Thank you James Kiser...

...for the special offer on Office software dingo.

Better than a paperclip any day.

Fact and Fiction

Fact: In today's NYTimes (requires you to register and log in, but seems mainly harmless!) there's an editiorial on national ID cards that says everything it would have been nice to hear friomthe UK proponents before they started thinking about a scheme let alone running trials.

Fiction: In The Register, there's a picture of the future with ID cards.

Fact, fiction. Or should that be the other way round? Don't the dystopias always win?

So that'll be: no pizza until you've renewed your library books, mister. And don't forget to floss.

Travelling... Hopelessly Lost

Leaving Hedingham Castle this afternoon, M thank us for persevering in our determination to get us there. It would have been so different if we'd not found it: then we'd just have been stubborn--and a wrecked day out would've been down to us.

To wind back a little. On Saturday, en route for Ickworth, we saw signs advertising jousting at Hedingham Castle just before we reached Linton. We looked on the map and coudn't find Hedingham, with or without a castle, in the surrounding twenty-odd miles in any direction. Never mind, we all thought, we'll set off on Monday, follow the signs, and find it. Optimistists, eh?

So we packed pitta and salads and fruit and water and set off at midday. We saw the sign before Linton and then no more. M suggested we changed course for Linton zoo, pleasing Looby Loo no end and pissing the ravens off--nice zoo, important collection of smaller big cats, but often visited and probably crowded. The ravens insisted we continued, whilst furiously searching the map. We reached Haverhill and decided to head for a nice drive across country to find a good picnic spot before reassessing the day. We hadn't quite reached Sudbury, but we had seen the first signs for the Colne Valley railway, when the map also revealed a place named Castle Hedingham. It was well off the area we'd searched (and, yes, we'd tried the index in the road atlas too with no luck), but there we were. Travelling with no idea of where our destination lay, rebels without a clue.

Well worth it for: a fine falconry display (that LL enjoyed, so we may start the courses again with her in tow); a jester (who invited LL to help with a trick); the lady of the castle, Empress Matilda no less (or rather, less an "h"), who made our little empress (more correctly, with an "h") a lady of the wardrobe; a very well staged, but most defintitely staged, joust (tho' whether the knight who was unseated was meant to be so is moot); and the most terrifying sight ever. Anyone who thought that a children's crusade was somehow ludicrous needs to see a couple of hundred pre-teens pouring across a jousting field to check up on the weapons and join the king's army. The audience was larger, we think, than the organisers had expected (tho' not uncomfortably so) and the number of children huge (the picture on the castle's web site shows a neat little parade: this was a multitude).

Anyway, all proceeeded without mishap and with a touch of A Kinight's Tale mullarckey.

Home via a wide range of back roads in the early evening sunshine.

Many photos taken. Most, probably, of blue sky.