In search of mythology and ravens: a trip to the Tower

Merlina

Connections, connections; links and connections. Back in November, The Other Half and I spent a few days on the Normandy coast, in Deauville.

Last year’s health-based fun and games had rather left us in need of clean air. But during our stay – the first time either of us have been to that part of the world – we visited Caen.

And there, we saw both the remains of the castle built by William of Normandy and the place where the remains of his remains are said to be buried after originally being disrupted and tossed around a little in 1562, during the French Wars of Religion. This grave now holds a single remaining thigh bone.

For Brits, William is better known as The Conqueror: 1066 and all that.

So it was intriguing to see how differently the French see him (heroically – certainly in that part of the world), as opposed to our rather more conflicted view.

But just over a week ago, with The Other Half away for work and time on my hands, I decided to head back into William territory and to the Tower of London, the iconic fort he founded in 1066.

Crows atop the trees

I haven’t visited since – oh, 1971, on the eve of my family’s departure for Mossley after living for three years in west London.

I remember the Bloody Tower, the crowds and my sister (three years younger) crying so much that we left quickly.

A return – rather longer – visit has been in my mind for some time. But in the event, it was spurred less by the William connection than my growing love affair with Norse mythology and not least, Huginn and Muninn.

Those, for any readers not in the know, are Odin’s ravens. Huginn represents memory and Muninn, thought. The All-Father sent them out to fly around the world each day, yet dreaded that they would not return.

Some scholars speculate that this is an idea of fear of not being able to come out of a shamanistic trace. But for a modern reader, it could also suggest someone afraid of losing their memory and capacity to think in age.

Morning sun over the Tower of London

A god fearing Alzheimer’s or dementia. That is a rather poetic idea: in other words, this is a god who is more than a touch human; not perfect; flawed.

As I really get into reading the Norse myths, that’s one of things I love about them.

The gods are human – and are certainly not the supposedly perfect (and boring) gods of the monotheistic big three from the deserts of the Middle East.

And so it was that, on that Saturday morning, I peeved the cats by getting up early and heading out toward the Thames.

Passing first through a nearby park, it was almost eerily quiet. Rows of crows topped the naked trees, chorusing a cawed greeting that echoed across the grass.

Get inside as early as possible

For a moment, as though on the periphery on my senses, I could almost feel the German woods again.

A short journey on the newish overground train to Whitechapel and then a further two stops on the District line brought me to Tower Hill.

There was a chill to the air and the late winter sun was battling through the clouds as it climbed above the Tower itself – a building that seems squat by comparison with the glass and steel that girds it – as in so much of the capital these days – on three sides, with the Thames flowing past on the fourth.

HMS Belfast is to the left on the far bank, with Tower Bridge just a little to the right.

I was early. Too early, indeed, even for the ticket office. A hot chocolate in one of the surrounding buildings warmed me through, before I started a queue at one of the ticket booths.

A few moments later, I ducked past a gathering of grockles and, after a quick bag check, found myself heading through the gates.

Traiters' Gate

There was hardly anyone around: if you want to feel atmosphere within these walls, then early in the day is when to find it, when it’s still enough so that can almost hear the old stones breathe.

With only a limited idea of which way to head, I turned toward the Bloody Tower’s entrance before being halted in my steps by a deep, throaty call from just beyond a wall nearby.

The ravens were calling.

Backtracking, I made a quick left, then another – to find myself at the foot of the grass that slopes down from the White Tower, facing these magnificent, mythological birds in their smart, new homes (by Llowarch Llowarch Architects and just nominated for the RIBA London regional architecture awards 2016). 

According to some sources, ‘most’ people refer to a group of ravens as a ‘flock’, which is rather unpoetic of them, given that the alternative collective nouns are ‘unkindness’ and ‘conspiracy’.

Armour inside the White Tower

Incidentally, their smaller, park-living corvid cousins are sometimes referred to as a ‘murder of crows’.

It’s a small conspiracy at the Tower: the nation-preserving six, plus two reserves, for safety’s sake.

It was nine, but Somerset-born Porsha died in late January, at the tender (for a raven) age of eight.

