Monday, June 18, 2012

Belated Thoughts on the Jubilee


In all the excitement of the Jubile I missed another opportunity to blog about Doctor Who.  In one of those spooky coincidences that seem to happen a lot (note to self: keep an eye on entropy levels) our current trawl through New Who we last week arrived at The Idiot's Lantern  which as any fule kno is set at the time of the Coronation.

Here's the trailer:


Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Lighting the Beacons

We saw that there would be a Diamond Jubilee Beacon being lit on the Downs above our village, so we decided to go and watch it being lit.

Needless to say the location we had found on the website was incorrect, but a large cardboard sign directed us several hundred yards up the road, where the cars parked on the verge made us realise that something was happening.

There was a small crowd present, some of whom had been present for the Silver and Golden Jubilee Beacons, and we waited together and looked out over the dark plains below.  There was a wonderful sense of timelessness there, a feeling that we were sharing in something that stretched back at least to the Armada - or even earlier as there are so many ancient earthworks in our area. 

We did our best to ignore the signs of 21st Century Berkshire, and as we watched we spotted several beacons spread out across the landscape beneath us.

At 10.00pm the signal was given for someone to light ours: there was a countdown, a flash of flame, and then a great cheer.




We drove home listening to the soundtrack of the beacon sequence in The Lord of The Rings: