Sewing Scot: HSM 2017 Challenge

I just made it in time with my HSM challenge for January.  I honestly don't know what took me so long, it is the most simple thing to make.  For those of you who don't know, one of my sewing aims of this year was to participate in at least one of the HSM challenges.  My post recording which ones currently stands at 6.  Well, one down, 5 to go.

The challenge was firsts and lasts, so something that would be first or last in an ensemble. Because I didn't particularly like my first regency chemise, I made a second one.  The back was a little high on my first one (it didn't show, but in case I ever want to make a gown with a low back), so I thought to make another one, this time lengthening the shoulder strap.  This did not turn out how I planned or imagined.  I think I probably extended the strap in the wrong place.  Instead of lengthening in the back like it was supposed to, the front just ended up being really, really low.

One, very stupid and avoidable mistake, is that I forgot to put an opening anywhere, and when then i snipped the bias binding around the neckline to make one, I realised it was the centre back I'd placed it.  Honestly, you lose concentration for a second.  It's hard to discern which is front and back when everything is white.

The Challenge: January 2017 - Firsts and Lasts

The Item: Regency chemise

Material:  100% Cotton Lawn

Pattern: Laughing Moon #115

Year: ~(1800-1810), although possibly give or take a few years on either bound.

Notions:  green satin ribbon for the neckline, 100% cotton bias binding for the arm holes and neckline.

How historically accurate is it?  That's a good question.  The pattern is pretty accurate, according to the booklet that comes with it.  As for the cotton lawn, I've been puzzling over this as I'm not overly familiar with regency undergarments.  I have been under the impression that linen was more widely used in this period for undergarments, but that cotton was also used....not entirely sure.  I'm going to say 80% (95% Confidence interval: 60-90%), sorry if you're not a statistician, but I can't give an estimate without one.

Hours to complete:  3-4 hours

First worn:  Regency Ball, Edinburgh, March 2017 (so not yet).

Total cost: ~£20, possibly less.  Cotton lawn was from my current supply, at roughly £8 p/m, and roughly 2m used for this, that's £16.  Ribbon was roughly £2, and let's just say the same for the bias binding.  

As so completes my first HSM challenge!

The social tight rope between the sexes

I was actually reluctant to write this post because of the obviously precarious subject matter; don't want to go insulting any of the four regular readers I have accumulated.

I don't have to deal with this much, the relationships between men and women thing.  My friends are girls, I now live with girls, and I don't have a boyfriend to worry about (not in that way but from what I've heard, boyfriends are....work...some of the time).  I live quite a male-secluded life.  There are men on my course, as there were in my old one, but as you can tell from my single status nothing's ever come of it, they're colleagues, people I am forced to see 5 days a week and then I get a Masters in return.

The relationship between men and women is a long stretching, complicated, dangerous, sensitive, and at times rewarding one, but how long has it taken us all to get to this questionable truce?  Hundreds of thousand of years, folks!  I do not consider myself a die-hard feminist, I simply believe in human equality and the right to make independent choices.  Women have had a notoriously oppressive history, seen as nothing but objects, deemed as "imperfect versions of men" (thanks Christianity), and restrained from reaching their full potential.  The world isn't like that now, this is the 21st Century and the bickering and fights between the sexes should be over.

In an ideal world yes, and although in economy, jobs and family life, etc, we all are, but what about the contentious area of actual inter-sex relationships?  I'm making this post sound so serious when it's not.  This post is simply about wolf-whistling and inappropriate methods of flirting with the other sex.  Unfortunately due to my limited time spent out in the real world I've been sheltered from the true horrors of inter-flirting, at least I think that but I have been told differently by several of my friends who have seen me oblivious to the flirting of the opposite sex (yes, I am that girl).

Living a life as a semi-hermit has its perks, it also has its understandable disadvantages.  I went to the local supermarket for an extension to my weekly shopping usually done in Aldi (I love you Aldi but sometimes...you know....you just aren't enough).  Everything was good, I bought too many tins of soup, and smoothie's that just jumped miraculously into my hands of their own volition, I swear.  Walking back down the busy road to my flat I was changing my Ipod, innocent, in my own little cloud world when boom!  or rather Honk!

