Christmas 2014 Part 1: Melbourne, Shakespeare, and some Family Roots

Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-on-Avon

The girls had two weeks off school for the Christmas holiday.  I combined a couple vacation days with the Rolls-Royce Derby shut-down to get the same time off.  I thought before the holiday started that it would be relatively low-key.  We'd pick my parents up at the Manchester airport, and spend an appropriately paced holiday for a family with young children that we didn't want to wear out (yes, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it).  On writing it up though, it was actually quite eventful.  Here's the first part.

My holiday jump-started when I was on my bike cycling home by the unusually early hour of 4:30 pm.  It was still a ride home in the dark, but I was home early enough to join the session of Christmas carols around the tree in the village that the Melbourne Rotary Club organized.  Members of the town band and training band provided accompaniment.  It was cold, but thankfully not rainy.  That's me on the trombone to the left of the door with lights on.

Here's the tree that we sang and played around.  The kind folks at the Methodist church across the street offered refreshments for those of us who were semi-frozen by the time the caroling was done.

Despite flying United through Newark airport, my parents had an uneventful flight to the UK.  Charis and I collected them at the Manchester airport.  Sunday evening we made a short visit to Calke Abbey, which had a number of decorations and festivities going for the holiday.  It was the first time I've been in the chapel on the estate.  They set up floodlights from the outside so the stain glass window was illuminated.

I think the girls enjoyed the colored floodlights on the trees more than the ones at the chapel though.

Obligatory fuzzy photo so I can lament my iPhone's mercurial camera and my brother can lobby for a trip over here so he can show me how to use it.

On Monday, we met cousins at the Manor Hotel in Moreton-in-Marsh.  The cousins took my parents for a night while the rest of us went to Stratford.  The Manor Hotel is a a high class establishment with excellent food.  And, more importantly, they provided crackers (poppers for my US readers) with toys inside that kept little ones mostly busy and cheerful.

We stayed in the family suite of the Brook Lodge in Stratford.  Elise shared a room with Kristine and I.  She got her own bed with reading light, and we let her stay up with us.  She decided to spend time writing clever captions for the photos about our trip to Turkey.

She was less than thrilled to realize I'd captured her activities on camera.

But her reprimand was short lived, as she began giggling in self-congratulation about a particular caption that involved high praise for her (great and powerful Elise) and poked fun at me (jealous Daddy).

Kristine happily knitted.

Here's the room Charis and Clare shared.  Charis got the bed, and Clare got the sleeping bag.

Our morning excursion before picking up my parents again in Moreton was to Shakespeare's birthplace and family home.

There's a small museum between the ticket desk and the house.  The film on this wall had some narrative about Shakespeare, as well as visuals of how his plays have been adapted around the world. I hadn't realized there's a hip-hop group dedicated solely to Shakespeare.

I guess it's not truly high culture until it's been interpreted by the Simpsons?

The sight of the girls running is becoming a familiar one.

The house had several displays showing food that the Shakespeares would have eaten.

They also had an activity to "smell and guess" the contents of a couple bags of food ingredients.

Motion shot of the girls looking at leather gloves in the tannery where Shakespeare's father worked and taught his apprentices.

A trio of guides in what would have been the girls' bedroom (notable facts included that it was directly over the tannery and had no beds because only boys got beds) got Elise and Charis to act out part of the play that's performed during A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Elise, dressed as the prince, was trying out her sword.  She didn't realize yet that Charis, dressed as the princess, was supposed to be someone she wooed, not someone she fought.

During the play, a lion (Clare refused to take part, so one of the guides did it) chases the princess, who flees but leaves behind a bloody cloak.  The prince, on seeing the cloak, presumes his true love has died.  He is stricken with grief and stabs himself in anguish (or, in Elise's case, with a smile on his face).

The princess, on discovering her true love is dead, stabs herself in grief as well.  Which results in the prince rising up one more time so that he and the princess can die together.

We walked from the house into the extension where Shakespeare built a pub.  That doorway behind us is not short because of any camera angles.  It's really that short.  It evidently (barely) met the building code requirements at the time, as Shakespeare didn't want to spend any more money than he had to on such frivolous things as helping guests not bang their heads.

Another experiment with heeding Elise's command to look properly serious.

Tour of the house complete, we grabbed lunch at the Henley Tea Shop.  To Elise's great delight, one wall was papered with a book theme.

Rendezvous with my parents complete, one car made a detour through Solihull to explore my Dad's roots. We stopped at the house where he was born, which he got to see for the first time.  Evidently some Americans who do genealogical research in the UK think nothing of knocking on doors and requesting tours of homes that they believe they have a connection to.  We settled for a photo from the sidewalk.

Obligatory fish and chips meal with guests.  Note the enthusiastic response (it might have had something to do with the smashed peas posing as vegetables).