Last night we moored in the same place we stopped a week ago, close to the Tesco and a few minutes walk from the center of Banbury. Beside the towpath there is a large and pleasant park, Spiceball Park. The River Cherwell runs through it, and there is a significant engineering effort under way to make the course of the river more natural, including a custom built backwater for the newts to breed. However, there is a strange mystery surrounding this park. Nobody seems to know why it is called Spiceball. Paula tried asking locals, and I tried Googling. No joy. I even asked the guy behind the desk in the town museum, and he said he had been asked that before but he didn’t know, and neither did the curator of the museum. Why Spiceball and not, say, Jellybean or Gobstopper?

I spent half an hour exploring the treasures of Banbury Museum this morning. Unfortunately, they don’t allow photos, so I can’t share their broken Civil War cannon, or their fine collection of vintage police truncheons. However, I couldn’t resist sneaking a photo of this.

Note that the word “FAMILY” is in inverted commas. This is presumably to distinguish it from the “HOSPITAL” enema kit, the “DAIRY FARM” enema kit, or the “KNOCKING SHOP” enema kit. Students may gain extra credit by completing the sentence, “The family that clysters together…”

The museum has a gallery that spans the canal, and disgorges you straight into the Castle Quay shopping center. This is apparently designed to prevent you from ever finding your way out, but I eventually emerged into the market square where there is a fine Tudor building for lease if anyone wants to open a chip shop.

Meandering a little way from there we come to Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn.

Now I could tell you all about how Oliver Cromwell used this pub as a courtroom during the Civil War, probably attracted by the all-you-can-eat curry on Tuesdays. However, there’s something much more interesting about the pub, and that’s the use of “Ye” in the name as the definite article. This should not be pronounced like the ye in, “God rest ye merry, gentleman.” The definite article in English has always been pronounced like the modern “the”. However, English used to have another letter called a thorn which was left here by the Vikings in exchange for Northumbria. It looks like þ, and sounds like a “th”. You’ll still find it in Icelandic. So, you used to be able to spell the definite article þe. However, when printing made it to England, many of the early printers used typesets imported from the continent where the Vikings had not left as much typographical litter, and they found there was no thorn. They decided to use a y instead, so we got the definite article spelt “ye” and sounding like “the”. I’m glad they did not decide to use a p, or we would have had Pe Olde Reine Deer Inn.

While Coventry had the whole Lady Godiva mythos as a source of civic pride, Banbury had a nursery rhyme.

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

A cock-horse can be either a lively horse, an extra horse used to pull loads uphill, a toy hobby horse, or a stallion. Banbury used to have three crosses you could choose from, but in 1600 the Puritans tore them down. I was going to say that seventeenth century Banbury was a hotbed of Puritanism, but Puritans don’t keep their beds hot, because SIN. Anyhow, there were a lot of them, which made it a bit uncomfortable when Banbury Castle was occupied by the Royalists during the Civil War. The Royalists requisitioned all the food from the town to withstand the inevitable siege, and Charles I gave orders that if the castle looked like it was going to be captured the town should be burned. You can see why a guy like that got his head chopped off. The good news is that the town was not completely burned, and after the Civil War, they tore the castle down and used the stone to rebuild.

From 1600 till 1859 there was no Banbury Cross, but the Victorians put one up, and it is every bit as Victorian as you would imagine.

But there was still something missing. There was no fine lady on a white horse, no matter what sort of cock horse you turn up on. However, in 2005 the town put up a statue of a fine lady on a bronze colored horse, because apparently nobody since the Ancient Greeks has invented paint that will stick to statues.

What’s more, the sculptor made her into the Queen of the May, a figure descended from a pagan summer goddess. I find it strangely satisfying how much that would have pissed off the Puritans.

There is all sorts of symbolism in the statue. The seven bluebells on her feet represent the seven days of the week.

The thirteen flowers in her headdress represent the thirteen months of the lunar year.

The pokey nipples represent a desperate attempt to compete with Coventry who get to have their equestrian statue stark naked, and the spider web on her nose represents the fact that Banbury Council can’t afford a feather duster on a stick.

OK, who actually counted the bluebells on her foot and noticed there were in fact eight of them. Look, I am still not making this sh*t up. This is from the sign right by the statue.

Either the sculptor is a member of a radical group of calendar reform terrorists, or nobody in Banbury can count to eight.

Then there was this.

It was a beautiful day today, cruising down the canal. There were long waits at the locks as lots of people are leaving Cropredy, and it takes about ten to fifteen minutes per boat to get through a lock. The boat in front of us for most of the locks today was an interracial couple, which was nice to see. There is hardly anyone except white people in canal boats. I did see one black guy in a chandlery, but it turned out he was making a delivery.

The first cows of the day did not appear till three o’clock, but we did go past a field of goats, and the spot we moored tonight was across the canal from a field where about twenty or thirty wild rabbits were silflaying. This was just past a farm shop with this sign.

If bacon is the answer, what is the question?

Q: Why is it called Spiceball Park
A: Bacon