Home life
Glastonbury tour
Alice Thomas Ellis
Iwent to Glastonbury last week with my friend Charles. We wanted to see if the Tor would have a strange effect on us. Charles had a friend who was so overcome by the atmosphere halfway up that he had to turn round and come down. I felt the same way. The shallow steps are killing. Either you have to take giant strides to get one foot on each or you have to adopt a mincing gait and take several steps to a step, and once you start thinking about it you tend to fall over. There was a wind at the top which made the ears ache, and the knowledge (gleaned from a book in one of the witchcraft shops) of the death on site of the abbot who had defied Henry VIII made one feel miserable and heavily pessimistic about the nature of humanity. Everything about Henry VIII has this effect on me.
Apart from the breeze, the thought of the hanging, drawing and quartering, and
the profound hope that Henry's ulcers really gave him gyp, I experienced little. Other people have been whisked into the air or found themselves in subterranean passages. I may have been resistant to the influences, having encountered several left-over hippies — long frocks, long hair, long whiskers, not much personal hygiene — and they always affect me like this. I find myself automatically against every- thing they claim to be for: love, peace, flowers, beads, beans, everything. If you are consumed with loathing for Henry VIII and contempt for the idiots in fringed waistcoats it takes some time to remember on which moral ground you customarily stand.
Then there were the witches. I think I saw several — most of them running tea-shops — but of course I could be mistaken. It's just that witches and tea- shops seem to go together. I don't know why and can think of no historical connec- tion. The cream tea is very far removed from the eye of newt and toe of toad. Still, there is something funny about Glaston- bury. I felt that if there was some elemental force there it was bitterly resent- ful of the tea-shops and was just biding its time. Something had annoyed it way back in the 13th century or thereabouts and it had responded with a colossal earthquake.
Going round the ruins of the abbey was ' at once an uplifting and even more de- pressing experience. What remains is still so beautiful that it is impossible to imagine the cast of mind of those who allowed it to fall into disrepair and those who carried away chunks of it to add to their own horrid houses. Some tiny sections of tiled floor have been preserved and the colours are so glorious that by an immense effort you can briefly visualise what the building must once have been like before the hellish Henry destroyed everything. We had hired a tape describing the history and layout of the place and I was diverted to learn that each Christmas a sprig of the Glastonbury Thorn is sent to the Queen. It seemed peculiarly ironic in view of the behaviour of her predecessor. Then I thought of the other Charles — the Prince of Wales and all was forgiven. He is quite splendidly sound on the related subjects of architecture and vandalism and would nev- er have permitted the destruction of the abbey, or allowed those Tudor thugs to pinch bits of it. As we approached the Thorn we heard some tweeting, and there was a robin hopping about on a twig without any hint of shyness or alarm. While in fact the robin is not a very nice bird, being given to murdering his rivals or anything he sees encroaching on his territory, there is a legend that he got his red breast in trying to wrench out the thorns from the crown of Our Lord on the cross. This struck us as pleasantly symbolic and we drove home satisfied, despite not having levitated on the Tor.
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