It came from right beside me where the road was, the lane closest to me.  Cars and trucks beep at each other all of the time, but this was a short sharp sound that made me look up instinctively.  What happened was the most disturbing and weirdest thing that has happened to me this year (to my reflective knowledge).  I looked up and made eye contact with a middle-aged man driving one of the trucks pictured left (but the British version) and he gave me a sort of nod.  How to explain this nod is difficult, it wasn't a chin-up "how you doin" nod; if I was to explain it I would say it was an encouraging nod, but I think we can safely say what it really was.

I don't know if it's common in other countries to be beeped by passing cars, lorries, trucks.  It comes in different forms in vehicles, the most frightening and obvious one is of course the ominous engine rev.  It's the vehicular form of a wolf-whistle.  Was it, or is it, appropriate for men to still do this to women walking on the street?  On this line of thought is the outdated wolf whistle still appropriate?

I think even women are divided on this issue; some see it as a compliment, which I suppose it is, whilst others see it as an insult of one kind or another, a kind of objectification.  All I can say is that I was utterly gobsmacked.  This has never happened to me in such an obvious form.  I was the only one on the pavement and he was looking directly at me.  The first thing I said was "did that just happen?".  I thought it was funny, don't get me wrong, slightly gross but funny.

It was more of the shock of it happening that inspired me to write this post than any other motive.  At least I haven't heard one of those awful pick-up lines dropped, I would burst into laughter right in front of the poor sod.  The fact that it was a middle-aged guy, the fact that in all of the older movies you see the guys wolf-whistling, is it an outdated thing, beeping horns and whistling?  Is it as common for women to do?  Men seem to be more under the influence of their impulses, they can't control them as well as women seem to, for the most part.  I've seen attractive men and I don't start making noises in their direction.  Where did this culture come from anyhow?

Although my story is mild, very very mild, do you have an embarrassing story like it?  Did you get dropped a pick-up line when he was being serious (you poor thing)?  Do you think it is outdated?

History Sunday: Dunfermline Abbey

Welcome to my History Sunday blogpost.  As my approximately 4 frequent readers know I am Scottish and frighteningly proud of being so.  Ever since I moved down to England it seems I have become more Scottish; answering questions with aye, and improving my accent.  For this history Sunday I really wanted to write about a Scottish historical figure, not the usual ones like William Wallace or Robert the Bruce, but preferably a queen.  I also thought about doing a history of Scotland one but I would be writing pages until the end of time.  Scotland only became Scotland in the 11th century and even then what we know now as Scotland is different from the first kingdom of Scotland.  I looked at the queens consort list and wanted to write about Saint Maragaret of Scotland; unfortunately she is English, more specifically a daughter of the Earl of Wessex.  When I looked at the list I realised that most of the medieval Queen consorts of Scotland have been English, or French.  There are about three who were Scottish, daughters of Scotland's nobles, but there is sparse information on them that would take barely a paragraph to write up.  It saddened me that I didn't know anything about the historical figures of Scotland; I don't know anything about Scotland during the middle ages and I can name every English monarch from the 11th century to the 17th but no Scottish ones.


To placate the huge disappointment this realisation was I decided on Dunfermline Abbey.  I travel a lot during the summer, going to see this castle and that castle, and on my bucket list for Scotland was the famous Dunfermline Abbey, resting place of the kings, Queens, and royals of Scotland.  I went to this place during the summer of 2014 and as self-appointed ambassador for Scottish heritage sites getting to it is easy; there's a train stop called Dunfermline Town, which you can get to from Edinburgh Haymarket, on a Scotrail line; alight at this station and follow the signposts, or your phone's GPS, until you reach the Abbey which is on the way to the main town centre.  It's probably easier by car.

At this point I'd also like to mention that every picture on this post was taken by yours truly during my visit, no pinterest or google images, I promise.

The Abbey was supposedly originally founded by King Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, or King Malcolm Canmore of Alba (Scotland in Gaelic), and his wife Saint Margaret of Scotland who I mentioned above.  When I went to Edinburgh Castle I was told of Saint Margaret and how she was a very pious woman and this apparently rubbed off on her husband, and it certainly did to her children who were also either cannonised or admired for their piety by chroniclers.  One of their daughters was the wife of King Henry I of England, and their sons became Kings of Alba.
The knave, pictured on the left, is actually the oldest part of the Abbey dating to the 12th Century..  Apparently the Abbey claimed that Saint Margaret was its founder and forged an earlier foundation charter than David I's reign.  King Malcolm and his wife did found something here but it's unclear whether it was the Abbey or just a church.  Dunfermline Abbey became the centre point for the growing cult of Saint Margaret, Scotland's only cannonised royal.  This would have meant a lot of money coming in and so obviously the monks in residence here would have wanted people to keep thinking Saint Margaret founded it therefore forging the charter.

