The Houses of Parliament and a sprinkling of sheep

Hello everyone...



Hanging in Westminster Hall

So I just spent the last four days doing my Silver DofE expedition in Wales. I had intended to post this before I left but there wasn't time to finish it. I also have noticed that I have only done one book review  this month, although I have read other books so maybe I will post another one today sometime. And can I just say that Wales is such an underrated country. I love hills and mountains (although maybe not climbing them) and Wales has a beautiful skyline. At least, the west coast does. And the forests that we walked through looked like a combination of Narnian forests and the Lord of the Rings. Also, there are so many sheep. And some sheep got loose from their fields and could be seen just walking away along the footpaths, going on their own little expedition. We actually did climb a mountain because we climbed up to 610m above sea level which is when a hill becomes a mountain.

But, back on track. On Saturday, I went to the Houses of Parliament. I have been there before but I went when I was about six or seven and I don't remember much at all except that everything seemed very big and very boring. So I decided to revisit...

The Houses of Parliament

(And also, in front of the Houses of the Parliament, there was a big celebration because on the 15th August, 70 years ago was the day that the Japanese surrendered and World War II officially ended.)





The first part that I saw was Westminster Hall. It is the oldest part of the Houses of Parliament and is about 900 years old, having survived the Great Fire of London. It was originally built by the son of William the Conqueror in 1099 and then it was remodelled by Richard II. When it was built, it was the biggest hall in Britain and possibly Europe as well. There is a huge stained glass window at either end of the hall, which made taking photos really difficult due to the very bright light but the roof is gothic architecture.

On the floor, there are lots of plaques that commemorate different people and historic events, such as St. Thomas More and Winston Churchill. The Queen's mother lay in state there before her burial and various people were acquitted of crimes as the law courts were there for 700 years before they were moved to the Royal Courts of Justice. Lots of famous trials took place there. For instance, William Wallace was a Scottish nobleman who fought against Edward I. He was captured in 1305 and tried in Westminster Hall. He pleaded innocent by saying, 'I cannot be a traitor for I owed him no allegiance. He is not my sovereign. He never received my homage.' But he was hung, drawn and quartered.

St. Thomas More was also tried here because he would not agree that Henry VIII was the head of the Church of England. He was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered as well but was then beheaded instead. 

And also, King Charles I was tried here, after losing the English Civil War between the Parliamentarians and Royalists before being beheaded. Oliver Cromwell ruled England until he died and King Charles II took over again. It was the only time that England ever had a Republic.



Terrible lighting :/



The next place that I saw was St. Stephen's Chapel where the members of the House of Commons used to meet. After the Great Fire of London, St. Stephen's Chapel was destroyed and so the one that I saw on Saturday was rebuilt on the site of the original with the same layout and design. It is a very small place with limited places for the members of the House of Commons to sit and so it was very crowded when it was used. It was also the place of the first recorded smoking ban at the end of the seventeenth century.



This is Lord Mansfield. He was Lord Chief Justice from the years 1756-1788 and he was closely involved in the Zong case, when slave traders threw slaves overboard because they were going to get more money if they were dead, insured cargo than if they were sold in the slave market. This is the case in the film Belle.  

This is Pitt the Younger. He was the Prime Minister while William Wilberforce was fighting to abolish the slave trade



And then photography was forbidden, so I can only write about it.

I saw the Central Lobby next. The Central Lobby connects the chamber of the House of Lords with the chamber of the House of Commons. It is the place where the public can ask to speak to their MPs. The architectural style was of medieval gothic architecture. After the Great Fire of London, a competition was held to gather designs for the rebuilding of this room, as it was destroyed in the fire. There was 97 entries and Charles Barry won. Also, because it is in the centre of the Houses of Parliament and therefore, in the centre of the United Kingdom's government, above each of the four doors leading out of the room was a mosaic of the patron saint of each of the four countries in the UK: St George for England, St Andrew for Scotland, St Patrick for Ireland and Saint David for Wales. Furthermore, there were lots of statues around of different monarchs because Charles Barry wanted lots of statues.

Finally, no parliamentarian business can happen in the House of Lords or House of Commons unless a mace is present to show the power of the monarch. The sergeant of arms, someone who is royally appointed,  carries the mace to the House of Common everyday.

Next came the Peers Lobby, which is the room before the House of Lords. It is decorated in red because that is the colour of the House of Lords whereas green is the colour of the House of Commons. Apparently, according to one of the peers (members) in the House of Lords, the House of Lords is listened to by the government because they are more driven by the issues of the country, rather than party political concerns. 200 peers are independent Lords that have been made so because they are great in their own respective fields.

The Not Content Lobby is used when the House of Lords has a difficult decision to make. This is one of the places where the votes are cast. Because there are more members of the House of Lords than seats available, the peers walk through the lobby and separate into the 'yes' area, which means they agree with the motion being put forward or the 'no' area, which means that they don't agree with the motion. Their vote is recorded by a clark. It is also the area of many debates because there never is an overall majority after a motion is proposed.

