Henry's house

I cant believe that Michael jackson is dead. It just goes to show that life is short and we should make the most of what we have today.
Today we went to Hampton Court Palace, the home of Henry V111. What a great place. I didn't do history at school but if I had my time again, I would. Although I must say that English history is so much richer than Australian history. Its all so exciting talking about knights in armour and kings and queens and people getting beheaded for disagreeing with someone. There were a lot of school excursion there today and again, I was glad I was not responsible for them. I have decided that school kids are the same no matter which country you are in and the teachers sound the same, trying to get kids excited about things that are probably not all that exciting to a 10 year old. There is always one kid, whose name you hear repeated over and over and after 5 minutes you feel that you know him or her. Henry soon shut them up.He was pretty scary when he got angry after someone suggested it was his 6th marriage he was about to have. The story of Henry V111 is quite amusing now but I am sure it wasn't at the time. We think that Saddam Hussein was bad but I think that some of these kings and queens would have given him a run for his money. Henry V111 pretty much thought he was God.
I learnt some interesting things today, especially about medieval(sp) manners. It is really impolite to eat the pasty of your meat pie. the pastry is just a vessel to cook the meat in. You are supposed to take off the top, scoop out the meat and throw the rest away. If you click on the photo with the writing on it, it will give you another hint about table manners.
We also got lost in a maze that is hundreds of years old. I am glad I was with Adrian because otherwise I would still be in there wandering around.
We walked home from the railway station via a big shopping centre, then through some street shops where we bought some apricots that actually tasted like apricots and some Belgian blackberries, which we ate on the way home. Off to the Cotswalds tomorrow.