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We went to Wells to have lunch with the family and have a look at the market (where some of Hot Fuzz was filmed) and the Cathedral. As we looked at the front of the Cathedral we speculated as to what the weird starfish to the side of Jesus might be. The boy Jesus was a bit of a prankster, turning his classmates into goats (in the Apocrypha), so did he turn a couple of lads into sea creatures too? I definitely would do stuff like that if I had magic powers. Sure you'd want to cure 12 people of leprosy (but not everyone- that would be going too far) and dick around on water, but you'd also want to punk people too. Otherwise what's the point?
A man in a blue gilet approached us to answer our questions. He was in some official or semi-official role from the Cathedral (well, he had a gilet, with Wells Ambassador or something written on the back and a pile of leaflets, but to be fair, anyone could do that). He explained that the human-headed starfish were actually seraphim, so it was a much bigger deal than a childhood prank. This was God's work. He'd made angels that looked like starfish and made those angels think that was a good thing. You can tell from a lot of his work, but that guy definitely has a dark side. He did a lot of good stuff too, but the bad stuff is something else. He's like a celestial Jimmy Savile.
The man talked us through lots of the other statues - the Jesus and seraphim were only added in 1985 and the then Prince Charles turned up for the unveiling. I was in the area at the time. How did I miss that?
The 12 figures beneath Jesus are the disciples (nice of them to give Judas a place) and then beneath that the nine types of angels, though most of them have become weather-beaten or actively chiselled off. Having rattled them off quickly he asked the kids if they could list the nine types and I have to say, I'd never heard of most of them and he might have been making it up as he went along (He wasn't of course. As any foole know they are Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. And no, I didn't just copy and paste that from wikipedia) Rather than answer the kids ran off to chase each other around the green and who can blame them.
We got more info on the statues and I was very grateful to the old man for sharing his statue based wisdom, even though we hadn't asked him to. We called the kids back and told them they'd missed out on some good facts. Phoebe said 'It's the school holidays. It's illegal to learn stuff." Which is true. I asked her what the nine orders of angels were and we improvised our own list, Seraphim, Cherubim, Jeroboam, Magnum, Solero, Fruit Pastille, Simon, Dominos, Pizza Express.
Lovely to be back in Wells and the market was fun. We went into the Bishops Palace, which I am not sure I've done before, though I remember going to see the swans in the moat back in the seventies. Those were probably different ones than were there today though. We went into a little corner room which had served as a defensive position and later a place for prayer and contemplation and then later a potato store and then went up on the battlements. The Cathedral looked huge from this angle. If you thought that the history of Wells started and ended with Hot Fuzz you were wrong. It's an amazing place.
