As I was up during the night, I could not resist the temptation to discover what I could about the Monk’s Bench which used to belong to my father and was safely delivered to me yesterday in Bromsgrove. The piece is certainly quite large being some 1.45 metres in length (just short of 5′) and the seat forms a cover to a capacious chest as you would expect. The bench has three panels on the back and three on the front, five of them being the same which have the appearance of a ship’s wheel set in a framework and decorated with fern-line plants. But it is the central wood carved panel which arouses the most interest. It shows a couple in medieval garb (I would guess 17th century but it would take a more experienced historical eye to discern the exact period) and of the couple (man and female relative) the man is holding out his hand. Kneeling before him, and also extending her hand to receive what is being offered, is a woman also dressed similarly but in front of what appears to be a simple stone structure which could be a hermitage. There is a clue in the woodcarving because there is a type of rivulet between them which one might suppose is a flaw in the wood but was certainly carved in that way. I wonder whether the wood carver had found this way of expressing a sort of boundary line that was not to be crossed as the hands are extended across it. From my researches, it seems that mediaeval scenes were much beloved by the Victorians, perhaps recreating what they saw as a romanticised past golden era and this was quite a common motif in these monk’s benches. But the predominance of the ship’s wheel motif and the fact that my father had lived not far from the North Sea has made me wonder whether the whole piece might have been constructed from some of the oak remnants of a shipwreck and the bench was one way of commemorating the vessel. This is not entirely fanciful because I did read on the web of one’s monk’s bench constructed from this material. Looking at the superb hinges and examining the minute turnings of the elements of the ship’s wheels (if this is what they are) makes me believe that the whole is of oak, mid-Victorian construction but I realise that decoding the nature of the wood carved panel is calling for a lot of conjecture on my part. I think that when we have visitors to the house of a certain age, I will get them to cast their own critical eye on the piece of furniture and give me their considered opinion. But apart from all of these nocturnal investigations and musings, yesterday the day has started off gloomy and cooler than of late and I must ensure that I get down in time to see my Saturday friends (whom I missed last Tuesday as my X-ray appointment intervened)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the morning, I walked down the hill and had a few minutes of conversation with my Italian friend. Again, I expressed to her my disappointment that she was selling up her house and leaving the area and I am sure that her mind is well and truly made up. I just repeated to her my regret that a long-standing friend would be leaving but I think the absence of a car these days is leaving her feeling a little isolated, coupled with the fact that her knee is continuing to give her some grief. Once I arrived in Wetherspoons<\/em>, I eventually saw one of my two Saturday friends (it being still a bit too hot for the other one) We had our normal pleasant chat over breakfast and then I went to join my University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller and we spent some time discussing such wonderful topics such as the state of our backs and the costs of funerals. Although this does not sound the most scintillating of conversations, it is quite important that we share common knowledge with each other. I showed both of my friends the photo that I had of the recently acquired Monk’s bench – one thought it looked absolutely marvellous whilst the other considered it a hideous monstrosity – well, you cannot legislate for people’s tastes. On the way back up the hill which seems quite a long walk without a wheelchair in front of me (paradoxically) I met up with our Irish friend and exchanged bits of news with each other, not least about the new priest who should be taking over at the start of September. I then cooked myself a lunch of quiche, salad and coleslaw and had a little doze before I ventured out to do my 20-minute stint of sweeping up and tidying of the patio at the rear. I expect we shall have some rain in the next day or so and then I may give the patio a special sweeping with an extra stiff long handled brush I have just located.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I attended the church service as I do, on my own these days, but we had no organist and therefore no hymns sung this evening, But at the end of the service, I was pleased to make contact for a few moments with my Irish friend from down the road and we may be seeing each for a little while the next day. When I got home, I cooked myself some scrambled eggs for a ‘high’ tea and watched England being absolutely massacred by India in the day’s play at the Test Match, here is Edgbaston as it happens. India were scoring incredibly freely and got over 600 runs on the board with the new Indian captain scoring over 250 runs in the first innings and then over 150 runs in the second. England having been fielding all day were put into bat and lost three quick wickets so the massacre of England, first with the bat and then with the ball continued. I then started to watch the much-billed match between France and England in the Womens’ European competition. England scored what appeared to be a good goal but it was disallowed because of an offside detected by the VAR in the buildup to the goal. France then scored an easy goal after a quick breakaway and so the score had France in the lead at half time. I cannot actually see the England team beating France and perhaps a draw is as much as they can hope for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I was up during the night, I could not resist the temptation to discover what I could about the Monk’s Bench which used to belong to my father and was safely delivered to me yesterday in Bromsgrove. The piece is certainly quite large being some 1.45 metres in length (just short of 5′) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7506,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions\/7506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}