The Prince's Chamber had two doors. One led to the chamber of the House of Lords and one led to the Royal Gallery. The Prince's Chamber was definitely a Tudor room. The Tudor kings and queens with their spouses were painted on wooden panels at the top of the room. Katherine of Aragon was painted as Arthur's wife, even though Arthur was never king. It is also here that the Lords can review their notes before entering their chamber to discuss things. There is a huge statue of the young Queen Victoria on one side of the room and along the top of the room, there are a lot of paintings that depict the defeat of the Spanish Armada. They were completed in 2010 but before that there were tapestries that depicted the same thing.

The Royal Gallery is used for state occasions and addresses from various heads of state to both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Apparently, it is also used for informal discussions between members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The original plan for decoration of the Royal Gallery was to have lots of murals of British military victories but that plan fell through and now there are only two: the Battle of Waterloo (which didn't take place at Waterloo and was only called that because of the name of Wellington's HQ) and the Battle of Trafalgar. There are lots of pictures of monarchs on the walls and their spouses. For example, Queen Elizabeth I is there along with Prince Phillip.

The Norman Porch is just a corridor that links the Robing Room to the Royal Gallery. There are lots of busts of Prime Ministers who were also members of the House of Lords and it is below the Victorian Tower where Parliament's archives are held. There are some real important documents in there. For instance, the death warrant of King Charles I  and every law passed ever. The longest law is on a parchment roll that is 350 meters long and is it the 1821 Land Tax Act.

The Robing Room should be called Queen Victoria's room because it was full of stuff for Queen Victoria. On one side of the room was a throne that was made for her when Prince Albert died. There are huge portraits of her and Albert next to each other above the throne as well. At the State Opening of Parliament, which is an annual event held each year, this is where the sovereign dresses. Apparently, the State Opening of Parliament is the only time the three parts of the government, the sovereign, House of Lords and House of Commons are together. When the chamber of the House of Commons was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, they used the chamber of the House of Lords and the House of Lords met in the Robing Room.

Wow, there is a lot of writing today. Bear with me. It is almost finished. The Chamber of the House of Lords. It is quite a strange room in that it is very traditional with a lot of old red leather benches and the 'wool sack' where the speaker sits but then there are also lots of modern features that really clash with everything else. There are televisions because the activity of the House of Lords started to be televised in 1985. There was an amazing throne that was covered in gold leaf and that is used when the sovereign reads an address at the State Opening of Parliament to outline what will happen in that year.

I'll jump straight to the Chamber of the House of Common. Just in front of it is the Members Gallery where there are statues of Prime Ministers like Churchill, Thatcher, Lloyd George and Asquith and then connecting the two is the Commons Corridor where there are pictures from the Glorious Revolution. I am not sure what that is but you can look it up. The Chamber is all in green with benches and a big chair in the centre where the speaker sits. S/he checks that there is order and s/he chairs debates. Government parties sit on the left and opposite parties on the right. The Prime Minister sits on the front bench with his ministers around him. At the back of the room, there were the shields of members of the House of Commons who have been killed during military service or died during a terrorist attack.

Okay, I am done. Done and dusted. I probably could have said a lot more but I think that it would have got boring so I will stop there.

Clare



So it goes...

Hello everyone...

This is a book review but it won't be structured like the other ones because I wanted to discuss some stuff in more detail. So get ready for a lot of writing...

On Monday, I finished reading Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. This is an anti-war novel which is slightly autobiographical because it speaks about the bombing of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, during the Second World War by the Americans and Vonnegut was present there. 

However, the main storyline follows a man called Billy Pilgrim, who was also at the bombing. Billy Pilgrim has the ability to travel through time and experiences moments in the past, present and future. So, within Billy Pilgrim's story, there are two stories: Pilgrim's experience of the war and his experience of moments of his life, in the past, present and future and not in chronological order either. 

It is a mind-blowing novel and strongly competes with The Picture of Dorian Grey for being my favourite novel of all time. When it was published as well, it was so controversial, because of all its depictions of war and people in the war and it was one of the first books, I believe, that pointed out that homosexuals were also victims of the Nazi Holocaust, something that wasn't widely acknowledged. There were so many themes in it that messed with your ideas about time and the point of things that we do and, in essence, the pointlessness of the time we spend worrying about useless things. I will not be able to do it justice by explaining it because I believe that it is far more effective to experience it personally but I will try...

Some of the main themes...

