February 2024 - Part One - Winchester Cathedral

February is a strange month, in the fact it is both the shortest month, and it feels like the shortest month. Once you're a week into february you're almost at the end, whereas when you're a week into January you know there's still another nine weeks to go.

Work was busy, and I had grown in confidence up to this points, and I was really starting to enjoy my job. However, it seemed it was not a sentiment that was shared. Our training group started with twelve people, and already we had lost four of them, that was a little startling! 

But February was a month of activity, it seemed every spare minute of each day I was either doing something or seeing someone. This is a picture of the night sky above James's parents house, and his Mum was trying to teach me the names of the stars and constellations. I remember only Orion's Belt, the group of three in a line. I wouldn't agree it looks like a belt, but hey ho, who am I to argue with the universe? I also enjoyed meeting up with friends, Me, Shakira & Mel all went out for brunch together at Trago Lounge (@thelounges.co.uk/trago) where everyone was aghast at me for having macaroni cheese. I mean how can you not love it for breakfast? The macaroni is carbs, the cheese is protein, it's like a superfood, and is bound to set you up for a good day!

I also was working my way through the backlog of jigsaws. We had loads, most of them brought during covid, where we would do one each week after I had finished my shift for the day. We got bored of that quite quickly, so I thought I'd better do them and get rid. This one was hard but fun, with all animal related celebrities, except Meowrilyn Monroe's face was missing. It was a second hand jigsaw I'd bought of ebay I think for a couple of quid. A bit annoying, but never mind, can't help that!

Am I allowed to shout Opa?!?! Or is that classed as a stereotype and culturally insensitive?

James had set me up with a subscription to SnackVerse (snackverse.com) as a Christmas present, and so each month I would receive a box of snacks from a different country. This month was Greece, and there was a good selection of tasty crisps, sweets, biscuits, confectionary & drinks. I think it's a great idea for someone who loves to try new things, so it's worth having a little look and seeing what you think. Subscriptions start from £7.99 and you can cancel anytime. It was actually a really thoughtful thing for him to do for me, as some of the boxes were places I had been while travelling, so being able to recognise some of the items inside was really good. Plus as it was a present for me, I didn't need to share! 

Although I did at least offer a treat to Husky. He was busy working in the day as a switchboard operator. It was finally time for him to start contributing to the bills, after all, we can't all lay around in bed all day!

I was picking up lots of overtime at work, and doing more hours to help fund our planned holiday in the summer to Denmark & Sweden, I was getting excited for it, and had started planning and booking things. That's what all the overtime was for, gotta fund the trip somehow. I work full time, but being able to pick up some overtime really makes a difference. In fact, all of my overtime pay gets moved straight into my holiday fund when I get paid each month. And working between 5-10 extra hours each week meant it was starting to build up. And considering how expensive Scandinavia can be, I needed as much in there as possible!

A touch of false advertising perhaps? Maybe smart pigeon would be more appropriate?

We were in Winchester for the day, and it took me ages to try and get James to understand what I was laughing about. You know when you're laughing so much at something, your sides hurt, your eyes are watering and you just can't get a full sentence out? This was literally me. Although once he realised what was making me laugh, he joined in too! 

Neither of us had been to Winchester Cathedral before, despite us visiting Winchester itself many times. (They have a nice market on certain weekends, worth checking it out if you're in the area. Lots to see & try, and the flower seller in the archway has the most beautiful bouquets). We saw that the moon was visiting, and thought why not kill two birds with one stone. Entry to the Cathedral was £13 if you book online, slightly more in person, but the ticket is valid for a year and you can visit as many times as you want to.

Now the Museum of the Moon is a touring exhibition, created by Luke Jerram using state of the art NASA imagery to create a perfect copy of the moon which is just over seven meters in size. It's a marvel to behold, although it's one of those things, where once you've seen it, you've seen it. It was nice to get up close and see the surface of the moon, but yeah, that was kind of it. There was some changing lights and sounds, but no sort of information panels or any explanations about it. So we felt a little bit lost, especially as I would have loved to know about the process of creating the moon. I did get this lovely pictures thought, especially the second one where it is (almost) perfectly symmetrical. I mean I took a load of photos, and on my phone screen it looked perfect. Once I saw it on the laptop realised it was slightly to one side. I will keep practicing, I promise!