It’s indicative of the esteem and affection in which the ravens are held that they are buried within the Tower’s walls.

In the early days of WWII, with Hitler having taken an early lead, two of the Tower’s ravens had to be put to sleep after being badly injured in a bombing raid. It brought the number to just four.

There are those who have speculated that this accounts for Britain’s loss of empire in the years following the war.

All this seems to have stemmed from Charles II’s time when, after complaints from the royal astronomer that a rather larger unkindness of ravens was disrupting the royal stargazing, the king decided that six would be kept and the astronomer royal banished to Greenwich.

White Tower, grey day

They can fly, but since some of their feathers get a regular trim (akin to a haircut), they don’t go far – although a couple of years ago, one did make it as far as Greenwich!

I stood watching them for some time. After an attempt to sketch them – difficult at best and made harder by the cold – I nipped into the nearby ‘ravens shop’, where I discovered that there was no certainty that they would be let out and, if they were, it was likely to be around lunch – some time off.

Looking back at the cages, one suddenly appeared to be empty – for a moment, I wondered whether a large crow was one of the ravens (as did the shop staff) – before one of the shop staff suggested that, if two had been let out, they’d be likely to be up around the ‘coloured cannon’ or on Tower Green.

Off I sped, but to no avail. At which juncture, I decided to have a look around the White Tower, which was engaging enough, as it holds part of the Royal Armouries collection.

Coming out, I was contemplating heading off when I noticed a very large black bird hopping around on the grass slope. Back off around to Tower Green, I arrived in time to see a very big black bird perched on the edge of a bin, rooting around inside.

Merlina rooting (note trimmed feathers)

The bench next to the bin was empty. I sat down quietly, as near to the bin as possible, and got the camera ready.

This, I learned later via the Ravenmaster on Twitter, was Merlina (born in South Wales in 2005).

She rooted for a while until she pulled out a piece of banana, placed it on top of the bin and scrutinised it carefully, before picking it up again, hopping down and taking it to a small pond on the grass behind.

There, she dropped it in the water, twiddled it around a bit with her beak and then retrieved it – doubtless in an effort to assess when that had rendered the banana edible.

'What do you mean this isn't meat?'

Hopping the short distance to Tower Green itself and the site of the scaffold, she hopped around the back of another bench where a young couple were munching crisps, with me in stealthy pursuit.

As I was standing at the side of the bench, she hopped up suddenly onto the arm, sending the crisp-crunching female into paroxysms of squealing terror.

The girl ran – then ran back to grab her rucksack. Her boyfriend went with her.

In the meantime, I – having not run – was snapping away. And as though to reward me for not being a squealer, Merlina stayed on the back of the bench for quite a few moments, allowing me the opportunity to snap some wonderful shots at close quarters.

'She ran away quickly enough ...'

After she’d had enough and hopped off, I – grinning like a loon by this stage – went to take a remarkably crowd-free glance at the crown jewels. They’re quite surreal, to be honest, and I found myself musing that they looked like something out of a theatrical production.

But then again, that’s precisely what they are.

It was an enjoyable and educative visit. But you can keep the bling – I’ll take Merlina and the gang over them any day.

• To follow the Ravenmaster on Twitter, go to @ravenmaster1.

Making sure your diet has gotta lotta bottle

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to have you looking again at your diet and wondering if it’s nurturing you or killing you, then it’s something such as a heart attack in the family.

The Other Half is now attending rehab sessions after his recent Event and these include a weekly talk.

Recently, one on nutrition provided the news that no, locally-produced honey does not render you immune to local pollen. It also included a call for those present to drink more milk, since there’s a risk of an osteoporosis timebomb and they need their calcium.

It’s probably already far more of a problem than most of us realise.

According to Guidelines for diagnosis and management ofosteoporosis (1997) by JA Kanis, P Delmas, P Burckhardt and others, which was published by the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and Bone Disease, in “women over 45 years of age, osteoporosis accounts for more days spent in hospital than many other diseases, including diabetes, myocardial infarction and breast cancer”.

And that’s just women – osteoporosis affects men too.