The most interesting idea in the book was one about moments in time. Many people around Billy Pilgrim were dying, some in the war and some members of his family as well. When Billy Pilgrim travelled in time, he met a race called the Tralfamadorians from the place called Tralfamadore. They were aliens and they taught him this idea about moments. Humans can only see in three dimensions but Tralfamadorians can see in four. In the fourth dimension, moments in life are all occurring and then re-occurring simultaneously and endlessly. A person's life is a period of time, the past, the present and the future where there are thousands of moments. And, at some point in that person's life, they was a moment when they were happy and alive and well, even for just a second, or a split-second. And, when they died, it didn't matter that in that moment, they were dead and you weren't going to see them again because there were always moments that they were happy and alive and these moments keep replaying in the fourth dimension. 'The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exists.' This race, the Tralfamadorians, said that they saw human beings as millipedes with their baby legs at one end and their adult legs on the other end. Just an object made out of time and moments. I believe that it would be very interesting to try and live life, imagining every moment to not be lost but instead strung on a line in front of you and you could revisit them as you pleased. 

Linking on to this idea about moments, there was an idea about the illusion of free will. If every moment is continually re-occurring in the fourth dimension, a dimension that we cannot access because we are blind to that part of the universe, we have no free will because our life is already written out and happening, even if we, in the present, of whatever dimension we are in now, do not realise it. We think that we are choosing to do something really original and that we can do that because we have free will but it has already happened, even while you are debating whether or not to do it. One of the controversial ideas about this book and a reason that it was banned from a lot of schools in America, was because it was considered to be anti-Christian. But, that is an variation of an idea in Christianity, that God knows everything that will happen and is happening and so your life is in His control and you don't need to worry. Interesting.

There was also a repeated phrase. So it goes. and it was linked in with an idea about the uselessness of massacres and wars. Whenever someone died, Billy Pilgrim would say 'So it goes'. That means, whatever happens, happens and there is nothing that you can do about it. Death is inevitable and the only thing that we know for certain, above all else, is that we are going to die. There is no escaping it.

For example. 'His name was Howard W. Campbell, Jr. He would later hang himself awaiting trail as a war criminal. So it goes.' and 'The Germans carried the corpse out. The corpse was Wild Bob. So it goes.' By saying 'So it goes' after every death, it also puts every death on the same level. It didn't matter whether they were a major, colonel, private, Nazi, American, English or whatever, their deaths were all the same because they were the same in life, human with ideas and morals and faults, just the same. One death isn't even a pinprick on the entire universe and it meant nothing if put against the whole picture, even though it had devastating consequences on those affected.

This book also gives you a sense of where humans are in the world. During World War II, so much was devastated and destroyed, the city of Dresden was annihilated, so many people died and so on and so forth. However, when combined with ideas about the scope of our planet and our world and therefore us, living on this tiny world, the devastation is lessened in a sense. It isn't that it no longer affects us, but even though, it may destroy us, it doesn't matter at all to the rest of the universe. (I know I didn't explain that very well, but hopefully you will understand.) 

Another thing that I love about it, is the irregularity of the writing. In a way, nothing flows but at the same time, it does. I don't know how to explain it exactly. The storyline jumps around a lot and isn't chronologically written either. At the beginning of the novel, it can be quite difficult to understand what it going on but then you re-read certain parts and they make complete sense. Like I said, it is mind-blowing. 

Okay...I'm done. 

Clare 

#MonopolyChallenge...all the places on the board in one day

Hello everyone...
A little while ago, I saw a video on the DailyMix YouTube Channel where Jim Chapman and ThatcherJoe were challenged with a Monopoly Scavenger Hunt. They had two hours to see as many places on the Monopoly Board as possible. 

Watch the video here
And yesterday, my sister and I tried the challenge except we changed it slightly and tried to go to every single set of places on the board in one day. We didn't do the stations and we made one mistake and went to Whitechapel instead of Whitechapel Road. The two of them are really close but I wrote the names down incorrectly on the piece of paper we were using to mark off the ones we had seen. 

Brown Set

Old Kent Road

Whitechapel Road

Grey Set

The Angel Islington 

Euston Road

Pentonville Road

Pink Set 

Pall Mall 

Whitehall 

Northumberland Avenue

Orange Set 

Bow Street

Vine Street 

Marlborough Road

Red Set

The Strand

(That is a terrible photo but the street sign does say the Strand  ;))

 Fleet Street

Trafalgar Square

Yellow Set
 Leicester Square

Piccadilly 

Coventry Street

Green Set

Oxford Street

 

 Bond Street

Regent Street

Blue Set 

Park Lane 

Mayfair

(We couldn't find an actual street sign that said Mayfair so we took several photos to prove that we were actually there :))

Okay, well that is it for this blog post. I hope that you enjoyed it and maybe feel inspired to go and do the Monopoly Challenge as well. I recommend not doing them in the order as they are on the board but instead using a map to check which places are closer to each other and do them in that order. 

For example, we went to Euston Road, Pentonville Road and the Angel Islington first and then went around Central London, to the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Bow Street, Pall Mall, Mayfair, Park Lane, Bond Street, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street, Coventry Street, Whitehall, Northumberland Avenue and Leicester Square. Whitechapel Road, Fleet Street, Marlborough Road, Vine Street and Old Kent Road are a little more spread out and in slightly more obscure places and we did those last. 

Anyway, have fun!

Clare