obviously there were many businesses cashing in on the love of Shakespeare, a cafe called The Food of Love, a gin distillery that was in a building once lived in by his descendants called the Shakespeare Distillery and a street artist posing as his ghost. He didn't sit still but moved every so often 'spooking' passers by. Shakespeare likes to have ghosts and fairies in his plays too.

While the sky was blue then, we later were admiring the oldest house in Stratford-upon-Avon when the heavens opened. Luckily the Tudor housing style involved having a significant overhang of the upper floor, which saved us from a soaking as we huddled under it. No owners complained as all the houses are holiday lets.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust does a joint ticket for three places they have acquired, so we immersed ourselves over the next couple of days going to the site of house bought by William Shakespeare as an adult, though he was mainly in London working, but the rest of his family lived there. The building itself was demolished, but they know the history of it and own the site. It also has very fine gardens with art installations as well as Shakespeare related exhibits in the house that would have belonged to his neighbour. It was all rather confusing but a talk explained it all. We heard it twice on different days by diffent guides.

As we headed back to the the basin we passed another street performer. He was much louder than the ghost. He drummed and sang and we enjoyed his performance. He had quite a crowd, not quite as many people as there were swans and geese by the river. I saw he had a 'tap to donate' device which I  like since I love street artists but but don't carry cash much. I felt he deserved a bigger crowd but then people didn't need to get near to hear him.

The following day we moved the boat through the lock as we had been there two nights and moored on the river. The lock working was complicated by a large triathlon event in the nearby recreation ground, which meant lots of runners were using the bridge. This meant members of the public were using the lock gates to cross over to avoid the bridge, so I had to wait for them to get out of the way and also warn them about hazards such as oily parts they might have thought were a handy thing to hold on to while descending. One commented that it felt a bit unsafe and I assured him this one felt a lot more secure than many. I also needed to use the bridge to work the other side and open and close the gates, so I had to choose my time when there was a brief gap in the runners and jog over myself. Fortunately none of the race officials challenged me.

By the afternoon the races were all done. We visited an exhibition at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. People are free to tour it. From inside we could see Bartimaeus moored up on the river. It looked a peaceful location now.

There is a great free exhibition in the Swan Theatre of costumes used in past productions, some had been chosen for display, by a group of refugees from Ukraine, with some moving descriptions of what they liked about them based on their experiences and missing loved ones and their home.

There was also a fun screen activity where you can stand in one spot and swipe through a rail of outfits have the costumes appear as though on you. At the end of the room was an original first folio of Shakespeare plays and at the entrance (also the exit) to the exhibition was a permanent installation of Romeo's face made of suspended stars, based on a quote from Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet: Come gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
	Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
	Take him and cut him out in little stars,
	And he will make the face of heaven so fine
	That all the world will be in love with night
	And pay no worship to the garish sun.	

Walking past the basin later we saw that another Ortomarine boat had arrived at the Basin, but didn't try to meet the occupants, as it is a hire boat. I let the Ortomarine group know about the sighting. This boat was being hired this week by someone who had been a captain in the navy so he should have found manoeuvres in the Basin easier than the hire boat next to us did, as they tried to leave in the morning. They still looked like they were loving their holiday even as the man at the helm shouted: 'they don't turn easily do they?' 

The following day we went to Anne Hathaway's house. We had seen a fair amount of Tudor lifestyle by then but were surprised to find the house had been inhabited by the Hathaway family over a few centuries and they had made it out in different eras over the time, so one room was 19th century but some were early 16th century.

A chair that might have been around when they were courting was there and a facsimile of wedding documents for Anne and William. The wedding was just before Advent, because no marriages were allowed during Advent and Anne was pregnant so they wanted the marriage sooner rather than later. Clearly love wouldn't wait for the Shakespeare's.

In the evening we went to see the RSC  perform Measure for Measure. It was an excellent production, set in modern times, of people in power being hypocritical and corrupt, and love, or rather lust, wouldn't wait in that story either.