The perils of Shakespeare in the open air

So far we’ve been fairly free from travel problems – or the problems of summer, I might call them. And apart from the stinging nettles I encountered when I walked with Celia the other day – the results were itchy for a short time, but then turned ticklish, which was odd – and the midges that bit when we went to see the Chapterhouse Players at Barnham Broom a few weeks back, we’ve kept clear of anything nasty, including tummy upsets and so forth.

However, Celia did have quite a reaction to the insect bites she got that night while watching Shakespeare (it made it all the more memorable an occasion!). For well over a fortnight she was itching the places they’d bitten her, and nothing, not antihistamines, not insect bites soothers, not calamine lotion, not nothing (!) kept her from scratching. She’d wake in the night scratching. She’d have to get up in the night to scratch and go and soothe herself somehow. Her stomach and arms turned red where the skin was getting attacked constantly, and she was not a happy lassie.

In the end the itchiness went away, but for a while it looked as though being woken in the night was going to be a permanent state of affairs!

Going back in time

Well, we’ve hardly been living on the edge of late, but we did have lunch in a house built in 1570 today. As the host said, it’s amazing to think that Shakespeare was writing his plays around the time the house was built. Actually Shakespeare was only born in 1564, so he probably wasn’t writing much at that point, but you get the idea.

The people who own the house, which is situated near Bury St Edmunds, are both into the conservation of old buildings, and this place is a prime example of a house built (and restored) in the wattle and daub process. It has a thatched roof (I’m told thatched roofs are great, except that they need more frequent repair than more solid materials such as the tile roofs that are common everywhere in Norfolk) and that timber and ‘plaster’ look that’s typical of Elizabethan houses. (You can see some photos of the process of building one these houses here.)

It’s a bit weird going into a house this old (400 plus years), and sitting down at a table amongst furniture that’s also old (not as old as the house, but still old). On the walls are photographs of various ancestors in the typical serious poses of the early 20^th century and before, and the floors in the kitchen are made of bricks on sand. Apparently that stays very dry. The rooms have an uneven look about them, and even though I’m only 5’6” tall, I hit my head on one of the door frames, and would have hit it on more if I hadn’t watched out. Even the ceiling beams are within inches of my head.

The house has mod cons, of course, because these are 21^st century people, but it retains the atmosphere of a home built centuries ago – plenty of creaking floors, for example. (There were plenty of those upstairs at Blickling Hall as well – no doubt there for the benefit of Anne Boleyn’s ghost!).

We’re going back to this house mid-July, to stay there for a week, so you’ll no doubt hear more about it.