Sunday 20 March: Tower of London

I spent the day with a new friend Jessica. She was one of the first people I met as she made a point of introducing herself to me. She is the head cook at the canteen at my school and her older two boys attend the school. Jessica was particularly keen to get to know me as she lived in South Australia for some time, being the child of some ‘Ten Pound Poms’! I now tutor her youngest son on Monday nights, and usually stay for one of Jessica’s excellent meals. She and her boys are becoming wonderful friends.

Jessica and I decided to visit the Tower of London – one of those places that just has to be done! It was an interested day, not least of which because I got to see a side of Henry VIII that hadn’t really occurred to me before. One of the biggest features of the Tower is the display of armour and weaponry, much of it from Henry VIII’s collection. It got to the point where you could pick what had belonged to his army because it was clearly the biggest or the most powerful. I began to get quite a picture of his power as a ruler, and along with it, his arrogance. His armour confirmed this, rather hilariously. I believe he was in his forties when it was made for him, and lets face it, he was not a delicate fragile man! He was rather generously proportioned. The funniest thing was… how can I put this delicately? He had a somewhat optimistic view of the protection required for his manhood! Jessica and I took one look and burst into a fit of giggles (embarrassingly, no one else was laughing…). We had just been talking quite seriously about what an arrogant self-important man he was, and this seemed to top our verdict off admirably!

From there we did the girly thing and had a peek at the crown jewels. Frankly they were a little gaudy for my taste… Okay, I admit I’m just jealous I will never have rocks like that!

One of the most interesting spots was the tower where prisoners were kept. They have preserved the graffiti carved into the walls by prisoners with clearly too much time on their hands and not a lot of entertainment options. Some of it was exquisite and well worth spending time examining closely.

All in all the Tower of London is expensive, but well worth taking a look at. We really did enjoy our day.