Of course, the milk-drinking advice included stating that the milk should be skimmed or semi skimmed, and noting that, while calcium can also be found in cheese, you should only to eat a matchbox-sized amount of that in a single day because of the mortal threat of fat.

Look away now – this could be the death of you

Bad luck: today’s lunchtime salad – made at home – included about two Swan Vesta-sized matchboxes worth of feta (together with chick peas, broad beans, sultanas, a little couscous and a ‘dressing’ of plain, Greek-style yogurt).

Having had a small glass of apple juice before leaving home, my breakfast had consisted of a hard-boiled egg, a little poached salmon, some edamame beans and a squirt of teriyaki sauce, with an espresso on the side.

Thank you Itsu: tasty, healthy food, and actually cheaper than the far more conventional breakfast fodder I’ve been having recently.

There was a mid-morning ‘snack’ of a few dates.

Oh dear – never mind the cheese, am I in danger of eating too much fruit, given how it all sugars?

The point, though, is that my rule-shattering amount of feta for lunch should be considered within a wider context of a fairly healthy diet as a whole.

But back to osteoporosis and calcium intake.

I recall reading, approximately 15 years ago, that women on a  diet had a bone density deficit of 22%.

This should surprise nobody, given that one of the first things that goes out of the window when you start dieting is dairy produce.

And on this subject, let’s take a little look at figures for osteoporosis in France and the UK, since the French notoriously eat more cream, cheese and butter than any other nation on planet Earth.

In 2010, there were approximately 377,000 new fragility fractures in France. The number of people aged 50 plus, with osteoporosis, was approximately 3,480,000.

Bone – healthy and not-so healthy

The economic cost of new and prior fractures was estimated as €4,853m each year and it is further estimated that, by 2025, that figure will have increased to €6,111m.

In 2010 in the UK, there were approximately 536,000 new fragility fractures. The number of people aged 50+ with osteoporosis stood at approximately 3.21m. The economic cost of new and prior fractures was £3,496m (€5,408m) each year; by 2025 burden will increase by 24% to £5,465m (€6,723m).

These statistics are from A Svedbom, E Hernlund, M Ivergard, et al, Osteoporosis in the European Union: A compendium of country-specific reports, 2013.

It’s worth noting that calcium deficiency is not the only cause of osteoporosis, but that alcohol consumption and smoking both also increase bone fragility.

In which case, given levels of smoking and alcohol consumption in France (and given that it has a higher population), the lower number of fragility fractures is even more remarkable.

But then again, the French have not – thus far – lost any sense of a national cuisine; of the traditional and largely seasonal food that has sustained them down the centuries.

We have. We expect asparagus and strawberries in December, and are faced with a dizzying array of culinary styles in shops and restaurants.

And in a way, the culinary snapshot from our recent trip to Rye is indicative of that: poor versions of a ‘national’ dish – fish and chips – cooked on the basis of pre-prepped, largely-frozen ingredients, while local gems such as Cromer crab were noticeable primarily by their absence.

That’s not to say that there is no place for culinary evolution and global influences – or that the French don’t have these (see couscous as an example of the latter), but merely that we have gone to an extreme.

Subject to the whims of British culinary fashion

We fall out of love with genuine British ingredients – and then it takes a celebrity chef to bring them back into fashion. See cooking apples and cauliflowers as but two recent examples.

Sainsbury’s summer TV advertising campaign, “tigers don’t eat quesadillas”, also illustrates the current climate, starting from the perspective of a family where the children get to say what they will and will not eat.

I know it’s not hip parenting these days, but what was actually wrong with ‘Dinner time! Come and sit down!’ followed by (if required) ‘that’s what’s on the table – if you don’t like it, there’s nothing else’?

The idea of giving small children a choice about what they eat is nonsense: they need to be able to make an educated choice before being given a choice – and that means a food education first.

Nor is that an education where you make pronouncements on what’s good or bad for health. It’s a question of educating the taste buds.

Okay, it’s still probably going to be something of a battle, given the amount of high-processed, industrialised junk around the place for children to be tempted by. And Big Food spends an awful lot of money working out precisely how to get children hooked on that junk, so it’s not an evenly-matched battle: this is classic David and Goliath.