The Benedictine Abbey of the Holy Trinity and Saint Margaret (Dunfermline Abbey) was actually founded by their son King David I in 1128.
Dunfermline Abbey kept standing through the relatively calm years from its founding until the 13th Century when, you guessed it, Edward I stormed his way across the border during the Scottish War of Independence.  He held court at the Abbey in 1303 and then when he left he burned down the buildings.  I don't understand this act.  Edward I was a pious king, Dunfermline was a chartered Abbey with a Saint and numerous kings of Scotland buried in it, did he not fear the wrath of God would come down upon him for effectively destroying a holy place?  Perhaps it was because the kings were buried there that he partially destroyed it.  Nevertheless the Abbey kept standing even after the English were gone.

What I really want at this moment in the post is the guidebook I bought when I was there because it has so much information about this time and about life at the Abbey, but it's at home an I'm in Leicester so apologies.

Let's jump to the Scottish Reformation.  I know nothing about this; I only know about it in England but along those same lines Scotland joined in.  For those who don't know the English Reformation happened around the 1530s and was instigated by Henry VIII of England so he could marry Anne Boleyn.  The Catholic church wouldn't grant a divorce to Henry from his then wife, the poor Katherine of Aragon, and so he broke with Rome, made himself the head of the English church, divorced Katherine in this new religion and married Anne Boleyn, much to her ill fate.  And so began Protestantism.  Because Scotland and England have always been so geographically close, we share a common-ish culture, and our kings married daughters of the kings of England, it was only a matter of time before this new religion came over the border. 

The ruins of Dunfermline Palace

The Scottish Reformation happened in 1560 and banned Mass, etc, and made way for Protestantism.  This would be a very definitive blow against Marie de Guise, effective ruler of Scotland, and her Catholic daughter, the incompetent Mary, Queen of Scots.  Mary was the great-grandaughter of King Henry VII of England through his daughter, Margaret Tudor.  She was shipped off to France when she was very young to marry the Dauphin of France, the heir to the throne, leaving a regent to rule Scotland, and this burden eventually fell to her French mother, Marie de Guise, a catholic.
John Knox was the leader of the Scottish reformation and forced the issue in the wake of Marie de Guises death in early 1560.  Queen Mary didn't arrive in Scotland until 1561.
As all the Abbeys were sacked in England, so they were in Scotland, and one day in March 1560 the Abbey was sacked.
It was rebuilt, in part, in 1570, and reopened for worship in 1821, a huge gap, I know.  It has been extensively restored in the interim between those two periods, but it hadn't been completely destroyed to begin with anyway.  It is now a sight of historical importance as it is, save Iona, the place of the most Scottish Royal burials.  According to the Abbey these people are buried there, although when I was there I must have been looking in the wrong place because I didn't see any grave markers at all.  I do know that they will have been destroyed during the reformation but apparently Saint Margaret and her husband King Malcolm's tomb was restored on the orders of Queen Victoria in the 19th century.
Royals: Malcolm Canmore, Saint Margaret and their sons; Duncan II, Edgar, Alexander I and his wife Sybilla of Normandy, and David I with his wife Maud of Huntingdon.  
Malcolm IV, Alexander III, his wife Margaret of England, and their sons David and Alexander.  Robert the Bruce.
The wives and family members of some kings are also buried there but the full list is on Wikipedia if you're interested.

Dunfermline Palace is also adjoining the Abbey and is a ruin now also; has probably always been there in one form or another and was used to house royal and important guest when they visited the Abbey, it's the only part of the place you have to pay to get into, but it's not steep and the views are excellent.  King Charles I was born in Dunfermline Palace because his mother, Anna of Denmark and wife of King James VI of Scotland, lived in the palace at that time.  When James became King of England after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 the palace fell into disrepair and ruin, which can still be seen today.

