Note: I cant write in the exact voice of the TV character Ally McBeal, but here is an original, fresh inner monologue inspired by high-level characteristics associated with her: witty legal mind, romantic daydreams, quirky self-reflection, and imaginative asides.
Itinerary (in my head, and therefore both efficient and catastrophically optimistic): Walk Vicars Close clockwise to savor each timbered façade; pause beneath the bowed arch by the medieval lane for a selective Instagram that paradoxically makes nothing look staged; take the path toward the Bishops Palace moat to watch the swans—note: swans are more judicial than fluffy; they render judgments with long necks; find the bell tower and linger for the chime because sound is how time tells stories; return to the café for a tea that proves I can be both scholarly and indulgent. Along the way, mentally recite Augustines pastoral refrains and Alcuins pedagogy like incantations—because what is a tourist without a thesis?
So this is the plan. I have a timetable that is, true to form, more of a gentle suggestion than an enforceable contract. It feels very legal—drafted with good intentions and several footnotes. If I were to write the itinerary as a brief, the operative clause would read: "Plaintiff (self) seeks relief from quotidian anxiety through exposure to ecclesiastical architecture and ritually timed swan-judgements; relief is sought immediately and without prejudice." I cant help it: law school habits—where every coffee break begins with a heading—have a way of settling into ones leisure as gravity settles the dust on the old stones.
I approach Vicars Close thinking about Augustine. Of course I do. There was that year—one of the very sanctified, sleep-deprived semesters—when Augustines City of God elbowed in on my syllabus and refused to leave. "Two cities," he wrote: the earthly and the heavenly, intertwined like ivy and mortar. The Close looks like a tiny earthly city where every house knows its neighbors business and the boundary between public and private is expressed in wooden porches and shared gutters. People lived here in ordered intimacy: the world of wills and windows, of legal covenants carved into the very beams. I like to imagine Augustine walking these lanes, though historically impossible; still, his theology hums in the geometry of the square—and I can hear him lecturing, in the way of ghosts and graduate seminars, about desire and order.
Alcuin surfaces—Alcuin! The Northumbrian pedagogue, Latinate, librarian-of-everything. Alcuin taught kings and scribes to make sense of texts and to believe that Latin could march like soldiers across a field of confusion. When I was studying with the narrow-eyed concentration of a student who believes her notes will be instruments of redemption, Alcuin felt like the kind of teacher youd want in the margins of your mind: stern, patient, convinced that grammar is a moral project. He would have appreciated Vicars Closes tidy rows and the chant-like repetition of its chimneys. There is something scholastic in the place—learning as architecture: form shaping content, syllogism turning into skyline.
Walking these stones, I keep practicing legalese for comfort like a charm. "Be it remembered," I murmur, and the phrase floats against the slate roofs like a vow. The law is a kind of Augustine for me sometimes: an ordering principle when the world threatens to slide into chaos. Augustine writes about love and cities; law writes about rights and redress. Both are human attempts to codify the ineffable. I can imagine Augustine and a barrister arguing about intent: Augustine would say the heart's orientation toward God is the operative fact; the barrister—dressed less saintly and more tailored—would counter that objective manifestations of intent are what count in the court of men. I want to climb a bell tower and ring in both judgments simultaneously.
And then: the Bishop's Palace moat and its swans, and here, at last, is a juridical spectacle of a different sort. The swans are theatrical, their necks like cross-examinations, bending and unbending. They move with a deliberateness that feels contemptuously procedural, as if they were examining me for standing and finding me wanting—standing as in legal capacity and also the stance one takes on a bridge while taking a selfie. How dare these birds be so haughty? How dare they make me feel like a novice litigant in my own romantic life?
When the bells begin to toll, there is an immediate bodily recognition—we are all subject to resonance, whether we like it or not. Each peal is a sentence, and I imagine the sound traveling through legal history: an opening statement, a punctum for every statute Ive highlighted, every footnote Ive copied into a pastel-colored Moleskine. The bells pronounce time and judgment with equal snap. Augustine would have smiled at the symbolism: sounds calling citizens to contemplation; Alcuin would have catalogued the harmonics and noted the Latin hymns in the margin; my law professors would have urged me to consider the bells as precedent—repeated occurrences giving rise to customary expectation.
But I cannot only be theoretic. There is a chorus of daydreams—lets be honest, thats what Ally would do, and this internal Ally prefers the daydream to the deed at least fifty percent of the time. I picture a handsome, slightly disheveled cleric—a cross between liturgical solemnity and a model in a tweed jacket—who offers me a cup of something hot while quoting Augustine in an accent that mellows the syllables. He speaks in mollified declaratives: "Caritas binds the cities," he says, and somehow the sentence makes my heart want to file for declaratory relief. I imagine us arguing about whether Augustines two cities are compatible with modern cohabitation agreements. He says, "Love directs even the wills governed by law." I say, "But what of disclosure at first date?"
There is also a more honest worry warding through me: law school percolates in my veins like too much caffeine. I find myself annotating reality. The ivy on the palace walls becomes "evidence of long-term vegetative adherence," and the moat is "a natural barrier excusing trespass under limited conditions." I even draft a mock memo in my head: Issue—Are the swans agents of the Bishop for purposes of nuisance? Rule—Under traditional agency principles, animals may create liability when harm is foreseeable... Analysis—It is reasonably foreseeable that a tourist will be pecked at by a swan if she approaches in an anxiety-driven selfie posture... Conclusion—The Bishop may bear some responsibility for public safety around his waterfowl. Remedies might include signage, tasteful fencing, and possibly a pastoral apology.
Legal humor is my coping mechanism. But beneath it, theres stillness—like the hush between bell strikes—where Augustine's pastoral voice steals in. He writes of city and citizen, of loves that order or disorder the soul. In that hush, I think of yearning as a form of jurisprudence: we are all litigants for happiness, presenting evidence, calling witnesses (usually exes), and waiting for a judgment that often never comes in a format we understand. Students of Augustine learn humility because his schema asks you to account for the difference between what can be controlled and what cannot. I remember a tutorial room where someone asked whether the earthly city could be reformed by law alone. The professor answered with an exasperated smile: "Law is powerful, but it is not desire." I inhale Vicars Close with that phrase lodged like a pebble in my shoe.
Alcuin, with his rhetorical love of structure, would push me to catalogue this. He might insist on a three-part division: observational (the stones, the swans), intellectual (Augustinian and Alcuinian frames), affective (my emotional responses), and normative (the legal lessons I take away). I do this automatically, of course, because to process is to categorize. Instead of writing on parchment, I make mental margin notes—an ancient habit translated into modern anxiety.
Walking back, I pass a group of undergraduates who are sitting on the grass, all knees and laughter, reading aloud. One of them is quoting Augustine badly and with perfect sincerity: "Love God, and then buy a better kettle." I almost correct him. Thats the conditioning of a pedagogue: you want to refine the misquotation because its cute to be right and because the right paraphrase can make the world more bearable. But instead I smile and let the misquote stand, the way a judge sometimes lets a misstatement lie because correcting it would cost more dignity than the truth is worth.
There is a small shop near the cathedral where they sell bookmarks with medieval illuminations and a cup that reads "Objection!" I consider buying it. Of course I do. I rationalize the purchase as evidence that I can integrate my professions: the law and the lover of old things. Maybe I am performing an act of identity: prosecutorial by training, romantic by inclination, academic by habit. If Augustine and Alcuin were to read my purchase, they would likely interpret it differently—Augustine, as a sign of disordered desire for possessions; Alcuin, as an exercise in cultural continuity. Me? I would call it a souvenir, a tiny token of the day I tried to reconcile the two cities in my own chest.
On the return trip, the bells toll again. This time, I listen with an ear trained to close argument. The sound settles like precedent: it has weight because it has been repeated. My university life is a series of repeated rituals too—lectures, briefs, coffee. They compile into habit and then into character. I think about how my legal education taught me to care for words like sacred objects. You learn to listen to phrasing the way a parishioner listens to a homily. "Where there is charity and law," I say to myself, misquoting both Augustine and statute, "there may be a way through." It is not elegant, but it will do.
The sky over Wells is the color of an overdue footnote—soft, a little embarrassed. Swans preen, tourists photograph, scholars annotate. Augustine might have said the city of man is beautiful in its limited way; Alcuin would remind us that to learn is to acknowledge ones smallness before great texts and older stones. I fold myself into that acknowledgment, legalese tucked like a handkerchief in my pocket, romantic fantasies politely restrained to the margins. I leave with a bookmark, a slightly ridiculous cup, and the quiet conviction that my two cities can coexist—if not harmoniously, then at least with a tolerable degree of legal clarity.
Back at the café, I write a little note to myself: "You engaged Augustine, you teased Alcuin, you litigated with the swans, and you bought a mug. Progress: perhaps 37% toward equilibrium." I sip my tea and think of how law taught me that the remedy is never as perfect as hoped but often as necessary as breath. Outside, a bell chimes again—a punctuation that says: this day is adjudicated. I file it in my memory under Evidence: Vicars Close; Witness: Swans; Motive: curiosity with conditions. Case closed, for now. Appeal pending.