Word Games

Here's an easy game to play; here's an easy thing to say:

When is someone English, and when are they British?

I used to think these were pretty well interchangeable terms when talking about people (and things) who are English, but I have discovered this is not so. Have no fear, though: the rules are very simple.

• If someone is from England and they are good at something, they are English.
• If someone is from Scotland, Wales or Ireland and they are good at something, they are British.
• If someone is from England and they are not good at something, they are British.
• If someone is from Scotland, Wales or Ireland and they are not good at something, they are Scots, Welsh or Irish, respectively.

A very admirable scheme, I'm sure. Hence:

• Andy Murray, the British tennis player (actually a Scot), but
• Johnny Wilkinson, the English rugby captain.
  
• Gordon Brown, the Scottish Prime Minister of Britain, and
  
• John Major, the ex-British Prime Minister (actually English).
  
• Cardiff, the Welsh capital, but
• The beautiful mountains of the West of Britain (ie. Wales).

This scheme is particular hard on the Irish, who are not part of Britain at all. The only major difficulty with it is Kevin Peterson...

Snow!

Yes, we have snow. Here is our back yard this morning:

and our street:


and the Met office has added a new term to its vocabulary: "Bitterly cold."

TimTams

We were recently sent two packets of TimTams (Thanks Emma) and they were most appreciated. Tom had one... and I had the remaining 19. Share and Enjoy!

Guess who's now 1?

Well, she can't walk yet but has an impressive vocabulary of farmyard animals and bath toys. And she can say 'cake'. What more could a girl want?

My Evening, November 5

As I leave the front door and begin to wind my way down into the town, I keep a sharp eye out around me.  All around are sprays of small lights in the sky, which appear and fade over a few seconds, punctuated by an occasional bright flash that lights the suburban landscape.  The air, merely overcast and threatening drizzle at sunset,  is now thick with smoke and the stink of gunpowder, and the sounds of explosions form an almost constant background.  The brightest flashes are followed by near-deafening cracks a second or so later, which invariably startle and cause me to glance sharply in their direction.  Gradually it settles down; there is a persistent crackle that sounds like small-arms fire around a mile in front of me, away to the north on the far side of the river valley, while down to my left and behind me, to the south-west, there is an irregular, less frequent, deeper thump of heavier shells.  To the south-east things are mostly quiet, though there is the odd whistle of a rocket being launched.  To the north-west, in the direction of the city centre, the low cloud reflects a bright orange glow, which seems to get brighter as the smoke thickens.

I walk quickly, as the night air is cold, and take a dark route, the better to see rather than be seen.  Walking along a length of road, I am passed by a rattly, battered ex-army jeep, but the streets are unusually empty tonight.

As I begin to descend into the heart of the town, there is a sudden erruption of sharp cracks that freezes me stock still.  At first it seems that it can only be yards away, but as I recover from the shock I realise that it must be several blocks away at least, if not near the edge of the town, and I continue on my way.  We have had some forewarning of this; for the past week there has been the occasional explosion heard after dark, but nothing has prepared us for the scale of tonight, when things have started in earnest.

Sound familiar?  It won't, not to Australians.  What God-forsaken war zone have I landed in?  Afghanistan?  Iraq?  No; nor is this a flight of fancy.  This is suburban South-West England, near Bristol, and the French have not invaded (nor anyone else, for that matter).  But tonight is bonfire night, or Guy Fawkes night, and the quantity of fireworks expended within sight of my house is deeply impressive.

For anyone who does not know the history, Guy Fawkes night celebrates the foiling of a Catholic plot to blow up the Protestant-majority parliament in the 17th century.  A fellow called Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the Palace of Westminster, trying to look casual as he said, "What pile of gunpowder?  Oh oh, oh, this pile of gunpowder!  No, dunno nuffin' about it."  Over the intervening centuries, the date has morphed from Let's celebrate our freedom from tyrrany etc etc to It is every Englishman's right to buy as much light explosive as he can carry and set it off on (or at least within a week of) November 5.

The display, as I have said, has been impressive.  We have impressive displays of fireworks in Australia, but they are always highly organized, orchestrated, expensive affairs that are planned, designed and generally over within ten minutes.  There is nothing organized or designed about this display.  Every man, his dog and his dog's tapeworm has been out and bought a selection of fireworks, ranging from a small display suitable for a five-minute garden entertainment for £3, up to a large set of display fireworks for around £50, and is setting them off as fast as his cider-addled state will allow.  There are, of course, a fair number who just can't wait for the night and have been setting them off for the last week, but tonight they are everywhere.

In Australia, of course, setting fireworks off willy-nilly is generally frowned on, as they tend to produce rather more wide-spread displays (ie fires) than the operator intended.  For most of my childhood, purchasing fireworks required an expensive commercial operator's license, and it is only in the last few years that individuals have been able to buy them.  Even then, you need a permit which specifies a particular time and place where you may set them off, and the penalties for breaching the conditions are stiff.

Not so in England; every supermarket sells fireworks, and everyone buys them.  The only restrictions are that you have to be over 18 and can only buy them at certain hours.

We have contributed in our small way, setting off a few small pyrotechnics in our back yard, ostensibly for Elizabeth's entertainment but actually for mine.  Elizabeth, for the most part, watched with a slightly puzzled frown, until one made some sharp cracks, and she got a bit upset.  We have some left for tomorrow night, so we can acclimatise her slowly.

Ee-i-ee-i-o!

This is the view of the valley that Tom walks past twice a day and I walk past whenever I go to the High Street. Lovely, huh? Of course, this photo was taken on a sunny summer's day, so to get an idea of what it's like now, take away the sun, add mud and reduce the temperature by 15C. Anyway, I digress. The real reason for this post is to submit a complaint about a song: Old MacDonald had a farm. I'm sick of singing it! Unfortunately, it is our daughter's favourite song and it is requested several times a day. Eliza sings along and suggests an animal for the farm. Initially, Old MacDonald had a farm solely consisting of pigs but he has branched out recently and now has a substantial duck farm. He also has the occasional sheep or cow (hence the photo.) I know babies love repetition but I think I need to change songs before I go ga-ga.

Warwick Castle pt 2

Having read Kylie's post about Warwick Castle, you will now be fully conversant with the wars of the roses and my dislike of high, old buildings. So, take your skun ferret and lower it slowly into the boiling pitch until... sorry, don't know where that came from.

Warwick Castle is really touristy. The building is very impressive, and they've gone to some lengths to try to educate people about some medieval things. But the result is that the whole thing feels a bit cheapened, and they neglect some of their best stuff.

As Kylie has outlined, the castle started as a fairly significant fortification in the history of Norman England. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the English were a bit less worried about the hordes of marauding vikings / saxons / poor people / traitors / distant relatives who might try to come and burn your castle down, and a bit less confident about using castles against them if they did come. So the Earls of Warwick turned the castle into a fairly comfortable Victorian gentleman's house, which also happened to have a big wall around it.

The contrast is quite bizarre. Outside: Medieval castle. Inside: Comfortable house, with oak-panneled rooms, fine furniture etc. Odd.

The inside is set up to try to show you what a weekend party at the house might have looked like in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Winston Churchill figures, as he was apparently a regular guest, as were the dukes of Devonshire and Marlborough and the Prince of Wales. On the whole, they were a fairly immoral lot.

Outside, medieval rules. There were quite good displays of falconing, and, of course, the firing of the grand trebuchet. This was a singular disappointment. Here you have a weapon capable of flinging some quite interesting things, like furniture, pianos or small cars, some considerable distance, and what do they do with it? They fling a 15kg rock. Alright, they doused it in pitch and set it on fire first, but it was still a small rock.

Back inside, I was quite disappointed that they didn't make more of their collections. They actually have some quite good artwork, including a number of van Dyke studio portraits, one or two by van Dyke himself, several by Sir Joshua Reynolds and more by his studio, and one quite unique painting of Henrietta Maria which was first painted by van Dyke's studio as a half-height portrait and then extended to its full height by Sir Joshua. They make nothing of them. I only found out about them because I recognized a van Dyke and asked one of the staff about it. He turned out to be extremely knowledgable on the subject, and very helpful and happy to talk for a long time. But if you didn't ask, you would know nothing about it. The one upside is that, because they make nothing of them, you can walk right up to the paintings. You could easily damage or destroy them if you chose to. In other stately homes, the paintings are kept roped off and you can't get near them. At Warwick, you can study them very close up.

They also have a quite extraordinary collection of weaponry, ranging from Norman times through to the 18th century. Again, they make nothing of it. It's like someone found it all in a crate and said, "What'll we do with all this old junk?" "I dunno, just hang some one the walls where it might look nice. Spread it around a bit, you know?" The crowning piece is, of course, the trebuchet, and they make a great deal of that, but on everything else they are silent.

The best thing about Warwick castle was getting in free. We were lined up behind a coach party. The driver came down distributing tickets, and when he got to the end of the line he asked us, "Have you paid?" We said no, and he said, "Well, here, have these tickets, they're spare." Beauty.

Verdict: A good family day out, but could be better.

Oh, and several people have asked what is a Motte and what is a Bailey. A motte is a kind of pile of dirt, useful to be on if you are trying to hurl rocks at someone else's head, or if you want to see a long way, and a bailey is a wall that you put around the motte, to keep people from trying to put a sword in your head (or assorted other disfiguring operations).