It doesn't take long to go around the Abbey and the Palace, but the inside is breathtaking, as all Abbeys are, and the views are amazing too especially if it's a good day like it was when I visited.  Dunfermline town is also just behind the Abbey so you can go for lunch and some shopping afterwards.  A nice day out overall and it is amazing to know you're walking in the same space as some of the most vibrant of Scotland's kings.

History Sunday: Eleanor of Castile (II)

Leonor, anglicised at the time as Alienor, and in modern English, Eleanor, was now Queen consort of England and had already completed her role as consort by giving Edward I his son and heir, at this time, Alfonso.  But there were more children to come.  Alfonso, created Earl of Chester, was born in roughly 1273 in Gascony and  became his father's heir after the deaths of his older brothers; John (1266-1271) and Henry (1268-1274).  As I said previously she gave birth an estimated sixteen times but only a handful survived infancy or childhood.
Katherine (1261-1264), Joanna (b/d.1265), Juliana (may have been unnamed)(d.1271), Berengaria (1276-1278), unnamed daughter (1277-1278) were all daughters who died in early infancy, as well as John, Henry and Alphonso who all predeceased their father.  Now her surviving children:
Eleanor (1269-1298), the eldest surviving child and daughter married Henry, Count of Bar, and had issue.
Joan of Acre (1272-1307), married firstly Gilbert de Clare and then Ralph de Monthermer, producing offspring from both marriages.
Margaret (1273-1333) married John II of Brabant and had one son.
Mary (1279-1332) a Benedictine Nun and Amesbury.
Elizabeth (1282-1316), married firstly John, Count of Holland, and secondly, Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and had issue.
Edward of Caernarvon (1284-1327), the ill-fated Edward II of England.

As you can see it was all daughters that survived childhood with only one son, Edward, becoming his father's heir.  I always feel for families at the time, especially ones like Eleanor's because despite their rank she cared a lot for her children.  Having os many of her offspring die before she did must have been heart wrenching.  According to sources the couple took the death of Alphonso particularly hard.

Eleanor Cross

I actually love Edward and Eleanor's marriage.  There's a story which I hope to God is true.  Since the church was very strict on when, how and where people could have sex, it was forbidden during Lent.  Edward I was a pious king and never shared his wife's bed during this holy time.  Every Easter Monday, at the end of Lent, he would pay Eleanor's ladies to trap him in his chambers so he would have to pay a ransom to be set free and visit Eleanor's rooms.  I love this story so much because it's not really a usual tale about medieval monarchs who always seem steeped in this fog like seriousness.  What is truly touching is that when Eleanor died, the next Easter Monday after her death he still paid her ladies the ransom.
There are many instances like this one that proves Edward and Eleanor's marriage was a successful one by any terms.  Edward is never recorded to have fathered any illegitimate children and by all accounts seems to have been faithful to his wife.  Another example is that when she died he erected the famous Eleanor crosses wherever her funeral entourage stopped and a few can still be seen today.
The final story I will tell here is that when the Earl of Norfolk was getting married, Edward I refused to attend, and so Eleanor paid minstrels to play for him.  Their marriage definitely held true affection that every historian and medievalist is surprised, if not impressed by.  Edward was a brutal, intimating and fearsome man, but Eleanor seemed to be his retainer, his literal better half, much like Matilda of Flanders was for William the Conqueror.  It is said after her death Edward seemed to become more temperamental and harsh.

Surprisingly Eleanor was not popular in her own time, in fact any foreign Queen had to make a grand gesture of some kind to be popular in England,  With foreign consorts came their many, many foreign relatives, and in true English style, the people of England despised them.  After Edward and Eleanor's recall to England by Henry III, her relatives came over with her and immediately garnered unpopularity from the commons because they were lavished with land, power and position.  This wasn't the first or the last time when a Queen's relatives would harm her popularity with her subjects, in fact Eleanor of Provence, consort of Henry III, was even more unpopular.  Eleanor, although a devoted wife and loving mother, was disliked by her subjects because they thought her a grasping foreigner.  There is some foundation to their reasons though as Eleanor had a lot of land as queen consort and made possibly unwise business transactions.

