KILLER HOBBIES

On this day was our Good King Richard
, , , piteously slain and murdered,
To the Great heaviness of
This City..
   City of York on 22 August 1485

Hi, remember me?  Monica Ferris?  World Traveller?  I was off to see the momentous ceremonies surrounding the reingerment of the bones of King Richard III, found a couple of years ago under a parking lot in Leicester, England.  I've been a fan of the King's since 1967, when I read Josephine Tey's marvelous defense of the King, Daughter of Time.  So I immediately began to save for the trip.  Two friends agreed to come along, though one had to back out because of knee surgery.

But on the plane trip over I got sick.  Desperately, embarrassingly, horribly sick, with gastroenteritis.  I think they later burned the rest room at the back of the plane.  I thought it was a 24 hour bug, but it wasn't, and by the time we got to Leicester, I was becoming scared.  I ended up in the hospital and missed the whole moving ceremony - it was on TV, and I tried to watch but all I remember is the Duke of Gloucester doing a reading from Moses about wrapping up his bones to carry into the Holy Land; the rest I slept through.

I was in the hospital from Tuesday night until Sunday Afternoon.  I tottered out of the hospital on legs made of tissue paper and we went over to the Cathedral, where I saw the beautiful tomb, then to the Richard III museum - practically right across the street! - and saw the hole they dug to remove the bones.  I bought some souvenirs and we came back to the hotel.

God bless Becky!  Poor thing, this hasn't been any fun for her.  She's not an enthusiastic traveller, and she's not all that interested in medieval history, but she's stuck by me, she ran errands, got on the Internet and told people what was going on, figured out the money, very tentatively tried the food, and prayed for my release so we could go to London.

We were supposed to join a bus tour - a new city every day - but when I asked a doctor if I should try to go, he hemmed and hawed a bit.  I finally said, "If I were your daughter, would you let me go?"  "No," he said without hisitation.  So we didn't.  Instead we'll spend the rest of the week exploring London.

Flying home April 5, having spent rather a lot of money to be entertained by sweet nurses who called me dearie and love and my pet while cleaning up the unspeakable messes I kept making of my bed.