This Is Kate's Thread About Dr. Nigel J. Spivey

Disc One did William the Conquerer up to Henry VIII. It skipped a lot of rulers, and I'm disapointed at the lack of Saxons. I mean, Alfred! Ethelread the Unready! Come on! And then he talked about Edward I, like there had never been an Edward before him - and Edward the Confessor rolling in his Saxon grave. Humph!

And wonder out loud what songs I should pitch Brill-Building stylee for a well-known girl group. (If I can stop laughing long enough to take this seriously.)

(bah xpost)

Swirly berry teas sound good; I've been drinking a lot of ginger tea, cause it's nice to drink when you're sick.

I would have stayed home but I need the money. I'm a temp, I don't get sick leave. It's more the boredom than the illness which is making me not want to be here.

HSA was all curious when the box came, he was sitting on the bed and I kept trying to get him to LEAVE so I could open it in peace, cause I knew he was going to take the piss, and of course he did. Well, he should have gone in the other room and done his boystuff like I suggested.

It was funny, when I first started watching the video, he sulked and stayed in the bedroom, reading. Then he washed his hair for, like, an hour. Then he came out and started dancing round the living room naked trying to distract me. He kept saying "Aren't you glad I'm not all jealous like most boys would be?" in a very silly, jealous sort of way. And then finally he just gave up and sat down and started watching it with me, and got hooked, and was all "Actually, this is really good..." So HAH!

crookback dick wz full of beans
he murdered half a dozen queens

etc

Heh, someone has finally come up with something for me to do, now that I finally have something to talk about. How annoying! More commentary on the commentary at lunch...

nb. not historically accurate

Where do they FIND historical reenactors? And why do they feel the need to show endless clips of Henry II galloping moodily around on his horse by himself?

But it's quite unlikely that I'll ever stop being interested in either history, or art, or indeed art history or other "tedious" subjects. So I worry not about the merchandise becoming redundant. I tend to hold onto the interests much longer than the crushes which spurred them on.

What else was he on TV for? Or was he talking about Horny Historian, I mean, Heroes of WWII or Kings and Queens or IS THERE TO BE MORE NEW SPIVEY GOODNESS OF WHICH I AM NOT AWARE YET?!?!?

Oh please let him host some Channel Five programme about horny art of the Romans or some such thing. I would explode, surely.

OK, you have a deal. Email me about the handover.

(What does press embargoed mean? Does that mean that they ARE for some future production thing, so there is Spivey Goodness yet to come?)

::slaps self::

However, if there is no new goodness, why does your colleague have said photographs? Hrmmmmm? Or maybe his other series is about to come out in a lush box set?

hstencil?

she is not great at all (voluminously bosomed, but pretty rough british porn actress and model). however, this a look that would work for most women, as far as i can tell

Ha-hem. Anyway, I was thinking more of Dr. Spivey being surrounded by naked slave-girls with feathers, i.e. ME. But this is getting very silly indeed.

I think I may have just volunteered to sell my soul to the Devil, but I'm not sure. Wouldn't it be annoying if the Devil said "Sorry, I've got enough souls"?

(I'm also waiting for the address of where to post my soul to, so we shall see...)

Thank you, Dave! I kiss you! In Latin!

At the Tower of London, no less. Eeep! Was he talking about William the Conquerer or maligning Richard III, I wonder?

::SWOON::

Damn, I've got to figure out a way to resize it so I can make it my new wallpaper. (I'm sick of the cat with the Oscilloscope.)

Erm, yes please, but let me email you to let you know what my other account is so you don't crash yahoo.

::fans self::

(I should just be shot. This is very silly.)

Watched two more episodes last night - Charles I has just had his head chopped off. And I fear that Dr. Spivey's politics are potentially showing, and this worries me. Slightly. Especially when he starts getting excited about the awful terrible common rabble depriving the glorious king of his divine rights. I worry.

Was slightly disappointed by Elizabeth I, but then again, that's because that whole era is so complex and so fascinating that you could have an entire series about her, and not exhaust the possibilities. But you know... when you've got all this interesting politics and discovery and culture going on, should you really spend five minutes discussing the Queen's gynaecology? That seems a little disrespectful to me! (However, I may blame Channel Five for this, as they seem to have wanted the whole thing a bit "Sexed Up". Literally.)

Not to mention sexist - he barely mentioned the sexuality of the Kings at all (though he did have an aside about "If Elizabeth was a king, then James I was a Queen!")

Sigh. Onward! I think he'll get more excited about the Restoration, and no more about that nasty fun-hating Cromwell.

