Back to England

One of the days we were in England we took a day tour to Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford and the Cotswolds. Scenes from the early Harry Potter movies were filmed at Warwick and Oxford. Warwick has great wax figures. In the picture it looks like Henry VIII was a big man, but we saw what we were told was his actual suit of armour. He couldn't have been much over 5'5" if that tall. When you see the beds the kings and queens slept in, if they slept together, you think they had to have side rails to keep from falling off the sides. The stories about these people is "bigger than life."

Same goes for William Shakespeare. We visited his home in Stratford. Small rooms, low ceilings. A man, who in death, is bigger than life, and we aren't even sure Will wrote all those lovely sonnets and plays. In the book "Sweet Swan of Avon" Robin Williams makes a good case that the actual author was a woman named Mary Sinclair.

I've always thought of Oxford as one big university. In fact it's many small colleges in the same town. One of those buildings houses the great dining hall in the Potter movies. It's still used to feed students. The film company used it for the first two films then built their own in Hollywood, or somewhere. The dining hall looks the same as it does in the movie, just no flying postal owls that we saw.

I've heard of the Cotswolds for a long time, but as far as I discerned, they're just villages with little houses that look a lot alike.

The rest of our time in London was spent touring the Tower of London where Henry VIII had some of his wives held and beheaded and where many people the royals didn't like for one reason or another were tortured and killed. When you think about it, why do we want to visit a place like that? We loved seeing St. Paul's Cathedral.This church belongs to the people. Westminster Abbey belongs to the royals. That's why Princess Diana got married at St. Paul's rather than the Abbey. She was making a statement. Every hour a prayer is said at St. Paul's and an invitation given to anyone who wants to speak to one of the ministers about faith. The lady speaker when we were there spoke a blessing over all of those assembled. I needed that blessing. My body was giving out and we had 5 more days to go. By that night, after the all- day mostly-walking touring and seeing Phantom of the Opera (which is always good), I had red welts on my shins from so much walking. I think it was at that time I said, "No more." When pain in the body is greater than the experience, the time to do something else has come.

What is the meaning of all this? Life is one experience after another. Sometimes the experiences are wonderful, but they come to an end and all we have left are memories. On the other hand, some of the experiences are terrible, but they, too, come to an end and we're still left with the memories. Maybe that's why I write and read what other author's write. The Greek word for author is archegos. It means someone who begins something so that others may enter in to it. (The word is used in the book of Hebrews in the Bible about Jesus being the author of our salvation.) Someone somewhere writes about his experience. We read it and enter in to it. The next time I think about traveling to a far-away land, I'm just going to read about it!

London Royalty

We arrived in London on a Friday. On Tuesday the guys rode the tube early in the morning to save a place at the fence around Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. The women (daughter-in-law, granddaughter and me)took a taxi about an hour later. (In order to get a good place to stand, a person has to get to the Palace about two hours early.) Our taxi driver was from Afghanistan. He, like everyone we met, was interested in America and where we were from. When he found out our daughter-in-law's family lived in the country, he talked about the way he lived in his country. Contrary to the pictures we see of Afghanistan, there are areas there that are lush, green and productive. He said his family had 3000 fruit trees on their land. The farmers in his area have banded together and he said, "No one can come in. Not the government, not the military and not the Taliban. We are safe from the war." They must not let the press in either because we've never seen anything like that on television.

Reid and I stayed across the street so the other four could take their places at the fence at Buckingham. We visited with an interesting man from Spain who had never been out of his country. He wasn't even sure what was going to happen so we filled him in the best we could. After the changing of the guard, we toured the Queen's Mews (where she keeps her horses, cars, carriages), her gallery where she has numerous paintings of the masters and the State Rooms of the Palace. Afterwards we walked to Pizza Express to eat then Reid and I took the tube back to the hotel while the others did some more touring. That evening we were excited to be able to watch a shortened, yet complete, video of the Dallas vs Eagles football game.
Sometimes the best part of being away from home is hearing from home.

One part of this trip stood out to me, and that was the opulence of the monarchy. We saw it at the Palace and again at the Tower of London where the Crown Jewels are kept. When you go into the area where the jewels and other golden pieces are stored, you are walking into a vault. Crowns, jewels, golden goblets and dishes, a huge punch bowl that surely can't be lifted without some mechanical apparatus--even the ladle would take several men to wield it--all within this room and absolutely useless.I think they take one of the crowns out when the Queen has to wear it. (I could go into a diatribe about how much "stuff" we all have that we don't use, but I'll just leave it at this.)If you know anything about the Tower of London, you know it was, among other things, a place of pain and passion, treachery and torture. English prince, Edward V and conspirator Guy Fawkes were imprisoned there as was a friend of Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More. Having anything to do with Henry was perilous to one's health. His six wives are remembered thusly: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. His second wife, Ann Boleyn,was beheaded at the Tower. Execution inside the tower was a privilege for those in high rank. Makes a person glad they didn't live back then nor know any of these "important" people.

I imagine most Londoners don't pay much attention to the tourist places. I don't think most of them pay attention to the queen either. Kind of like right here at home.