I should say at this stage, although you've probably all worked it out by now. This is a 100% raw blog. I don't edit, filter or change any of my photos. I take a bunch at the time, then sit down and delete the terrible ones and keep the good ones. I do it, because I want this blog to fully reflect what my actual experience was at the time. I could edit out the people in the pictures (correction, I would ask James to do it for me, my editing skills are awful) but I'm not going to. It was busy when I went, and I wouldn't want to create a false impression that it will be quiet for everyone. We live in a populated world, and especially in the towns & cities, there are people everywhere.

This blog is 100% truth. My photos are real, my experience is real, and my review is real. I don't get paid to do this blog, I don't get any kickbacks or additional perks because of it. I pay to enter like everyone else, and I share the space like everyone else. No special treatment. And I want to share how it really was, so other people can see it and make an informed decision to visit if they wish to.

I appreciate I'm sounding like some martyr of the bloggers, holding out in a hopeless bastion against the waves of modern life. But with so much AI & photo editing software in use across all social media and the internet as a whole, I want to continue with integrity & honesty. So there, that's my peace...anyway, quickly back to the cathedral.

        

The cathedral is bathed in light, there are glorious windows everywhere you look. That combined with the light coloured stone and the divine ribbed & vaulted ceilings almost gives you a feeling of floating.

There's an abundance of beautiful stonework throughout, everywhere you look there is glorious decoration. And hardly surprising, it's one of the largest cathedrals in the world, and certainly one of the most famous in the UK. There has been Christian worship in Winchester for almost two thousand years. The site had been occupied by various religious buildings, including churches, chapels & a monastery. The present building was began in 1079, although just outside the cathedral, you can see stone pavements marking out the outline of the previous cathedral on the site.

      

Winchester cathedral has a fantastic feeling of texture wherever you look. Whether it's the painted ribbing on the ceilings to the tiles on the floors. This is somewhere designed to impress, and that it does very well!

The cathedral now is wonderfully looked after, but it wasn't always like that. The priory that surrounded it was closed by Henry the Eighth (I mean who else could it have been?) in 1539. It was shut down and demolished in the decades after. The cathedral was fairly unscathed, there was just some altars and decoration damaged, but it was quickly restored to allow Queen Mary the First to marry King Philip of Spain here in 1554. Further damage occurred during the English Civil War, particularly to the stained glass windows. However, it was the early 1900's when the cathedrals biggest risk became apparent. For years the cathedral had been sinking slowly on its foundations, but it had gotten worse and worse, to the point that the cracks were so big that people could see through the walls and even climb into them! What happened next, was nothing short of an engineering feat. The foundations of the cathedral were made of logs, laid across each other to form a sort of mat. However, some had rotted over time, especially on one corner and where it was compressing, it was causing the building to sink. Efforts to pump the water out to try and dry them failed when the chalky water from the nearby river Itchen started to come through. In the end, it was one man, William Walker, who was one of the countries most notable divers that came to Winchester to help. He would scrape away the foundations, one section at a time before recovering it with blocks, bricks and setting concrete. He did this every day for five years, until the foundations were strong enough to prevent any more movement of the cathedral. It no doubt saved the building. Quite how he managed it, in the pitch black and with bodies & buried remains floating about is a mystery to me, but his efforts mean that the Cathedral is still standing today and open for visitors. And for that, we should be very grateful!

I think this is just beautiful, the gorgeous blue and gold paint between the lovingly carved stone. Imagine being a stonemason almost a thousand years ago, the sense of pride as you finished your carving and was put up on display. I wonder if the masons knew or even thought their work would not only still be here in a thousand years time, but that more people than ever come to see it.

There's a small museum & exhibition space on the upper floor in one of the transepts. There's some interesting information panels and exhibits to look at, but it's also a great time to look down on the graceful architecture, as well as getting a closer look upwards at the painted wooden panels that line the ceiling. You can also appreciate in closer detail the different periods of construction, with the Normal Romanesque arches (left) and the tall, Medieval Gothic pointed arches (right). Look at me, I sound like an expert! 

A view across to the organ, and again, apologies for the slightly wonky shot! 

And here in the crypt, you can see the still flooded passage ways. The air temperature drops quite a bit here, and you can feel the goosebumps as you gaze down the arches and to the statue in the middle, reflected perfectly in the still waters. What a fantastic sight to finish our visit to the cathedral!