But getting home in the evening and asking your pre-primary school child what they want for dinner – and then responding with “you can’t have dippy chips every night” because they regularly have that because you don’t want to cook a fresh meal after a day at work, is not the answer and not the way to a healthy diet.

And why quesadillas? What’s wrong with a salad? It doesn’t have to be limp, tasteless lettuce and cucumber, with flavourless tomatoes.

Take some broad beans (in season at present). Pod and cook for 3-4 minutes, in unsalted water, depending on size. Allow to cool before popping the little green gems out of their skins.

Hull and halve some strawberries (also in season).

Broad beans. In season now. Yummy

Pop on a plate together with some feta – the natural saltiness of the cheese is a fabulous foil for the beans, and works well with the fruit too.

Dress with some Balsamic vinegar.

If it’s a main meal, have some good bread on the side or a few new potatoes (also in season).

Colourful, tasty and healthy – and not complicated.

The media doesn’t help – producing scare stories about health and further confusion about diet.

I freely admit that I find myself wondering if I’ve got it basically right: am I getting enough calcium, for instance, or do I need to start guzzling a pint of skimmed milk every day?

Indeed, am I really getting it all so badly wrong that today’s second matchbox of cheese will ensure that I won’t live long enough to get osteoporosis?

The year of Matisse

Matisse – and friend

It was in early September last year, as a chill returned to the air and the shadow of longer nights crept across the light. Just a short while after our return from the Roussillon, I found a book that promised to include a reference to Collioure.

In which case, Hilary Spurling’s Matisse the Life seemed to offer a welcome way of holding on to the light and the warmth and the colour a little longer.

Collioure merited quite a lot of mentions – enough that I learned new things – but beyond that, the book succeeded in drawing me into the work of an artist whose creative explosion in the village in 1905 had proved a seminal moment in modern art.

And from there it was but a short step to wondering where I might be able to find some of his work in London.

At which point, it’s apt to explain that Matisse and I actually go back a long way.

As a teenager studying art for A’ level, part of the course covered the history of art.

Unfortunately, in those days, I could never ‘get’ modern art – and that included Fauvism, the name given sarcastically to Matisse and his fellow artists after critics viewed the artistic result of their stay in Collioure that year.

Red Beach (1905)

Indeed, it was only within the last couple of years that I even remembered that we’d been taught about Fauvism – although beyond remembering the name of both the school and Matisse himself, I recall no other detail, which rather illustrates my point.

Picasso I ‘got’ – at least in terms of comprehending that, when you can do what he could do at 16, you’re going to have to move somewhere very different or stand still and stagnate.

At around about the same time, a school-organised visit to the National Gallery produced my first experience of some van Gogh in the ‘flesh’, blowing me away with the colour and his use of impasto to such an extent that he became an instant favourite – in spite of not being even remotely photographic.

Philosophically, my tastes were all over the place: I loved the likes of van Eyck and, in terms of more recent art, the Impressionists – but Renoir far more than Monet, the latter being too ‘modern’ in his abstraction – and that was as far as I was prepared to entertain the ‘modern’, apart from Picasso, Lowry and photo- and hyper-realism.

Portrait of Greta Moll (1908)

Indeed, it’s possible that that liking for van Eyck – specifically, a love of the Arnolfini Wedding – was essentially because I could view it as a form of early photo-realism.

There were, I suspect, many reasons for all this, but suffice it to say that, in ways I had no comprehension of at the time, it seems likely that a very traditional unbringing contributed to a mental blockage when it came to anything ‘modern’ – particularly when it was ‘experimental’ and abstract (I had the same sweeping attitude toward modern serious music too).

Anyway, fast forward again to last autumn and the search for works by Matisse in London.

Initially, that took me to the National Gallery, which claimed online to possess Portrait of Greta Moll from 1908.

But on visiting, it was nowhere to be found and nobody knew anything about it.

A week or so later, with time to spend in the Aldwych area of London late one afternoon, I decided to make a first visit to the Courtauld Gallery.

