Sea, shingle and castles .....

Staying at Hever Hotel for a couple of nights, just down the road from the famous Hever Castle where Henry VIII met Anne Boleyn. After a late start (due to a sales pitch that the Monk steadfastly refused to see any benefit in signing up too!) we made our way down to Bodium Castle  and spent several pleasant hours exploring the remains of what must once have been a really beautiful home until Cromwell's mob destroyed it.

Bodium is the last truly medieval castle built in England, but it is really a fortified manor house and a rather palatial one at that. We took a number of photos and will post these as opportunity serves. The castle is built in a small artifical lake, created by diverting streams and building dykes to create several large ponds. It is square in plan with corner towers, a Gate Tower and a matching second gate tower on its south side which is built over the Great Hall range. Approach is over a wooden bridge, riginally builtat right angles to the gate and ending on an outwork from which a short draw bridge allowed access to the Barbican Tower which protected another drawbridge which gave access to the main gate. Another bridge and drawbridge gave access from the South where a harbour had been created and the River Rother limited access for an attacker. Luckily, the castle's owners have preserved most of the main structure, lost however, are all the internal buildings which the Parliamentarians destroyed.

From Bodium we made our way to Rye, one of the ancient Cinque Ports, and then to Winchelsea Beach where we sat on the huge pebble bank and watched the sea, the ships and the fishermen for a while. Then it was time to return to Hever via an interesting route with many twists and turns along sunken lanes and clogged A roads until we found ourselves once more in our converted stable yard.

Pictures will be posted eventually. The one thing to mar the day was a pheasant who decided to make a kamikaze flight across our path - bird met wing mirror obliquely. Wing mirror one, an explosion of feathers, a smear of bird poop down the side of the car and a dead pheasant n the verge for the foxes later. Not a high point methinks but pheasant have to be the stupidist birds I have ever come across! 

Dirt sticks .....

I'm not at all surprised by the revelations that have exercised so many in the political arena these last few days. Labour have always excelled at treachery, at smut and at smear campaigns. They used smear tactics to unseat Winston Churchill in 1945, they used the same tactics against the later Conservative governments of the 1950's once the Conservatives had lead the nation out of the massive debt Labour saddled them with in 1945 - 51 with all their seizure of private property and nationalisation of everything in sight. They used these tactics throughout the 1980's and into the 1990's and have carried on the smear and sneer campaign throughout their latest term of office.

There isn't an honest or decent sentiment in the Labour Party and there never has been. My father once described them as "Closet Communists" who tried to disguise their real intention to drag this country into a soviet style "Utopia" by calling them selves "Socialists" - but you don't need to look far to see their real nature. The McBride affair is just the tip of the iceberg. How much more isn't revealed? Gordon Brown's lukewarm response is surely telling - he knows full well that his "advisers" are hard at it with their chums in the Red Top media and the Murdoch controlled broadsheets cooking up the lies and the poison they hope will keep them in power.

Labour is a lie and it is founded on lies. Look at the leadership and the paymasters, all of them from public school and moneyed backgrounds. Where are the actual "workers" in their ranks, there are very very few and most of them in very junior positions. NuLabour/Old Labour makes no difference, their only stock in trade is to engender greed in the idle, envy in those who work for those who have money and position and to perpetuate the mythology of the "victim". In their definition we are all "victims" if we don't share the privileged backgrounds they enjoyed - but have no intention of allowing us to reach.

Dirty tricks is the stock in trade of this party of dishonesty and self-indulgence. Their only mantra is "Tax and Spend" and this shower of worthless parasites, the majority of whom have never done a useful days work in their lives, prove it. The last few years have seen our hard won freedom eroded to the point where they dictate what we may say, what we may think, and what we may do. We have no right of self defence should one of their "deprived" drug-taking, benefit claiming liberators of other peoples possessions decide to attack the rightful owner and we are monitored and filmed everywhere, even in our own homes. Send your PC for repair? Take care, someone at the repair shop will do a "hidden file" search and find all those naughty pictures you've been looking at.

