Monday, March 27, 2006

Just call me.....

One-Paternoster-Sq

Well, I'm back from the trip to England -- actually I was back a week ago, but I brought a cold back with me and am only just now getting over it. (And getting over the 8-hour time shift, which gave me quite a whack -- I'm still going to bed 2 to 4 hours early most nights.)

This trip was mostly about other things and not about paternosters, but I did manage to see a few. I don't, alas, have good photos of the wooden beads I saw at the Museum of London, because I'm still figuring out how to use my camera, and I had a certain amount of difficulty focusing on some things:



... It's a wonderful museum, but they suspend things by invisible brackets inside a brightly lit case (which creates reflections) and often against a distracting background (delightful display, really hard to photograph).



Out on the streets, I didn't succeed in getting my photo taken with a Paternoster Row street sign, either, because they are all twenty feet up in the air on the sides of buildings. But I did get a photo, though not a very good one:

Paternoster-row sign

I also wandered into Paternoster Square, which is a decidedly bleak expanse of stone and concrete that's now taken over what used to be the western half of Paternoster Row. No benches, no flowers, and not surprisingly, no people sitting around enjoying the view (bleah). But I did get a few photos, not least this one, which tickled my funnybone:

Paternoster Chop House

(I think we'd call this establishment a "grill.")

I do have some actual bits of paternoster information to share, but I'm still working on sorting my 1,000-plus photos.

For the moment, what I have to show you is a few amber beads, rather vaguely dated to the "1400s-1500s":

Amber beads

And this rosary, which I did see, but I'm showing it to you on the museum's website since the picture I got of it was very blurry.

More soon.....