Honeymoon 6: "With her head tucked underneath her arm..."

The Birthday Trilogy, Part II

In the Tower of London large as life,
The Ghost of Anne Boleyn walks they declare.
For Anne Boleyn was once King Henry's wife,
Until he made the headsman bob her hair!
Ah, yes, he did her wrong, long years ago
And, she comes up at night to tell him so!

R.P. Weston & Bert Lee, With her head tucked underneath her arm

Before I met Karli, I used to travel for my birthday - it was an extra little gift, and I enjoyed the opportunity to do something completely different to celebrate the day in a foreign country.  Karli's work schedule has made September travel a bit more of a challenge for the last few years, but this year we had the excuse of taking our honeymoon, so here we are in England, far from home on September 26th.

So - what does the well-travelled geek do in London for their birthday?

The day starts with an appropriately themed card from my wife (it's only been five weeks since the wedding, so it's still neat to say "wife".)  After a leisurely cup of tea and a croissant at our AirBnB, conveniently located just south of Waterloo Station, we make our way to the Underground, buy a pair of day passes, and we're off to our first stop: the Tower of London, one of my favourite sightseeing spots in London.

Karli had expected the Tower of London to be just that: a tower. She was surprised to discover that in fact we were visiting a small castle somehow left untouched over the centuries by London's ongoing urban development. The castle encloses almost 12 acres of land, with another six acres in the surrounding grounds, known as the Tower Liberties. (The castle's moat was drained and filled in at around 1830.)

I've always been fascinated by history, perhaps because there's a point in time where it's a lot like epic fantasy, just without magic, elves or dragons.  Castles and sieges, swords and armour, kings and queens, deadly combat, base betrayals, brutal torture and silent assassination, it's all there.  In fact, some of the events in George R. R. Martin's epic Game of Thrones series are based on the 15th century War of the Roses, where the House of York was locked in battle with the House of Lancaster for control of the English throne for 32 years.  (And Martin's Red Wedding is partially based on the Black Dinner, a 1440 Scottish dine-and-die party.)

The Tower of London's grim history stands testament to the bloody nature of those past centuries - not as long past as one might think, the Tower last saw use as a prison and killing ground in 1941.  Imprisonments, tortures, executions, midnight murders, mysterious disappearances, the Tower has seen them all. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, lived her last days in captivity at the Tower of London, which also witnessed her execution - oh, and the executioner's axe and block are on display in the castle. Henry's less famous fifth wife, Catherine Howard, suffered the same fate.

The Tower's current incarnation is far friendlier than its role in decades and centuries gone by:  one part museum, one part history lesson, one part arsenal, one part school, and home to the Crown Jewels, the Tower sees over two million visitors annually.

The central keep, known as the White Tower, is the oldest part of the castle. This Norman fortification was built in 1087 under the orders of Harold the Conqueror, and now showcases the more noteworthy items from the Royal Armouries collection.

The White Tower's exhibits are not intended to present a comprehensive history of arms and armour, but rather its most impressive examples: the armour of kings.*  As such, the samples on display are skillfully crafted, artfully articulated, and artistically embellished - gilded, embossed, and engraved.

The exhibits also feature a full range of functionality: specialized jousting and mêlée armours for the make-believe of tournaments, fantastic parade armours, multi-pieced garniture armours with interchangeable pieces, and practical field armours for the battlefield itself.

The final display is far more utilitarian and perhaps shows a grim sense of humour:  it's a contemporary P90 submachine gun, stubby, ugly and unornamented - which, at 900 rounds per minute, is a completely democratic solution to the final argument of kings.

- Sid

* There is also a small apologetic plaque that addresses the lack of the armour of queens - or any mention of queens at all, really.

Honeymoon 5: Sidebar

The Birthday Trilogy, Part I

Dear Colin:

Hello, my friend!  It’s been a while since I’ve put pen to digital paper with you in mind, but I felt that your generous gift for my birthday deserved a longer response than just a thank-you text.

