Currant state of play

We forgot the excitement of the Lions' rugby triumph and Murray's Wimbledon, a week ago, in the fever surrounding the England win in the first Ashes test yesterday - a fever more concentrated because of the game's intense fluctuations over its five days. 11 o'clock came and went this morning with a distinct feeling of anti-climax, and still we have three days to wait before another round of cricketing battle with the old enemy commences.

Meanwhile, our blackbird has relocated her old nest: we moved it from by the back door into the store in our sunless area, and she is once more sitting on eggs. And Caroline is battling with the the currant glut, trusting to her painting stool, with its canvas much in need of replacing. "Do you suffer from the tyranny of fruit?" Tamara Talbot Rice was wont to ask.

Hill

Another first today, visiting the hamlet of Hill, right down by the River Severn beyond Berkeley. We were supporting the Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust and in the process enjoying a jolly lunch in a left-over marquee pitched upon a sodden lawn. Never can loitering within tent have been such a prevalent activity in any recent Summer.

St Michael's church is no contender for any revised edition of Jenkins, but it has a certain atmosphere, thanks to the generosity of various Fusts. One of them married a Jenner - not the famous doctor's family - and Jenner-Fusts still live at Hill Court. (Indeed they are cousins both of Caroline and of Nicky Talbot Rice, GHCT's enthusiastic and welcoming Chairman.)

Had a bomb dropped upon that lunchtime tent, much of the fun would have been taken away from Gloucestershire's social life. Not that I would have survived to bemoan it of course.

Glorious Gloucester

Clutching my wonderful bus pass and a sandwich, I set off for Gloucester yesterday with a view to exploring the County Records Office. That will have to wait till another day.

I was sidetracked by the Cathedral: just before I left home, Sarah Loveday had arrived, and said I should drop by the Cloisters to look at Diana Green's Creation & Fall etchings, which are on temporary display. So I did (and admired them); which led to an amble round the Ambulatory and into the Lady Chapel. I realised that, in spite of many previous visits, I was looking at much of what I saw for the first time.

An hour or more had passed when a Steward walked by. "Was I joining the Tower Tour, starting in five minutes?" "No," I said, but then thought, "Why not?" The tower of the Cathedral is visible on almost any walk around Cheltenham, but I had never climbed up it.

The guide on duty - it happened to be a friend of ours, Sue Hamilton - does not it seems share my fear of heights. Intrepidly she led us 175 steps up to Great Peter (which strikes the hours), into the adjacent Ringing Chamber, and up again past the ring of twelve bells. Finally, we emerged onto the roof, and there we were, in driving rain, 225 feet above the Cathedral floor.

The view is of course amazing, even on a day like yesterday. When taking the photograph above - there are some more in a web sequence beginning here - I was pointing the camera West over the nave. In mediaeval times, the River Severn would have been visible flowing from right to left in the top of the picture. The West walk of the Cloister is visible at the bottom right, and beyond it the half-timbered building is where Richard II is thought to have held his Parliament of 1378.

To its left is the former Deanery. Caroline's great-great-grandfather Dean Edward Rice, who held office for 36 years, would have lived there with his 12 children: he kept chickens in the Cloister garden, according to Tamara Talbot Rice's autobiography. Sue Hamilton said there were still chickens kept in a roof garden somewhere in the Cathedral Close: I didn't spot them.

At that height, you cannot help thinking about the faith of the monks who organized such a tower to be built 550 years ago. On the bus, I was reading a newspaper article by a professor of philosophy under the headline "The rise of Milliband brings at last the prospect of an atheist prime minister." God save us!

The Victorian age

Our friend Terry Murphy once told me of a question put to him by Tamara Talbot Rice (the then widow of Caroline's cousin David, the Byzantinist). Tamara never lost the art of rolling her Rs, having been born (before the Revolution) of Russian parents.

"Do you suffer from the tyranny of fruit?" she asked, making "tyranny" sound like a cat's purr. Well, our Victoria plum tree is weighed down with fruit this year, and it's not a time to be away from home. Each evening I run the gauntlet of the local wasp population in order to pick the plums that are ripe. And end up with red fingers from stoning the fruit. Caroline is already asking whether she has enough room in the deep freeze.

The deal as we arrived here was for builders to come and erect a bungalow at the rear of our house: they yanked out an old apple tree in order to provide the driveway. The best investment I've made was planting our two plum trees to take its place.