Although their relationship was loving and respectful Eleanor had limited influence over her husband, but she was consulted about her daughter's age of marriage, as is only right.  She had some influence in other political decisions her husband made but they were few and far between.

To get back to her education Eleanor really ran with the writing culture of the day having the only scriptorium in northern Europe open and copying and illuminiating manuscripts for her.  Books about the lives of saints and many more things from the time are all because of Eleanor who was a major patroness of literature in the day.

Eleanor died in Nottinghamshire in November 1290 at the age of 49 with Edward, her husband of 39 years, at her bedside.  I think this is heartbreaking because of the affection they held for one another which was further proven with the spectacle Edward made of her funeral procession.
Fortunately Eleanor died before things between her husband and only surviving son would get really bad, but its perhaps unfortunate for the younger Edward that he didn't have his mother around for surely she would have intervened on his behalf, as most royal mothers before her had.
Edward I remarried in 1299 to Margaret of France and the couple had two children together.  Although it did take 9 years for King Edward to remarry I don't think it was because of his grief; apparently as early as 1293 he was searching for a new bride.  He died in 1307, a somewhat resented king and angry man, leaving his son with debt, border strifes and political problems.

I like Eleanor of Castile just because she didn't do anything scandalous.  Isabella of France, the daughter-in-law she never met, overthrew her husband, and many more Queens of the age were scandalous, but Eleanor of Castile was just a normal consort who bore a ridiculous amount of children and who had the undying faitihfulness and respect of her husband.  She must have been quite a woman to garner the affection of the fearsome Edward Longshanks, bear as many offsring as she did and travel everywhere with her husband (which was somewhat unusual at the time).  Although she was disliked during her own time she's had a positive, if not easily forgotten, opinion since the 17th Century.  Unfortunately I think she's easy to forget, I always find people like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda and Isabella of France are the centre for novels because they're supposed to be these empowered females, but I have greater respect for women like Eleanor of Castile because they lived their life with grace and accomplishment.

Unfortuntely I've never read a novel about Eleanor or her husband, or even of her time period in history; they seem to be a bit thin on the ground or perhaps I'm just not looking in the right place.  All novels centre on the numerous battles between England and Scotland during her lifetime which I dislike.

As for sources; thanks Wikipedia!

Life has themes: this week's = Morality!

Recently I wrote a very long post about protagonist morality and whether a hero or heroine can ever be truly morally corrupt.  I meant to publish it to the world today until something unusual happened which mirrored that post.

We all like finding money whether it be in our pockets, pressed up against the washing machine door as your clothes are spinning, or in our bank accounts.  Some of us even like finding it outside on the ground.  When I was younger I never found money; I think I found a £2 coin once and was so happy.  Then adulthood hit and my belief system formed.  I am not a Christian or any of the other accepted religions of the world, I prefer to think I'm Wren Religion.  I don't want to go into the complicated labyrinth of my beliefs in deities but jumping straight to the main pivoting point of my entire life and the one thing that makes my decisions; Karma!

In the most basic definition of the word I have taken Karma to be simply, "what goes around, comes around" or sometimes "do good things and good things will come".  I mentioned in my post (soon to be published) about character morality that the reason why I staunchly believe in Karma is my childhood watching Japanese Anime and then my late adolescence and current life watching South Korean dramas.  Those cultures are very moral, they indoctrinate their youth with a clear sense of right and wrong from a very early age, obviously mirrored in their TV shows.  Like every population there's always outliers (showing my statistics roots there) but for the majority of people in Japan and South Korea they do the right thing; this is proven by the lowest crime rates, and highest reported safety by many foreigners that go over there to live.  I heard a story from Simon and Martina (if you haven't heard of them go and check out their blog.  They're a couple who have been living in South Korea for years and regularly post videos about life there) that someone lost their wallet in South Korea, they either went to the police station or someone handed it to them and all of the money, credit cards, etc, were still inside.

I never realised how much watching these things when I was younger affected me until my late teens, probably about 17 or 18, maybe even before that.  Getting back to the main point of this blog post, money....I mean morality.  Whenever I find things that don't belong to me, I hand them in, regardless of what it is, even money.

