The Canterbury Tales

"Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be," wrote Jane Austen in Emma – and up to a point, I agree. I’ve been in the UK for five months and have yet to step outside London’s city limits. Cough, cough, splutter, splutter ... I’ve been feeling a run-down lately, so when a day trip to Canterbury was proposed I jumped at the chance to enjoy clean air and wide-open spaces. And Austen would approve: she herself was a regular visitor to the district.

Jonathan, Julie, Jane and I took the train to the cathedral city on Easter Sunday. We headed straight for the main attraction, but when we arrived we were told we couldn’t go in until the morning service had finished. We loitered around the entrance until who should emerge from the nave but the top man in the mitre, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. After him came a curious procession of people in ceremonial get-up. The cathedral itself is massive and magnificent, parts of it dating back to the first church established on the site in 597AD by St Augustine. Inside we saw the chapel where that "turbulent priest" Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170 by some of the king's over-zealous knights, and where former Archbishop Robert Runcie and Pope John-Paul II prayed together in 1982. In the crypt were the tombs of King Henry IV and his wife Joan of Navarre, and the Black Prince Edward Plantagenet. We lit a candle for my father who is about to start his post-operative cancer treatment.

We wandered around Canterbury for the next few hours: Jonathan ran into some familiar faces from Parliament in New Zealand in the street, who led us in the direction of a slap-up pub meal, where we ate, drank and talked a lot of nonsense. Though the roast, it should be noted, was not as good as the one Brigit Stevens had cooked for us and newly-arrived Dominic Hollands in Brixton the previous night. I returned to London after a brilliant day out in good heart and health.

The big news is that I’m in the Zone. I’ve left Hackney Council to take over Jane’s PR job at Zone Vision, a digital TV broadcaster. Jane, meanwhile, has gone on to wow ‘em all at BBC World. Now, Jane and I have history. Five years ago, I first met her when I replaced her at the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Let’s just say, I shall be watching her future career with interest!

The job is very exciting – and just a bit big and scary. In fact scariness is part of the general job description: I’m the PR manager for the channel’s Horror and Reality channels and I’ll be working with our international offices on their campaigns for the company’s many other channels. I’ll be getting out of London more often in the future – along with bloodthirsty psychopaths and ambulance chasers, there’s going to be a bit of international travel.

ADDENDUM: A few more pics courtesy of Ms Julie Clothier, CNN and Turner('s).com.