Tonight's TV
Abbey habits
In Search Of Medieval Britain
(BBC4, 7.30pm);
Chinese School (BBC4, 10pm)
THIS is a tale of monks going commando
and a tightrope walker
falling to his death at Durham
Cathedral.
The knickerless
monks are revealed by Dr Alixe
Bovey as she goes In Search Of
Medieval Britain. She ditches her sat-nav and
heads north using the 1360 Gough Map, the
oldest surviving road map of Britain.
No one knows who made the map or why,
but it was the first to depict the country with
reasonable accuracy, with 600 towns and
cities marked.
The North was known as the wildest part
of England back then, not least because it
was in the front line of the on-going war with
Scotland.
Fountains Abbey was founded by a breakaway
group of monks from a nearby abbey.
They went back to basics to live a "life of
poverty, isolation and going commando", as
Dr Bovey explains. They believed not wearing
underwear stopped their privates getting hot
and cooled their ardour.
These medieval entrepreneurs lived in one
of the richest monasteries in the country,
thanks to its flock. Not the congregation but
sheep with high quality fleece.
The monks didn't much like hard work, recruiting
a new kind of monk - the lay brother
- to do the menial jobs. But the business hit
a bad patch in 1274 when the monastery
couldn't fulfill its contract, having taken
money for wool before the clipping. It ended
up £900 in debt, the equivalent of £500,000 in
today's money.
Dr Bovey is a good guide, digging out
quirky facts and figures as she arrives in
York. In the Shambles, she points out the
flesh shelves where butchers displayed their
meat and recalls that the road itself was a
drain where dung, blood and offal were
chucked twice a week.
She takes us on a tour of York Minister -
which saves us a few pounds as there's a
charge to enter this house of God - and explains
all about the magnificent stained glass
windows.
Then on to Durham Cathedral, where lay
brothers were used for different duties than
at Fountains Abbey. They were medieval
bouncers employed to eject rowdy pilgrims.
They didn't stop a tightrope walker stringing
up a rope between the central and western
towers and attempting to walk along it.
He slipped and plummeted over 200ft to his
death in 1237.
Tightrope walking appears as dangerous as
being in the Yorkshire Dales after William the
Conqueror landed. The Normans faced fierce
resistance in the North, resulting in threequarters
of the population of Yorkshire "disappearing".
And not on holiday, I suspect.
The figures produced in Chinese School are
massive too: 250 million schoolchildren,
450,000 primary schools and 235 languages in
China.
The five-part series gets behind the figures
by concentrating on just a few pupils in three
educational establishments - a high school,
middle school and primary school.
It's tough being a student in China. You
need to be fit and have stamina as the high
school day begins at 6am and doesn't end
until 10.15pm. After that, many students rent
rooms and continue their studies into the
early hours.
Daytime activities include reading aloud
(the preferred way to learn subjects by heart),
aerobics and 15 minutes of eye exercises
(which Chairman Mao believed improved
eyesight).
Students also have to take practical athletics
tests, which count for 50 per cent of the
final exam mark. That means competing in
the 100 metres, 80 metres, triple jump and shot
put.
Middle school pupils enjoy a grave-sweeping
festival, although it doesn't sound very
cheerful. The idea is to visit family graves,
offer up prayers and pay respect to ancestors
in exchange for help in getting children get
into a good university.
Families buy "hell bank notes" to burn to
give ancestors some spare cash in the afterlife
and, presumably, make them more likely
to help with educational matters.
Even odder is a primary school ritual called
Love Your Eraser, which entails naming the
pupil with the worst kept eraser.
The poor seven-year-old chosen just about
manages to hold back the tears as he's named
and shamed. He's made to wear a shabby
jumper, beg forgiveness and shake hands
with everyone in the class. It's a real lesson
in humiliation.
9:59am Thursday 10th April 2008
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