Today's quote comes from Gracie Holland, who was asking me if I read her lips when she mouthed a message to me. She wanted me to steal Stephen's glasses. I didn't.
Okay. Continuing on from last time, on Wednesday we went to Canterbury and Dover. We told a few tales on the way to the Cathedral, and Dr. Benfell recited the first few lines of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. (The tale telling, I must say, was nothing compared to Drew Grover's amazing tales, but it was still fun.)
I definitely got the best guide at the Cathedral. His name was Lenny, and I think this picture says it all.
The hair, the shoes, the earring you can't see, the stained-glass window tie . . . I don't know why this man is giving tours in a cathedral, but he told all of the gory stories and knew the history really well, plus he acted things out. I think David was Thomas Becket for a minute when Lenny was showing us how the saint got chopped.
More pictures of the Cathedral below:
The ceiling directly above one of the alters - I think this is one of the towers from the inside.
Cami being a gargoyle. It was a better face before I made her hold it for a long time.
Self-explanatory.
So then we went to Dover, of White Cliffs fame. First, we toured Dover Castle (where I got the last of my presents for nephews and also got an amazing frisbee). It was typically castley and cool, so I'm just going to post pictures and explain them.
Walking up the path to the castle
TREBUCHET!!! High fiving my fellow trebucheters and yelling "Splat that!" in spirit.
Mallory's caption for this picture is "Megan as a manly lord."
A little bit of a heavenly glow here.
Oh Henry.
She's fine.
One of many amazing views from the castle.
This picture is 100% for my mom. This is a Roman lighthouse - one of the originals of the species!
The altar of the cool abbey by the lighthouse
Some weird shot of one of the parts of the castle
Me wearing the princess crown the Mallory bought and then wore around the castle (yay!) on the way down to the beach.
After kicking around the castle for a couple of hours, we went down to the beach, and before we got out, Dr. Holland read this really amazing excerpt from a devotional the his dad gave at BYU a few years ago where he talked about standing on the White Cliffs at the end of his mission and feeling panic about what was to come and then thinking of the words of Winston Churchill about fighting to the end - victory at all costs, etc. It was excellent, and I need to find the talk, because it definitely made me cry. Maybe a few echoes of my own life in that message? Hmm.
So then we got out and ran around the beach a bit (Dave Heywood jumped into the English Channel and started swimming to France, but he didn't make it all the way. Sad.), and by "beach" I mean "large collection of rocks near a body of salt water.
The beach, the cliffs, and me!
Katie and I decided we needed a jumping picture. It may not be the Chartwell picture, but it has its own special charm.
If you look really hard, you can see France on the other side of that water.
So that was a good time, and then we came home and Mallory and Cami and I ran to Queensway for food and to look for luggage for me, which I didn't buy at that time (which may be good, because I might buy a duffle bag now instead - cheaper and maybe easier to negotiate. We'll see.)
Thursday was pretty much a homework day - I finally picked a topic for Poli Sci - Edmund Burke and political campaign promises and the 60s are all going to play in - and then it was Globe night again!
King Lear was pretty awesome - not as crazy as Timon, but solid and with some crazy-icky eye gouging. I think they ripped out Gloucester's optic nerves along with that "vile jelly." There was also a part where some madmen jumped out of holes right by us and prowled through the crowd. Lots of jumping and shrieking from all ensued.
Mallory, me and Erin - 3 times at the Globe, baby!
On Friday morning Erin and I made another trek to the National Theatre to try to get tickets for Never So Good (starring Jeremy Irons!) and after a line and some discussion with some middle aged British theatre buffs behind us, we managed to get the only available and affordable spots left in the theatre - standing tickets behind the last row. Done and done, especially for £5.
We then had to hot foot it across Westminster Bridge to the Cabinet War Rooms, which were so cool! Everything has been left just as it was at the end of the war (except some maniquins and such) and the history was all very fascinating, although I must say that my favorite part was the crazy-cool Churchill museum. Churchill quote of the day: "We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm."
Me helping to guard the PM and so forth. Very intimidating, no?
After the museum and some playing with Gracie (including a hilarious few minute when Stephen was mimicking her. I was crying it was so funny) I walked to Trafalgar with Stephen and Katie where we got some food and watched some Chinese dance thing on the steps of the National Gallery. Yeah, there was flying and dragoning involved. I went home to attempt to do homework (didn't really, but did upload some music from Ty) and then had a lovely dinner of fish and chips before going to see Jeremy Irons with Erin.
It was a pretty great production, and it had everything - Jeremy, fire, WWI, WWII, Winston Churchill, gunshots, explosions, mustard gas, dancing from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, and so much more!
I love you, Jeremy. Let's do this again sometime.
This morning I went to the Camden markets with Annie, Erin and Kristen. There's an extensive post about a rather amazing coat that I bought there on my regular blog, but here I'll just say it was fun, and Erin got the "I don't need a boyfriend" coat, which was amazing, especially because of the guy who sold it to her. And I bought the most amazing coat ever.
See? Read all about how it was meant to be on the other blog.
After that coming home through the group of Georgian protesters in front of the Russian Embassy (which is right at the end of our street) (Don't worry, Mom, it wasn't a violent protest. They were just yelling something about the Russians getting out, and there were bobbies there standing by.), Cami and I made an attempt to go to the London temple which was . . . partially successful. We made it to Lingfield and managed to call a cab and even made it to the temple.
Here we are at Lingfield station, waiting just out of the pouring rain and freezing.
Cami looking lovely even though she said she looked like evil in front of the beauty of the temple because she was wearing all black.
Aw. Made it at last!
However, we didn't know that on Saturdays, the London temple closes early, and the baptistry earlier. Luckily, we got there just after closing, and a very nice temple worker was nice enough to take us on a little tour of the baptistery and telling us all about all kinds of symbolism in the design, tidbits about the construction, stories about workers, etc. It was much less disappointing than it could have been, and then when we went to try to call the cab back, we met a woman who works at the on-site distribution centre, and she had a cab coming already and offered to let us share it. She didn't even let us help pay for it, and we got to the station two minutes before the train did, so we didn't have to wait in the cold for long.
Tonight I attempted to see Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, but the times we found were wrong. Hopefully next week, and running around Piccadilly Circus with Danielle, Lauren Nielsen and Rachael Howe was fun.
And now I really need to go to bed a lot, but I'm caught up at last!