I'd like to see Mister McBride's computer hard drive examined. I suspect the contents of his and every other "adviser" in this shameful Party that governs us would make extremely interesting viewing to the Thought Police. Oh, except that said Thought Police are in the Party's pay .....

Bristol fashion.....

Had the fun of taking the Iranian students currently studying at my former employer's faculty on a day out to Bristol. They are fun, there are five of them and though they are all 30+ and have wives, children and responsible positions in their home country its a bit like having five overgrown schoolboys in one's charge, yet their interest in everything you show them. Today we visited the ss Great Britain in her dry dock and the surrounding museum displays. Watching their reactions to this amazing ship and the re-creation of her accommodation which shows in stark contrast the difference between the comparative luxury of the First Class versus the Steerage. There was a moment of huge amusement when a young woman sitting on her own in a saloon in First Class was mistaken for a dummy (The dummy "lady" was seated at the other end of the upholstered bench) and one of the students seated himself giving excited instructions for the cameraman who only realised the mistake when the young woman began to giggle. Fortunately, she thought the whole thing was hilarious and rather flattering.

Last Saturday we took the same group to Chepstow and Caerwent. At Chepstow we were lucky enough to encounter a group of re-enactors who happily explained the armour, the long bow, the weaponry and gave the guys some fun demonstrations. Perhaps the most impressive one being the 16 year old who shipped the string and then bent his Yew wood long bow which has a measured "pull" of 150 pounds. Even the largest of the students could not draw the bow to its full extent, something I think they will remember for a long time - especially after the owner - the sixteen year old - then notched an arrow and sent it clean through the target at around 25 yards! The castle itself is now largely a ruin, but there is a good display and a number of well thought out re-creations in some roomswhich give a really good idea of how it functioned and its inhabitant's lived.

Caerwent was a little disappointing, but I will have to take another look at the remains of the Roman town another day - perhaps when I can do so without having to worry about my charges scattering like a herd of cats across a working farm!

 

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all! Easter is at the very heart of the Christian faith, it is, after all, in the Resurrection of Jesus that we all live in the hope of a life hereafter.

Recently I was asked why I believed in the Resurrection and why I did not consider the whole thing just an elaborate confidence trick perpetrated for political reasons by the disciples. I will leave aside the "political" part at this stage and explain that the evidence presented by the Gospels, if examined forensically, would be sufficient to convince a court that it was real. So what is that evidence?

First the tomb was sealed and guarded, precisely because the authorities were afraid someone would pull of a body snatch. From the description it needed several men and probably some tools to shift the stone sealing the tomb and probably some device to remove the "seals" placed there by the Sanhedrin's officers. Something, during the night, caused the guards, not superstitious and badly paid bumpkins, but seasoned and battle hardened troopers, to run away. Whatever that was, it also opened to the tomb so that when Mary Magdalene and the others arrived, it was open.

Right, so that still doesn't rule out the intervention of a gang of men, or does it? Grave robbers would have snatched the body, wrapped temporarily in a linen grave shroud, as it was, and made a run for it before the guards could get back with reinforcements. That is not what happened. Now comes the interesting bit, the grave clothes were left as if the body had been slipped out of them, not possible if the descriptions of how a body was wrapped are accurate. But another key element is the position and condition of the clothe used to wrap the head - lying apart from the grave cloth and carefully rolled and placed. Again, this is not the action of a grave robber or body snatcher and the evidence suggests that both of these conditions where directly the cause of the frenzy of the Sanhedrin. What needs to be clearly understood here is that a host used the rolling of his napkin and its careful placement on the table as a signal to his servants to clear away the meal - in other words, a signal that the meal is complete.

So, we have a stone opened apparently without the use of tools, a body removed from its grave wrappings without disarranging the wrappings and a head clothe used to indicate that the task is finished. And now we come to the witnesses who all fail to recognise the risen Christ until, by some small gesture, action or, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, the use of a name or a tone of voice, reveals Him to them. What does this suggest? That the resurrection occurred in a manner that was beyond normal human experience and that the disfigured and broken man laid in the tomb rose from it renewed and in a form which we may all one day experience.

