All Hail King Snake

Right now Snake is the only child in the household. This situation has its pluses and minuses. Plus - extra dessert at dinner ; Minus -only one left to unload the dishwasher. Plus - can use sister's share of hot water; Minus - you are the only one parents drag on "educational" tours of England.

This weekend, we decided to go out to the battlefield of the Battle of Hastings. Actually, the battlefield is in Battle, (with a name like that there was only one thing that could happen!). Hastings is several miles away. The Battle of Hastings is important for several reasons, one being it is the last time that England is successfully invaded. It all started when the King of England, Edward the Confessor, died. Don't you love names like that? He actually got his name because apparently he was so pious. When I was looking at a poster of all the rulers of England, quite a few have names like that. My favorite, Edward the Unready. You are just branding a kid when you name him that. Did he get that name because he was always late to dinners, battles, royal things? How did his parents ever expect him to live down that rep when it was built right into his name?

Anywho, Edward the Confessor died leaving no heirs. His brother-in-law, Harold claimed Edward named him successor on his deathbed. (Wait, did anyone else hear that? Right before he died? He said "Harold you be king", Anyone, Anyone at all?) Before anyone could object, Harold had himself crowned. News gets to William of Normandy (France) and he is angry. Evidently, Edward the Confessor promised him the throne in gratitude for Normandy always helping England out when they were in trouble. Apparently, Edward gave away the throne at the drop of a hat, "Thank you for bringing my mead so quickly, you shall be my successor to the Throne", "Wow, that sure is a clean stable - you will be my successor", "C'mon baby, no one will know and then you can be successor to my throne".

So William gets angry, he whines a bit to the pope and the Pope says "stop your whining and do something about it" so he does. He takes some troops, sails to England, conquers England. Hence the name, William the Conqueror. Not very original, these English. All in all, a very educational day. They have a nice visitor center and you can walk around the ruins of the Abbey there, still remarkably well preserved, considering Henry VII had all the churches demolished when he was angry at the Catholic Church. There are still some structures standing and you can see how impressive it all was.

While we were on the train, Snake was fiddling around with his Ipod and we got to talking about how much he liked it, how he could watch movies on it, how long the battery power lasted etc. This woman came up and said she had over heard us talking about the Ipod. She was having a problem with hers and she was wondering if Snake could get it to work again. Apparently it froze and she couldn't get it to turn off. The last time it happened, she said, she just had to wait until it ran out of battery and then she was able to recharge it and it worked fine. She wasn't looking forward to a long train ride without her Ipod. Snake knew exactly what to do, apparently you hold the menu and power button (or something like that) at the same time and it causes the Ipod to reboot. He showed her how to do it and she was very grateful. She lavished some more praise and went to sit down. About 5 seconds later, we hear a very jubilant "yay!".

Now if Snake had fixed Edward the Confessor's Ipod, we would be sitting in Buckingham palace now. Surely that would have earned him the right of succession. He could be known as Snake, the Ipod Wrangler. At least it would have fit.