I’ve always felt that a birthday gift should involve something that, for whatever reason, the person wouldn’t buy for themselves, but might want to if they could - which is why I earmarked my gift to you as part of your guitar replacement fund.  However, I freely admit that I'm a tougher crowd in that sense, I don't even play the guitar, let alone have the need to replace a broken one.

Regardless, I do have a short list of extravagances that I might indulge in given the opportunity, starting with the Chris Hadfield MasterClass on Space Exploration.

 

The MasterClass program showcases an unbelievable list of instructors, featuring chess lessons from Garry Kasparov, Bob Woodward on journalism, Jane Goodall teaching conservation, Annie Leibovitz for photography, film making from Spike Lee, and a much longer list of luminaries from a wide range of specialties. Commander Hadfield is an obvious choice for Space Exploration, with a class that features 29 video sessions dealing with a fascinating range of topics that includes Astronaut Training, Orbital Mechanics, Capsule Design, the exploration of Mars,  and concludes with an overview of Chris’ journey to becoming an astronaut and the lessons he learned on his way.

The $120 MasterClass fee would still leave part of your gift - what to do with the rest?

It seems obvious to me that a visit to the past would be a suitable compliment for a visit to the future – as such, the balance of your present will go towards four weeks of training in swordplay at Vancouver's Academie Duello, conveniently located about eight blocks from my workplace.  The school offers a choice between rapier and broadsword, and given that the latter features two-handed broadsword, sword and shield, and poleaxe, that may well be my class of choice.

Don’t be surprised if this doesn’t happen right away.  We’re currently on our honeymoon, and I’m also in the middle of a 12-week introductory continuing education course in Occupational Health and Safety, so I won’t have free time to dedicate to other pursuits until December.  My current plan is to sign up for Commander Hadfield’s class at the start of the month, and then take a four week break from my regular gym schedule in January for longsword classes at Academie Duello – the beginner’s course runs two nights a week for a month, which would make for an interesting start to the new year.

And that's the plan!  Thank you again, and my best to Jennifer!

Cheers,
Sid

Honeymoon 4: The City of Love

If l had my way
I'd just walk out those doors 
And wander
Down the Champs-Élysées
Going cafe to cabaret
Thinking how I'll feel when I find
That very good friend of mine.

Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris

After a night out for dinner (the unusual Burger & Lobster) and theatre (Everybody's Talking About Jamie, an exuberant coming-of-age drag queen musical) on Monday night in London's West End, our Tuesday morning 7:55 Eurostar departure from St. Pancras Station seemed VERY early.  Nonetheless, we arrived within the prescribed one hour security and Customs window before departure, boarded the train, and were off through the Chunnel to Paris for the day.

Arriving at the Gare du Nord just before lunch, we hopped onto a Hop On Hop Off tour bus, and made our way down to the Galerie d'Orsay, where we hopped off for a few hours, browsing through the little street-side stalls near the Seine, strolling through les Jardins des Tuileries, where we enjoyed croque monsieur and Kronenberg for two at a little outdoor cafe, and then wandering down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe where we once again hopped onto a tour bus.

Sadly, the base of the Eiffel Tower is being sealed away behind bulletproof glass and tall steel fences in response to fears of terrorist attacks, and we didn't want to invest the time in standing in line to gain entry - thereby dashing my hopes of a tower-top re-proposal.  We finished the balance of the day with more bus sightseeing, caught our train, and were back in London by ten in the evening:  all in all, a wonderful day out for two in the City of Love. 

During our time spent shopping beside the Seine, I noticed a French paperback collection of H.P Lovecraft stories on sale for an affordable three euros, and decided to pick it up on a whim.  (Which resulted in a brief French transaction with the bouquiniste - because if I didn't speak French, why would I be buying a French book? Fortunately my limited French was easily up to understanding, "Trois euros," and "Merci.")

The joke is that Lovecraft is famous for his archaic and obscure English - lord knows what the French version will look like.  Regardless, I'm looking forward with a certain degree of curiousity as to the Gallic equivalents for "squamous" and "eldritch", although with my limited French, that will be the least of my problems in actually reading this book.

- Sid