The first instance of this is when I was at John Knox's house in Edinburgh.  I found £40 pounds on the floor and handed it into reception.  They took my phone number and thanked me; I thought that was the end of it.  A few weeks later they phoned me saying none had claimed the money and did I want to come and pick it up.  I was probably about 16 at the time, £40 was a lot of money for me.  I told them to donate it to themselves (all heritage sights in Scotland are run by charities).  I gave away the money because it wasn't mine to keep.  Was it a stupid thing to do?  I don't think stupidity really factors into anything to do with morality.  Morals are very much based on individual beliefs, and people with none are usually the ones who say what I did was stupid.

The second instance was a few weeks ago.  There is a flat right beside mine, our doors are separated by a very small space.  As I was about to enter my flat I saw money, £30, lying on the floor.  It was over the border between my flat and theirs.  I wish I was joking when I said this but I stood there for what felt like 5 minutes trying to decide what to do.  What was the right course of action to take in that moment?  This is the problem with any belief system, there always comes a time when there's grey areas.  Good thing about my religion is I can make it up as I go along, change to suit circumstance.  Because it was lingering more outside next door's flat than mine, I picked it up and chapped on their door.  Handing it to the disgruntled occupant I entered my flat with a sigh or relief.  The money may not have been hers, and I'm not so naive in thinking she didn't just pocket it herself, but I did the right thing and my Karma is all I care about, not hers.  The only other thing would have been to trudge all the way down to reception and hand it in there, but from where it was positioned on the ground it either belonged to someone in her flat or mine, and it was closer to their door.  This was an exciting thing to happen in my life but it was soon forgotten, until today!!

So it wasn't as fancy as this but still

The elevator is out for the second time in 2 weeks (see here about my post when the lift was out of order the first time).  This means that the 200+ people in my block are all having to use the stairs again (but fret not, it's worth it because all of us got a small box of Roses chocolates and an apology note: I would walk up to the 14th floor of my block if it meant getting another box, but I am expecting a bigger box this time).  I ordered something from Amazon this week and got an email saying it had been delivered today.  Unfortunately it was too large to fit in our small mailbox and so I got a letter telling me to pick it up at reception.  Dumping my bag in my room and signing this little note, I went down the stairs again, and lone behold what did I find, £10!!

It was just lying there, on the stairs where 200 and more people walk.  To be honest it hadn't been there on my way up the first time, but on my way down there it was, crumpled and lost.  It was impossible to tell who it belonged to.  And so began another moral dilemma.  Now, I've been having a really Sh** week this week, my attempts at buying a new pair of glasses that actually fit me has left me out of pocket by more money than I'd care to admit (and no matter how many times they're adjusted they're still not right), and it's a coursework week which means stress with some more stress on the side.  I was on my way to the reception, and when I picked it up I did think about handing it in, but then I thought, what were they going to do with it?  There are 600+ people living in my building.  They would most likely keep it for a week and then if no one claimed it keep it themselves.  Yes, someone could have asked but that's not British is it?  We accept that if we lose money someone is going to take it.  Peeps, today I was that person, today, I was British, or more specifically, Scottish.  I was like any other person I know whose belief system is "finders keepers".

This is the question, was taking that £10 bad karma?  I have never kept money in the two instances before this.  Why during such a bad week did I find the money?  Coincidence would be what a rational person, and probably I, should say, but I am also a writer and I like to believe in more than that.  I was having a bad week, am having a bad week, and finding that £10 did cheer me up, before the onslaught of Karma worrying came.  I will admit, my belief system broke down a little bit, but don't they all?  I don't feel guilty about picking it up, after writing this post I do feel slightly guilty about keeping it, but aren't people permitted strays from their beliefs?

Some of you may think I'm contemplating this too much, it was only £10 after all, but for some people that could be something important.  Maybe it was just the fall-out from someone else's bad week (yes, pun intended).  It brightened up my week a little and has some new friends in my purse instead of being abandoned on the stairs with no one.  On the other hand, at least it came to me and inspired me to entertain people with this post, and at least I actually thought about doing the moral thing whereas most of the other people here would have snatched it without another thought on the matter.

What do you think?  To much contemplation or the foundations of future bad karma?

