July 26. Strange, very nauseating drink and the usual orange marmalade and scones for breakfast, as well as English sausage (tastes like cheese) and an egg.
We (the St. Paul's Men & Boys' Choir of Akron Ohio) were given a tour of Worchester Cathedral (very short). We were shown the flying buttresses that were inside the cathedral, the old cathedral bells, the grave of A King, and how his servant's grave was in a room and offcenter because of a tradition that said the further East a man was buried, the greater his rank. So, the setup was the King on a stand in the center of the room, with servent stuck into an alcove in the wall. The tradition also said that if the person had been on a crusade, his legs would be crossed. The first crusade was one leg over the other, the second crusade was vice versa. It became the fashion to go on crusades though, so the crossed legs don't always mean anything. If one died in battle there was a lion at the their head, and if they died at home, there was a dog at their head. It became the fashion to die in battle, though, so the lion doesn't always mean something.
At lunch we had more of that terrible juice. I left quickly after I ate, since I heard that they were going to let the choir into the tower. I could feel how high up it was while I was in the tower, climbing those hundreds of stairs. Occasionally it was so dark you couldn't see the stairs. Finally, someone ahead said they found the top. I went on up, and found that it wasn't the top, but the room where the clock's parts were. You could see a little wheel that would turn 1/4 way every 1/2 second, and all sorts of other wheels and pulleys moving back and forth. We looked around some more and found that it was the top of the roof. You could see the topside of those neat arches, and a bunch of shafts going down into darkness. There was also a little door. Someone opened the door, and we found it to be a toilet (W.C.).
We found where the staircase continued and went on up. Occasionally there was a door with a hole in it. I looked through them and found the bells and the ropes to pull them. The bells were on large wheels, and looked neat.
We continued up, and after 230, 231, or 235 stairs, we reached the top. From below, the railings looked like handrails of stone. Actually, they were about 6 feet high and covered with chickenwire. I went over to one, and nearly fell on the way. The wooden grating covering the floor would shift under your weight, and it had a number of small steps. It was nervewracking to nearly fall while being so far up above the ground. You could see how far down it was to the slate, undecorated roof, and everything else in the city. You could also see this large spire, unattached to any church. It was taller than the tower.
I climbed up on the platform about 4 foot tall on the tower, and looked around. I could see the whole county, or whatever they call it. I then got an idea of how to remember how high it was, and walked off. I of course fell 4 feet then landed. It didn't do what I was hoping, though, because I expected it. On the way back down, we found a rope going through the room with the clocks. We looked through the hole, and saw all he way down to the ground.
After we came down, I tried to look up through the hole, but I couldn't. I saw more of the cathedral, and saw a baptismal font in the South bay that looked like a mixture of a pillar and a skyscraper. It was richly decorated and had statues all over it.
In the afternoon I decided to go off on my own to that spire. I found that Worchester is the hardest place in the world to be lost in. The tower and the spire are visible everywhere and their position tells you where you are. The spire used to be part of a very old church, but the church was torn down because it was disintegrating. The spire was left as a memorial to the soldiers in World War I. On the way back to the cathedral I bought a meat pie from a vendor with a booth at the city market.