The Viaduct at Arcueil (1898-1900)

I was fully prepared to see that institution’s Impressionist works, its Cézannes, its van Goghs and its Gauguins: I was not prepared to walk into a room and suddenly see, when turning around, Matisse’s Red Beach, from 1905 – and to see it just a few short weeks after sitting on precisely that spot at Port d’Avall.

In an instant, the colours made sense – perhaps mostly because my unprepared response was an emotional one, and an emotional response to a subject was precisely what Matisse and his fellow Fauves were attempting to convey on their canvases.

After all, with cameras able to make a photographic record, why try to do the same thing in paint?

There were a couple of other Matisse works in the same room, but that first sighting was, I think, the moment at which I fell in love with his work.

In late November, visiting the Walker Gallery while in Liverpool for work, produced another unexpected spot – this time, a very early Matisse, The Viaduct at Arcueil (1898-1900), which is an excellent illustration of the subsequent impact of the light and colour of the south on this northern artist.

Luxe, Calme et Volupté, (1904)

And right at the end of the year, the mystery of the missing Portrait of Greta Moll was finally solved when we walked into a room at the Tate Modern to see it hanging there, on loan from the National, presumably.

As for 2014, it brought with it the news that the spring and summer Tate Modern blockbuster was due to be Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, covering the late works.

It  seemed to be an astonishing piece of good fortune to have such a major exhibition close at hand so very soon after starting to really appreciate the artist, and it proved to be close to a spiritual experience and one that had its own arty ramification, of which more later.

In the meantime, July’s trip to Paris afforded further Matisse moments.

Port d'Avall (1905)

First, the long-awaited visit to the Orsay saw another of those occasions of walking into a room to find an unexpected pleasure – this time, Luxe, Calme et Volupté from the year before Collioure.

Matisse, having moved from Fauvism to what was known as Divisionism, was already moving on again. But in a small side gallery, with few people around, the opportunity existed to really take in this beautiful canvas, both from distance and then up close to examine the brush work.

Like so much art, reproductions – no matter how good – don’t do justice to the actual work.

The Snail (1953)

The week also produced a number of gems in the Pompidou, and then further works – albeit it from the ‘difficult’ Nice period – at the Orangerie.

But when you’re really getting to grips with the lifelong work of a particular artist, it’s as valuable to see some of the less-successful works as it is to see the iconic pieces.

It was after Paris, though, that I decided to take out a Tate membership – with the initial intention simply being to revisit the cut-outs. Indeed, I returned for a third visit in late August.

And for all that each visit gave me something new – and I felt something like pain knowing that it would not be in London for much longer – it is with forehead-slapping irritation that I only now realise that, in standing so far back from this vast piece, I’d failed to spot the detail, in the top left corner, of the tiny snail cut into the paper.

Then September arrived and it was back once more to Collioure, where the reproductions hung around the village made more sense than before.

Taking a look around the new headquarters of the Fauvism Trail, with its welter of prints of the relevant works by Derain, I suddenly spotted something on the wall behind the desk and, completely ignoring the issue of whether that was out of bounds or not, dashed to see.

It was a print of a long, narrow painting from 1905: Le Port d’Avall, and for some reason, it’s not well known.

Matisse, photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson

It’s important – and this is what saw me hasten past the woman at the desk – because it’s as much a getting-past-Divisionism piece as Luxe, Calme et Volupté.

The Collioure paintings of Matisse that are regularly see are, like Red Beach and View of Collioure, along with the famous views through open windows.

But this was different: this was a link to the previous stage in the artist’s development: the great leap forward was just around the corner.

It was the perfect way to mark the end of a year when I finally got to know Matisse and really appreciate his work.

In her book, Spurling writes: “Discussing luminosity long afterwards with his son-in-law, he [Matisse] said that a picture should have the power to generate light.”

There’s more than one work I’ve seen this past 12 months of which that is most obviously true.

And when you finally ‘get’ that, you understand just why Matisse was so good – and so important in terms of the history of art.

It has been a remarkable year of learning and understanding – and sheer joy.