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, a lasting admiration (I)

I was first introduced to John of Gaunt, first Duke of Lancaster, early in 2012, perhaps earlier.  If I hadn't let Anya Seton's fabulous novel gather dust on my bookshelf for many years it would have been earlier.  I fell in love with the book, the story and most of all with the Duke.  Ever since then I've not only had an obsession with him but his entire period of history, mainly King Edward III's court and everyone involved in its sphere.  I've actually written a series of very historically inaccurate short stories about John of Gaunt and his elder brother Edward of Woodstock (popularly called these days the Black Prince).

First of all let's go straight to historical accuracy and the man himself rather than the marvelously chivalric version Anya Seton created.  John of Gaunt was born in March 1340 in the town of Ghent in what is now modern day Belgium but then in Flanders.  His mother, Queen Phillipa of England (born Phillipa of Hainault or Hainaut depending on the spelling) was the daughter of William I, Count of Hainault, and his wife Joan of Valois.  I don't really want to go into that nice spiralling european royal lineage because it is so so complicated, so let's just say his mother was from a very distinguished lineage, as she ought to be else she would never have married the future King of England.

Phillipa of Hainult, John of Gaunt's mother

This is where we mention Gaunt's equally fabulous father, King Edward III of England.  Eldest son of the poor, misunderstood but equally unsuitable King Edward II who was deprived of his throne due to his own mistakes and his wife, the immortalised Isabella of France (I don't want to quote Shakespeare here, although I love him he has become overused in popular culture).  Due to many small mistakes, ill judgments and listening to people he shouldn't have (that's right, Despenser family, I'm talking about you), Edward II was swiped from the throne and imprisoned and eventually ended up dead.  There is a hot debate about how he died at Berkeley castle where he was kept, and even arguments that he didn't die at all and escaped to live life elsewhere, but I won't get into that here.  If you are interested in Edward II or like history as much as I do, Katherine Warner's brilliant blog is dedicated to this long misunderstood and condemned King so I definitely recommend going and reading the hundreds of posts she's put about the man himself, his life and times and anyone who was anyone in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Edward II blog by Katherine Warner

Continuing along my lines, John of Gaunt, first Duke of Lancaster came from distinguished lineages.  He was born as the 4th son of Edward III and Phillipa of Hainault, but the third to survive infancy and reach adulthood.  He had three elder brothers and two older sisters, one of the most prominent is, of course, Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales.  I love this man as well but it's more of a passing admiration and mostly concerns that he never married until thirty and then it was to Joan of Kent.  He was a fearsome warrior, proving himself at a young age, 16, at the battle of Crecy at the start of the Hundred Year War England had with France.  There is ten years between Gaunt and his eldest brother and apparently they were quite close.  I can imagine a young John being enraptured by his elder, distinguished brother, perhaps even wanting to become just like him.

Edward of Woodstock,
Prince of Wales

Isabella, Gaunt's eldest sister, is another character I have passing interest for and solely because she refused to agree to an arranged marriage and that her father spoiled her rotten.  I think it was in the book "The First Princess of Wales" by Karen Harper that she really came alive for me and I know it is a fictional portrayal but I mean what sort of brass did the woman have to defy her father and king, refusing an arranged political marriage in a time when women, especially royal ones, were for that exact purpose, to forge alliances?

Let's scroll back to topic.  Edward III and his Queen had a lot of children and I have the utmost respect and admiration for Phillipa for surviving and enduring as many pregnancies as she did.  It was due to her many children that less than a hundred years later the War of the Roses broke out, and we all know what happened there.

Let's jump to 1359, the year of our Duke's marriage to the great and desirable Blanche of Lancaster.

The couple were third cousins descended from King Henry III of England, no surprise there then.  He would have been 19 and she about 14.  Reading Abbey was the place and the marriage was thanks to Edward III who was clever enough to match his younger sons to heiresses to ensure their security, and perhaps their loyalty?  Poor Henry II of England should have perhaps gone down the same path, but alas, he didn't and had to pay the wretched consequences but more on that in a later post.  Blanche of Lancaster was joint heiress to the marvellous Henry of Grosmont, first Duke of Lancaster, who had an interesting life I know, or can remember, shockingly little about.  Katherine Warner has three posts on him so again go there, she is much more knowledgeable than me.

