Monday 5^th November 2018

My birthday. 61 years old. Where do the years go?

We walked into the city to finish our exploring. Firstly, to Spon Street. A curious gathering of surviving Medieval buildings from around the city that were taken down and rebuilt together in the 1970’s.

At one end of the street is the church of St. John the Baptist, a lovely church built in 1344. It ceased to be used as a place of worship around 1590 and was used as stables, a market and a cloth winding and dyeing house before being restored to a functioning church in 1734. During the English Civil War, it was used to hold Royalist prisoners taken at the Battle of Preston in 1648. The prisoners were given such a hostile reception that it is said to give rise to the saying “sent to Coventry”.

We visited the market again and bought some Indian fish, Golden Pomfret, that we intend to curry. Also bought some authentic vegetables to go with the curry after speaking to a young Asian couple about what to put in it. After a suspicious start from them, they fell over themselves to help us.   

We again, walked through the city centre stopping off at Lady Godiva’s statue and Priory Gardens. Lady Godiva (died between 1066 and 1086) is well associated with the city of Coventry. Legend has it that she rode naked through the streets after taking pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband's oppressive taxation. Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who obstinately refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would strip naked and ride on a horse through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word, and after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. Just one person in the town, a tailor ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, disobeyed her proclamation in one of the most famous instances of voyeurism.

On the way back to the boat we stopped off at Sainsbury’s for shopping. I stayed outside with Harvey. It was horrible. I was approached by no less than nine people begging, one arguing with me because I wouldn’t give him a fiver and another woman asked if I wanted a screw. The whole area was full of people sitting around drunk or stoned and discarded sleeping bags.

Coventry has an elephant on its coat of arms and across the city are bollards with elephants mounted on top. While there are numerous reasons given for the association, the real reason appears to have been lost. 

Coventry is to be City of Culture 2019. It has a long way to go and has a lot of improvements to make. The city is not nice at all and the people, on the whole, down right unfriendly. The only people to engage with us was the Asian couple in the market and a Latvian guy who was fishing a few days ago.

Brenda had her hair done in the afternoon and I sewed loops onto our new "Lest We Forget" flag. The boat does look good with flags mounted on the back end.

We had a lovely steak dinner. Originally we had planned to eat out, but there are so many fireworks, it would not have been fair on the dog.