Days 31, 32, and 33

On Day 31 we went on a tour of Parliament, but the British government persisted in their dastardly plot to conceal all the cool buildings by refusing photography inside. Anyway, the tour guide was very nice, and Parliament is insane inside. You can get an idea of the decoration inside by looking up a picture of the State Throne on Google. Queen Elizabeth sits there at every State Opening of Parliament, dressed in her Imperial robes and wearing the Imperial Crown, and reads out the Queen's Speech outlining the agenda for the upcoming parliamentary session. She doesn't write this speech, of course; it's written by the Prime Minister, who gets to sit and listen to her read it. The Queen also has to be totally impartial, and isn't allowed to vote. Ever. On anything. So I suppose the monarchy does sacrifice something, although I question whether the right to vote is that much of a sacrifice compared to the insane income and lands they're given. Also, there's currently a wonderful scandal going on right now where it turned out that the monarchy has requested funding out of a fund for low-income housing in order to pay the energy bills for Buckingham Palace.

The State Opening has some interesting bits to it; for example, the monarch sends her representative in the Houses of Parliament, known as Black Rod (because he carries one), to call the House of Commons into the House of Lords for the reading of the speech. Black Rod marches across Parliament to the doors of the House of Commons, only for the doors to be slammed in his face. So instead, he must bang on the wooden doors with his black rod (leaving some terrible scars we got to gawk at) until the Speaker bids him enter. Then, and only then, may a representative of the monarchy enter the House of Commons. This represents the supremacy of the common people over the monarch, and is such a big deal that when George IV wanted to see the House of Commons being rebuilt after a German bomb blew it up in the Blitz, they hid the fact that he'd entered the House of Commons for over ten years.

There is one part of Parliament you are allowed to take pictures of, and that's Westminster Hall. Pictures of that will go up tomorrow when I get back from Salisbury. The Hall is the only bit of the original Westminster Palace, built by William Rufus (son of William the Conqueror) to serve as a banqueting hall. This hall is huge, you must understand: at least four hundred feet from end to end. But when William Rufus was presented with the finished product and asked if he approved, the king sniffed, "It's not even fit to serve as my bedchamber."

What a wonderful man.

Westminster Hall is also where many trials were held before the Courts of Justice were built. For example, Charles I (the only British king to be executed by his own subjects) was tried and sentenced there, along with several of Henry IV's ill-fated wives. After Parliament, I took the Tube back on my own via Westminster Station, which is a wonderful example of Brutalist architecture. The sides of the station have been hollowed out into the rock itself and left uncovered, and the escalators are only covered by a thin sheet of metal over the bottom mechanisms. It's a very totalitarian feeling, and the silent masses lining up and emotionless voices providing status updates on the Tube only add to it.

And on Day 32, the rains came. This wasn't just any rain; this was a constant, cold drizzle that drummed on your head in an unceasing rhythm until it seemed like it was about to drive you mad. And we, lucky, lucky souls that we are, got to stand out in the yard of the Globe Theater for three-and-a-half hours watching Henry IV Part Two. I wore a shirt, a jacket, a pea-coat, a scarf, and a raincoat (which is huge on me, but conveniently fits over my pea-coat), and still ended the play drenched and freezing to the bone. The hood on the raincoat didn't do much to keep the water out of the inside, so I resorted to wrapping my scarf around my head until I looked like a Russian babushka in order to keep the water off my hearing aids. But the play was wonderful, the actors talented (and all the girls sighed over the actor playing Hal once more), and the hot chocolate I bought at an exorbitant price from the theater bracing. The wind off the Thames was also bracing, but in an entirely different and much more negative fashion. Shivering, we all trooped to St. Paul's Station with Dr. King and took the Tube to our respective flats. Incidentally, our flats are now so cold that I sleep in pajama pants, T-shirt, socks, and a sweater. Anything less and I shiver the whole night and wake up without any real rest at all.

Day 33 hasn't been tremendously interesting. About the only exciting thing is that we had to all watch Helen Mirren in The Queen for our British Life and Culture class, and got about halfway through the movie before the ancient DVD player provided by the building we have our classes in gave up the ghost entirely. I have a fair bit of homework due next week: an explication of Hotspur's monologue in Henry IV Part Two and an outline of my final paper for British Life and Culture with all the sources picked out, so I'll be spending Sunday in the library. The rest of the group went out to a pub, but as I've got a lingering cough and have been feeling run-down, I opted out of the excursion entirely. It's not as if we don't have time for pubs later. So now I am lying on our terrible ACORN couch (because everything ACORN is terrible) typing this post and listening to the Rolling Stones.

Next week should be quite exciting. Monday night I'm seeing War Horse at the National Theater, which is the story of a boy who follows his conscripted horse into the battlefields of World War One. The horses are enormous ridable puppets, so I think it'll be interesting; Tuesday night Kate, Erin, and I are going to see Wicked; and Thursday Erin, Nick, Chase and I fly to Rome to start our fall break. I'm going to Dublin over break too, which should be a lot of fun. Also, we are going to be going to a football (or soccer) game as a class while we're here, as well as going on another trip as a group, the destination yet to be determined.

Tomorrow we depart for Stonehenge and Salisbury at 8:30 in the morning, so I'll end this here.