Blanche had an older sister, Maud, who was co-heiress to their father's estates and worldly goods.  At the time of Blanche's marriage her father was still alive but he died in around 1361 making her husband, John, and her brother-in-law, rich.  Blanche had seven children during her marriage to John but sadly only three survived infancy and lived to adulthood.  The eldest of these children was the illustrious Phillipa, named after her paternal grandmother, who would later go onto become the Queen of Portugal and have very impressive offspring.  The second to survive was the passionate Elizabeth who married three times and had a few indiscretions but again I forget the details.  The final child to survive was of course King Henry IV of England, or at the time known was Henry of Bolingbroke.  She had other children but their were either stillborn or died young.

Henry Bolingbroke

Although most of my knowledge comes from fictional books and wikipedia I have read Alison Weir's non-fiction book about Katherine de Swynford (more on her later) which included information on John's life before her.
Every source I've laid my eyes on agrees that John was faithful to Blanche, that their marriage could have perhaps even have been a happy one.  That's what makes her death so tragic.  Blanch died at 23 at Tutbury whilst John was absent.  There is no exact cause of death, some say Black Death as it was ripping its way through Europe at the time but I suppose we'll never know for sure.  What we do know is that John took her death to heart, even commissioning "The Book of the Duchess" a work written by the famous Jeoffrey Chaucer that was also an attempt by the author to encourage John to cease his obsessive grieving over his first wife.

Phillipa of Lancaster

Now, let's have a look at England's political status in Europe at around the time of Blanche's death.  The year is 1368, long gone are the glory days of England's triumph over France at Crecy and Poitiers; it is the sunset years of Edward III's reign.  In 1369 the king sends John to France to take control of the refreshed military campaign in France.  Unfortunately this ended in disaster and was the first in a series of failures for Gaunt in war.

That's it for this post but I will continue John of Ghent's story in the next installment.

Reasons why you shouldn't post toilet paper...

Continuing on the awkward moments trend my life seems to have I recently, as the title says, sent toilet paper through the post.  That's correct, Royal Mail have delivered toilet paper that I sent to a friend.

Let's begin at the weeks before I left Glasgow to come down to Leicester.  The time was full of farewells and trying to figure out why I owned so much and how I managed to confine it all to one room in my parents' home.  One of my closest friends recently moved out of her home and into a flat in Glasgow as quickly as a snap of someone's fingers when I had been waiting three months to do so, but I digress.  When we were out to lunch one day the subject of toilet paper came up, don't ask me why you know how these things just kind of happen.  She told me, in the utmost confidence no doubt, that in her flat with three girls, her included, they were going through one toilet roll a day.

She told me they were chronically out of toilet paper and always had to keep buying new ones.  I was gobsmacked by this.  in my parents home where it's just the three of us we don't go through that much toilet paper, what were those three doing, this?

So i vowed, at the time, that for my friend's birthday this month I would send her some much needed, and no doubt appreciated, toilet paper.  This would have been fine if I had been more organised, which I wasn't seeing as I had just moved half way down the country and began a Masters course.  What I had to do instead was remove half of the paper from a roll of toilet paper, fold it up and put it in with her card which I was going to send to Glasgow.

I did this on a wet and rainy day; I wrote the card in the post office and addressed the envelope (organised, I know) then put the toilet paper in and sealed it, although it did need some extra sellotape to keep shut.  Back in Glasgow, on the few visits I actually made to the post office to send things, the question they always asked me was
"Is there anything valuable inside?"
To which I have always answered no.

Apparently down here in Leicester they ask instead:
"What's in it?"
In hindsight I probably should have lied, said something other than I did, but being the socially awkward person who isn't good on the spot, I told her the truth.
".....toilet paper....."
Once the large pile of toilet paper was in the envelope the bulge was hard to hide and to be honest I still can't think of what else I could have said it was.

Then ensued an awkward exchange of looks; the lady behind the desk obviously thought I belonged in a psychiatric ward and I was still reeling from what she had asked me and the truthful answer I had given.  To try and dissipate the situation and explain why a young woman would e sending toilet paper through the post I told her about my friend's unfortunate shortage of toilet paper and although she smiled and nodded I still think she thought I was crazy; she did understand the humour behind it though.

To be honest there is no solid reason why you shouldn't send toilet paper through the post, but if you do just pray that the teller doesn't ask you what is in your parcel/envelope or there is going to be a strange exchange of information and a lot of judgement aimed your way.  So to finish this post I will leave you with some excellent advice.