The work of a gang staging an elaborate ruse? I think not, there was not the time or the opportunity to pull this off. Those who were there did not doubt that what thy were witnessing was something extraordinary and the very diversity of experience and of witness description and detail lends strength to the physical evidence of the grave cloths.

Christ IS risen. Alleluia!

Good Friday and beyond

Its been a busy day, as it always is for those of us who try to keep this most important Christian celebration. The Solemn Liturgy of the Cross is really a continuation of the Maundy Thursday celebration of the Last Supper, a service which culminates in the stripping of all the altars and all decoration from the church except for the chapel in which the Consecrated Host is kept in readiness for the Solemn Liturgy.

Symbolically the reservation of the Sacrament in this chapel reminds us of the night spent by Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and a number of "watchers" keep the watch through the night, praying in the chapel before the Host. The Solemn Liturgy on the Friday commences with the Sacred Ministers prostrating themselves before the High Altar then prayers and a reading from the Epistles are followed by the unaccompanied singing of the Gradual Hymn and the sininging of the entire Passion Gospel from St John.

At the end of the Gospel prayer precedes the carrying in of the veiled Crucifix by the Deacon which is unveiled with the proclamation at three "stations" in the nave of "Behold the wood of the cross on which hung the Saviour of the World". At the head of the nave the revealed crucifix (A very large one) is venerated by the ministers, servers and congregation then carried to the High Altar and placed on a stand. The reserved Sacrament is carried in by the Sub Deacon and the congregation is communicated. Then a short collect is said, the Priest flings the book aside, strips off his vestments and these and those of the Deacon and Sub Deacon are flung onto the altar at the foot of the crucifix - and everyone turns away and walks out.

Symbolically this is one of the most powerful reminders to us all of the despair of the crucifixion and the loss of hope by His disciples.

The day continues with the Three Hour Devotion and a reflection on the love that hung on the cross for us all. What a preparation for the joy that is Easter and the Empty Tomb.

Changing climate

One of my regular reads is an electronic version of Scientific American which covers a wide range of scientific matters I find interesting. The latest covers a range of things scientists are doing in an effort to get a better picture of what is really happening in our atmosphere. Some may seem totally wacky, but all have a serious purpose and - to me at least - seem to be far more valid than some of the simplistic and often politically motivated ideas the idiots of Greenpeace and Fiends of the Earth scream, protest and campaign about.

Entitled Ten Important Atmospheric Experiments the ten snapshot articles are worth looking at. They certainly give a better picture of just how sciences is getting to grips with the problem of getting data that gives the real picture and some things that might possibly be done about correcting it. It's well worth the read.

Did you know that atmospheric carbon appears to be collecting at the North Pole and Oxygen appears to be richer at the South? No, neither did the scientists until recently and this is just one thing they are now having a better look at. Another is a proposal to change the inefficient, smoky and carbon soot producing stoves used by huge numbers of people in India for more efficient ones. This will reduce the atmospheric discharge of "black carbon" vast clouds of which drift over the Indian and Pacific Oceans at present and is apparently largely from these stoves. Changing them as part of a philanthropic programme will helpresearchers identify the effect this has on the carbon clouds observed drifting away from these countries.

And the answer to yesterday's question ...

Is this. The picture yesterday is of the "action" that links the manuals shown here to the valves on the windchests that allow the pipes to "speak". And yes, it is programmable, though not in the sense of allowing it to play itself. The "Stops" visible on the side panels determine which ranks of pipes will speak on each manual and the keys determine when.

For the non-players among us, the top "manual" is the "Solo" and "Apse" organ, the next down is the "Swell Organ", the third is the "Great Organ" and the lowest is the "Choir Organ". Out of the picture is the "Pedal Organ". The "Pistons" visible between the manuals allow the organist to select a particular set of stops which he has pre-selected (The little row of "Programmes" visible above the upper manual in the Right hand corner of the face) which means he can change the register without having to take a hand off the relevant manual to do so.

This is the driving seat for the Mighty Milton which has 4,600 pipes and 64 speaking "stops" for the organist to use. And yes, it does take a maestro to make it perform well.