Lifestyle Magazine and Common Place Book Online: Something For Everyone
Category: GEOGRAPHY
Boadicea, photo by PH Morton
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke (1729 – 97)
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2025: To date, 40 monarchs had been crowned in the abbey since 1066. The first one would have been William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, after overpowering the English army under King Harold Godwinson. This historical skirmish became known as the Battle of Hastings. The coronation was held on Christmas Day 1066.
The abbey is known as a Royal Peculiar, it is independent from any archbishop or bishops’ authority. It is directly under the jurisdiction of the Sovereign, who is the Defender of the Faith.
To Date, there have been 14 Royal Weddings which included, The Queen marrying Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) in 1947. The most recent was Prince William to the then Catherine Middleton in April 2011.
Some Famous People buried in the abbey:
Sir Isaac Newton
Robert and Elizabeth Browning
Ernest Rutherford
Joseph Addison
Clement Attlee
Sir Robert Moray
Charles Dickens
George Frederic Handel
David Livingstone
William James
Thomas Telford, the founder and first president of Institute of Civil Engineers.
Laurence Olivier
Stephen Hawking
A commemorative marker with the Dirac Equation was finally allowed in the Abbey after a five-year persuasion to the Dean that Paul Dirac was not an anti-Christ.🤣
Queen Elizabeth died today, 8 September 2022, at the age of 96 at Balmoral Castle.
She reigned for 70 years making her the longest reigning monarch in the UK and the second in the world.
A long life well lived!
God save the Queen.
Did you know?
The Royal Standard is never lowered into a half mast even if the reigning monarch has passed away.
Charles is now the king, King Charles III
The Queen’s Funeral.
19 September 2022
The Brits are the best in staging pomps and ceremonies and they have made the Queen proud.
On her casket, her Crown, scepter which symbolises fairness and justice, and orb which symbolises Christianity around the world, were placed.
The funeral is attended by most of the world leaders.
Prince George (9) and Princess Charlotte (7) may have been the youngest attendees.
The acoustic at the Westminster Abbey is spectacular. It might have been like angels were singing.
The Lord is my shepherd was sung.
The single bagpiper was really poignant.
This is the first funeral of a monarch at Westminster Abbey since 1760.
The flowers for the wreath were collected from Buckingham Palace, Highgrove, and Windsor.
The national and commonwealth soldiers, guards, armies, and militaries had their arms/rifles backwards to symbolise mourning.
The mall is just a scene to behold.
The word to describe this event is MAJESTIC.
At Windsor Castle, where the Queen will be interred, there will be a Wand of Office ceremony where the Lord Chamberlain will break a wand which symbolizes the end of a reign and then the start of another reign.
The wand breaking was not as dramatic as I thought. It was already cut in half and just gently pulling it apart.
The 64 drummers and pipers did such a good job.
People lining up the street from London to Windsor threw flowers at the Queen’s hearse.
It has mild early autumn weather. Brilliant colours especially along the countryside.
Who is that eye-catching 7’2″ man walking in front of the hearse?
The funeral ceremony started at 10:45 am to 5 pm and apparently there is a close family only ceremony that would not be shown to the public.
The Queen was laid to rest at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Most Holy Lateran Church, Mother and Head of all the Churches in the City and of the World.”
In Profile
Feast Date: 9 November
Building: Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
Location: Rome
In 313, the Edict of Milan granted religious freedom, including the Christians, within the Roman Empire. Before 313, religious followers were persecuted.
Emperor Constantine became the first Christian emperor. He donated the Lateran Palace to become the seat of the Bishop of Rome, who is the Pope. It houses the cathedra (chair) of the Pope.
The Church was founded in honour of St John The Baptist and St John The Evangelist.
It is considered the most important among the most major and prominent churches in Rome; it is called Arch Basilica. The other three Churches are St Peter’s, St Paul’s and St Mary Major.
This is one excellent & exciting movie. We watched the enjoyable first movie ‘Train to Busan’. It is said that sequels rarely if ever are as good as the first movie, this is one is as good if not better. Costing $8 million (£6million) it has so far made $100 million (£77 million). This sequel movie is set four years on from the zombie apocalypse devasting the Korean peninsula. Whilst zombies play a lesser role, the action and suspense are palpable. The hero is a south Korean Marine army captain (Jung-Seok), adept at martial arts, who tries to lead his family out of the beleaguered country on a rescue ship that ends up in Hong Kong.
He & his brother in law become part of a small ex-pat group treated with suspicion as plague carriers in HK. Criminals probably Triad & US criminals enlist this group to return to Busan in order to retrieve an abandoned lorry which has $20 million (£15 million) stashed in it. Despite being told that they would share in the money when it is retrieved, the possibility of betrayal is all too real.
The comradely ex-pat group returns to Busan armed & using satellite phones. They find the city devasted and zombies still running amok. They finally locate the lorry and are about to drive it to the port to meet the ship that will pick them up.
This where the real action and adventure begins. A rescue unit of the South Korean army remaining in Busan has gone rogue in the four years. The unit has set up a fortified camp for survivors which is run in the style of the Mad Max movies. The unit sees the lorry moving through the city streets and thinking it contains food, hijacks it, and returns it to the camp. Some of the group escape but face the violent army unit. The army captain Jung-Seok is rescued by a very resourceful family who had escaped the repressive army camp in this dystopia & has hidden away. Ironically, the mother (Min-Jung), of his rescuing family was originally refused rescue with her family by Jung-Seok four years before, when he was fleeing Korea with his own family.
Jung-Seok feels guilty at this and offers to take the family out of Korea in the lorry after they have to retrieve it from the army and its psychopathic leaders (Sergeant Hwang & Captain Seo). Their plan is to use the lorry & get to the port then meet the pick-up ship. Their plans to infiltrate the hostile camp and journey is one of tense action as they do this. Jung-Seok seeks to redeem himself and tries to help the family to escape.
I can thoroughly recommend this movie. It is well-acted, exciting, frantic, thrilling, sad at times, and keeps our nerves on edge as you hope Jung-Seok & the family can succeed. Like the first movie and other excellent South Korean zombie etc, horror movies, the movie gets directly to the plot and action without the sometimes frustrating & seemingly slow build-up lead into the story as in many western movies & TV, which is refreshing.
I can envisage this may become a successful movie franchise.
The strings are plucked to play it, not strum like a guitar.
As such ancient guzheng players used to wear tortoiseshell or ivory as fingerpicks.
If you are an avid viewer of Chinese historical costume dramas, you would have seen a guzheng being played by either or both the male and the female leads or even anyone in the cast.
The sound of the guzheng is atmospherically and ethereally old china.
It is so powerful that it is used in some fantasy historical dramas as some sort of weapon of destruction. Love it.
Though, a version of guzheng can also be found in other Asian countries such as gayageum in Korea,koto in Japan, yatga in Mongolia, etc.
