We went to the Holy Trinity Centre to a concert by a local 5-member band. Their instruments included voice, drum, squeeze-box, piccolo, Irish bagpipes, bassoon, fiddle, accordion, mandolin, dulcimer, tuba, and others that I can‘t remember.The music sounded very current and alive, unlike the music of some Celtic bands. One of the songs was a Hardy poem set to music--I think it was the Trampwoman’s Lament--which was the only excuse the Hardy Society needed to sponsor the event. There was wine and juice and biscuits, and John and I visited with his acquaintances from previous conferences.
took a captive coach-load of conference participants on a 5-hour death march around Tess sites. We drove miles and miles past the big and little dairies, listening to Furze read passages describing cows and barns and sheep fairs and hillsides, as our poor driver maneuvered past tractors and lorries. Here is the Wool Bridge, 
over which Tess and Angel walked after they married, and the site of their first fatal night together (fictional, of course). 
Hardy fans are as insane as any others, if not more so--we clustered around Furze as he pointed out relevant geographical spots from Bulburrow heights, and the day grew more and more hazy and hot. 
The air conditioning was inadequate, particularly in the back over the engine, where John and I were sitting, and feeling myself dehydrate (stupid blood pressure meds) I soon drank both my bottles of fluid. Four and ½ hours later, and no toilet in sight, the back row staged a mutiny, and the warden of the next church site (Rampisham Church, 
where Hardy accomplished his architectural apprenticeship by restoring the bell tower) allowed us to use the bathroom in his home.
now playing Polonius in Stratford, Cheryl Campbell, and Harriet Walter, 
who played the brother’s greedy wife in Sense and Sensibility and my favorite, Harriet Vane in the BBC’s version of the Peter Wimsey stories. So I had my usual little thrill of celebrity insanity--I walked past all three on my way to the toilet after the program. (I’ve never actually touched a celebrity except my first, when Alan Rickman bumped into my knee at the Lyttleton Theatre on the south bank clear back before Harry Potter. I realized then that I had as much crazy fan girl makeup in me as anyone did).
I should imagine, but don‘t know for sure, that many were Catholic. Of course they could have been Protestant too, depending on whether it was Henry, Mary, Elizabeth, or the Stuarts on the throne. It was interesting that the monument didn’t say which side anybody was on. It did say this: 
It is just the core of the wall, as "the smoother facing was used by locals for building in the middle ages." What would it mean to live in a place this old, so soaked in human history? Near the South Train Station are the Maumbury Rings, fortifications first built during the Stone Age, then made into a Roman amphitheatre, then used as a fairgrounds and an animal pen, and now a sort of public picnic area. Our students played Frisbee on/in them three years ago.
Here is the town clock, 
and the bandstand, 
where there may be music and/or theatrical pieces later. John went on a walking tour of Dorchester sites and I walked back to the B&B to work on my novel, but fell asleep for four hours instead. Sleep like drowning in the heat. But I think I’m over jetlag.
He probably would have objected to the lightning rod as well. This is a modern church, according to the pamphlet on its history, with the tower dating back only to the 1400’s, and most of the church 19th and 20th century, although built on Roman and Norman foundations. The windows were by William Morris and Edward Bourne-Jones.
On a cold winter night, this church would have been foot-aching frigid, but on a hot summer morning, it was a cool oasis, a vaulted, echoing sanctuary from the world outside. I dumped all my change in the little bag they brought around during the collection, and now I don‘t have any money for the bus.
on our 4-hour layover, awake during the compressed night and morning in the air,
and haggard by Victoria Station, 
waiting for our train to Dorchester.
Somewhere just out of sight are the remains of Roman Poundbury Camp and aqueduct, which we will have to walk to and look at before we leave. Dorchester was Durnovaria two thousand years ago. I thought the streetlight was evocative of Narnia, except at night, when it is just another light in the eyes.