It is a mild, sunny prototypical spring day here in Toronto. There was a strong thunderstorm here yesterday afternoon, with sheets of rain, immediate lightning after thunder, and it was over before the sun set. Now spring really begins; the trees and flowers and everything can grow and branch out...

Today's title comes from Tim Westwood, whose Easter Saturday show was as pleasantly odd as ever, playing music for 'the ladies' and talking about the Primark retail riot on one hand, and interviewing a boxer on his methods and attitudes on another...but yes, freedom is a must. Freedom is an odd thing; until you want it, you may not even realize you actually NEED it as well. Freedom is a right. A hard-won right, to be sure, but always worth striving for and then, once having been achieved, used. Going on vacation is a kind of freedom, and that is why, despite what others might have advised me to do, I went out every day instead of staying home and resting & getting lots of fluids. There was simply too much to do, to get close to, to get to know as well as I possibly could; and I always had enough strength & mental alertness, so...

We did do things that were not always about music, but music, of course, was never far away. At the National Portrait Gallery we went up to the Victorian floor to find the Brontes, but did a fair bit of the political/scientfic/royal part first, including one of those massive who's who paintings of a bunch of High Victorian Tories at an opening of an art show at the Royal Academy; the odd man out being John Ruskin, who is just visible over someone's shoulder ("like Paul Weller" he said, meaning the equally odd man out at the recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?")

Then there was Vicky herself, in stone and paint, short and regal and as a young woman rather odd herself, though she grew into being the queen much as a tree, once a sapling, grows into a mighty immovable tree. Certainly she had that authority by the time the massive painting of her giving a Bible to an east African was done - the Bible being the secret to British power and might, apparently. (He called this "Get one Bible.")

But the most touching of the Victorian paintings didn't have her at all in it; rather, one of a Danish princess who had just landed with her lady-in-waiting, said princess in England as she was to marry a royal herself (a prince, I guess) - she & her helper looked suitably different, sober, but the girls on either side strewing flowers from little baskets in her path were all rosy-cheeked with excitement and awe; it was a solid sort of excitement that you could tell was genuine, giddy almost, but reverent too. That kind of awe is almost gone now, a kind of blanket adoration that Princess Diana generated, and that King William (should he get there) may yet generate, if he merits it. The painting seemed mythological in a way, much deeper than just a Danish royal being feted upon reaching English soil.

But after a while (including a nice look at portraits of artists & writers from the early 20 c. including Spencer, Lowry, Woolf, etc.) we did find the Victorian writers room, and I ran to the famous Bronte painting; the one Branwell did of all four of them, only he was rubbed out, but persists, like a ghost. The one where Charlotte is thus separated from Emily and Anne, and (for whatever reason) looks different from them. Right next to this is the painting he did of Emily in profile; Emily, who I always liked the most as she was the most private of all of them, the most housebound and thus in a way the most free. (I won a book about her poetry called Last Things from Bronteblog, now I just need to get a book of her poetry & I'm set.) Right by the Brontes was Dickens, an admirable man in many ways but also a man whose mania for life simply wore him out; if I wasn't so sick we would have gone to Canterbury and I would have seen (from the train) how far he walked to work and back every day - a marathon, and for what purpose? To feel life, breathe it, all around him? I suppose so. The Victorian emphasis on industry and good works and charity still exists in today's England in various ways, but I doubt if anyone would walk so far to work, or if they could, for that matter.

After seeing the first ladies, we went upstairs to see the next ones - the Regency writers, specifically Jane Austen. Her little ink sketch is in a protected elevated box, which I think would amuse her; her eyes are the feature of the portrait, large and open and looking with interest and some critical amusement at something or someone. This room was full of familiar portraits, as Penguin Classics has used almost all of them, including one of Charles Lamb that I hugged (as much as you can hug a painting). That done, we left, to wander around the 70s and 80s photography, and then found the gift shop, where I bought a small amount of postcards, wishing they had more of the ones I wanted, of course. The main exhibit you had to get a ticket for was Faces of Fashion, starring the ubiquitous and boring Kate Moss; the studiousness & studium of the postcards for that were practically radioactive, so we left as soon as we could.

Marcello has written about our Hampton Court experience far better than I could, but I should say that if you go there you should be prepared (unless you already are) to spend some major time walking, going up & down stairs, walking on gravel, and possibly getting lost in the maze. I hardly took any pictures (because you're not allowed, indoors) and what happened was unphotographable anyway.

The first sight: sun on the rippling water, green grass as far as you could see, the brick solidity of the building itself, the heavy gravel path still there heading right into the inner court; all almost dream-like in vivid colors and fairytale proportions. This was all a bit spoiled by having to stand in line for tickets, but once inside there is a strange sense - I couldn't believe it at first - that people, royalty no less, lived here for a long time. Here is where they ate, the stag room full of antlers fixed to the walls, here is where the yeomen waited, there is where visitors waited to be called upon...all of the Tudor section was small and cozy, tapestry rugs on the wall, iron pots & pans still there...the great rooms showing a sense of proportion and nobility. Then the 18th century section with higher ceilings, awful ceiling murals, and a sense of way more money than style, though I had to keep reminding myself, this was the Baroque period, this was the style, and if someone wants a big portrait of someone trying to keep Apollo, the Sun God, from starting forth on his day, right over her bed, well?...

After this, we climbed (and climbed) rectangular levels of stairs (like Esher, only with a point) to the 'grace and favor' apartments, rooms the royals let more regular folk live in once they had left Hampton Court in the 1830s. They were occupied until the mid-90s by people who somehow lived without running water or electricity; the benefit being, I suppose, no rent, plus all the gardening and lawn bowling and God knows what else the grounds had to offer. There are still baskets on pulleys to remind visitors that everything had to be hauled up or taken down (food, I'm guessing) by basket...the rooms are empty now, full of displays and projections and there's even a room full of binders and books documenting who lived there; but we wanted to go outside, so we did...

...down to the gravel path leading to the swans' domain, water - the long water. Swans seem so elegant at first, but they are birds, they honk, they groom themselves; cygnets were around too, brown and like ducklings...I took a picture of a swan, perhaps the swan, and we slowly made our way to the maze. It was Easter, and the maze was a popular destination, so it was more a matter of getting through than anything else, though at one point we were lost; little kids all hopped-up on chocolate would whiz this way...and then come back, their families trailing behind them; I started to walk (holding Marcello's hand, as ever) and somehow we got to the centre, which was of course populated by more kids. So much for monk/nun-like contemplation; and I never could make out what the recorded voices in the hedge walls were saying...

...and then the cafe. Oh, what a captive audience will pay for pea soup & some carrot cake! We got some good cloudy apple juice, sat in a corner where they put somewhat rickety chairs just behind a decorative hedge, and listened to Pick of the Pops, an astonishing and life-changing event. No show that starts with the O'Jays can be all that bad, but this one was somehow a gift, our own royal blessing if you will...Easter is the time of renewal, resurrection, belief and incredible joy, and we experienced all these things from the moment we entered the grounds to the next morning...apart from the day he proposed to me, it is our most sacred day and we were, I am sure, the happiest people in England, if not the world...