Anna and I started with Starbucks on Good Friday. I’d forgotten the ludicrous mug sizes, so unwisely ordered a medium. Norwegian coffee temperance has obviously invaded my soul as I would have preferred less than half the amount, but with the mindless illogic of someone brought up by waste-not-want-not parents, I drank it anyway.

We took a bus into Winchester and took a whistlestop tour of the town centre and the cathedral. It’s a gorgeous old city and we were basking in warmth that felt like summer to me.

We went into the cathedral. There was to be a service shortly, so there were no official tours. Anna has been in Winchester for three years and hadn’t been in before, so it was a new experience for both of us. We were handed a leaflet as we entered. Had I opened it, I might have seen that Jane Austen was buried there, but being a philistine, I didn’t. So I have probably walked over Jane Austen’s grave without being any the wiser.

There were, however, a great many doors in the cathedral, ranging from huge to tiny. I presume people were smaller when the cathedral was built, so most would require careful navigation by tall people. I may have got slightly carried away with photographing them.

I also loved these wonky pews and modern carved altar in one of the side chapels. I feel cathedrals should be living places and not merely monuments to the past.

There were many carvings, of course, in wood and stone.

Stained glass?
Of course!

Beautiful cushions to sit on. I found myself thinking about the (probably) women who sat and lovingly embroidered all of them.

There was also a statue of a diver. Anna obviously inherited her love of quirky things over higher forms of knowledge from her mother, as this was the one historical figure she was aware of. If you check the top of the page, he even had a pub named after him. After diving down into the foundations of a thousand year old building, he probably deserved a pint.

In the afternoon, we boarded a train to Portsmouth in preparation for a visit to Porchester Castle the next day. Having witnessed a lot of muggle history in the morning, in the afternoon we plunged ourselves into the wizarding world. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.