It is snowing in Wallingford. As I tweeted this morning, one does not come to England for the weather, even in March. It was nice to get a tweet in response from Sam Brannan who was my secretary when I was at CABI, welcoming us back to Wallingford. The snow began as tiny flakes blown aimlessly by the light wind; at one stage it looked like turning into sleet or wet snow, which would have been disappointing; but now as I write the flakes are bigger and settling on the windscreens of cars. So, I am staying in this morning attending to my blog.
I am re-reading William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain, for two reasons: first, because I am this afternoon, snow storm permitting, going to a talk by him at the Oxford Literary Festival and a former neighbour has asked me to get him to sign her copy of the book, which she has leant me; and secondly, of course, because we are embarking on part of the journey he writes about in the book.
He visited Mount Athos and then Istanbul before heading further east to Ankara and Diyabakir. He is a good writer but methinks a little unfair or outdated in his views on the Turks. I was captured though by his description of Aya Sophia:
At the end of the Hippodrome, then as now, rises the great dome of Justinian's Hagia Sophia, the supreme masterpiece of Byzantine architecture, and still, in the eyes of many, the most beautiful church ever built. No other Christian building is so successful in transporting one to the threshold of the another world or so dazzlingly intimates the the imminence of the transcendent.
His description of coach rides and endless supplies of eau de cologne (more accurately, rosewater) splashed over customers to refresh them rang true. We remember stinking of the stuff. But his claim that 'rural Turks' had built a splendid and modern hotel in Ankara, the Buyuk Ankara Oteli, and allowed it to run down clashed with our memory of the place, which was our home for two months in 1972. We shall have to check on it when we return to Ankara after 41years on Monday.
The snow flakes are getting small, and wet, again. Kathy Mansfield has promised to send me a photograph of the snow, for the blog.
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