Time - 19:30 - 20:00 (30 minutes long)
When - Wednesday 5th November on Five
The Men Who Lit Up Germany.
Documentary series about those individuals who shaped the outcome of World War II. This prograsmme looks at the elite force of night-bomber navigators that were trained to fly before the main bombing raids and mark targets with coloured flares, making bombing raids significantly more effective.
(Subtitles, Stereo)

We would have been devastated had we missed it!

GODDAMMIT, I THOUGHT HE WAS OUR SIDE AND HE WAS A MONARCHIST ALL ALONG, WHY DID HE WAIT TILL THE LAST EPISODE TO SHOW HIS REPUBLICAN COLOURS?!?!?

I feel so let down. ::sniff::

OK, I know it's an overview survey programme, not an in-depth discussion of every single King or Queen ever, but there sure were some gaping and noticable holes. Like, WHERE DID THE STUARTS GO?!?!? One minute, we've got Stuarts, the next minute, we've got these rum Germans who don't even speak English, and he never even MENTIONED what happened to the Stuarts or where the Hanovers came from. That confused me.

However, there were some high points, in the form of "Dr. Spivey blags free trips to loads of great places!" - imagine my surprise when halfway through the George III episode, he turns up in Boston Harbour, indicating with cute fringe-flopping head-tosses exactly where to dump the tea.

WATCH KATE NEARLY JUST OUT OF HER CHAIR when he turns up in "Upper New York State" (Upper? Who the bloody hell calls it Upper? I suppose the same sort of posho type that calls it Wilt-SHIRE. It's UPSTATE, Nigel. UPSTATE.) wandering around Saratoga. Now that was a pleasant surprise.

(He did also point out that the USA is a Republic, not a Democracy - nice touch.)

Anyway, it did seem a bit... hypocritical the way he could rub his hands with glee at the thought of Richard III dispensing with the Princes in the Tower, but then got all high and mighty about Elizabeth II's "handling" of the "Diana Crisis". And then started complaining about how the current Royals were not "good value for money". What *IS* good value for money for Royals? Invading France and getting popists to pay for it? Humph!

But then he did point out that around the time of QEII's Golden Jubilee, about "70% of young people" (nice vague statistic there, Spivey) supported the Monarchy, so it wasn't going anywhere soon.

(God, he's hott)

We would have been devastated had we missed it!

A bit like the bomber squadrons! or, Unlike the good people of Hamburg! Or was that intentional?

Anyway, WHERE DID THE STUARTS GO?!?!? WHAT ABOUT BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE PART I AND II? WHERE DID THOSE BLOODY HANOVERIANS COME FROM?!?!? OK, obviously Hanover, but still. Why them?

OK, and I'm short tempered cause I haven't slept well the past two nights cause HSA is out of town and I'm upset cause I'm actually missing him and feeling like a big old fool, a big ole love fool, and I haven't had enough sleep and I want to know where the Stuarts went and I'm not having a very good day today WAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

I think Walpole actually influenced the highly dubious system of getting in a new set o' Royals after Jason of Orange. The early Gs *hated* England and spent most of their time beack in Hanover, leaving the the business of business to Walpole etc. 'We' needed a cast-iron non-catholic.

(The irony being, that things for Catholics were actually much *better* under the Protestant Georges than they had ever been under the supposedly Catholic Stuarts.)

X-post, Pink, you're right. There was an article about hunter gathering and shopping in the Metro this morning, I'll start a thread about that.

(I love how the British decided that Mad Old King George wasn't so bad when faced with the idea of having a Napoleon instead.)

Hogarth! Gin! The Gordon Riots! The 18th Century Made Us What We Are Today!

But! Considering how fast London was expanding, the whole stinkiness of St.Giles rookery and all that really fascinates me.

Whigs, wit and mincing, it sounds like Momus to you, doesn't it?

Gothick=Catholic Form vs Protestant Content=Victorian hypocrisy=Bloody Cold
Neo-Palladian/Classical=Town Planning=Protestants on their uppers=Still basically repressed catholicism=much warmer

Oxford corner: TS: Keble vs Wadham

[ducks]

I know, fie, for shame, I know the buildings in Oxford, but can't place the name to the building. Some Oxbridge academic I would make, sigh. I blame booze and my ex-boyfriend.

Get yer girlfriend on the thread to talk about Oxford Architecture! (But oh no, then I will start disparraging Cambridge and will offend both Dr. Spivey and Baronness Panther so perhaps that's not a good idea.)

In fact, actually, I'm quite sure that it does, my family nearly moved to Cambridge when I was 9 (why they couldn't have moved there instead of New York is quite beyond me, grrrr, I mean, the house we were looking at had FIVE FLOORS so each of us could have had our own floor, plus one for the dogs!) and I remember the architecture being really nice, and a really cool alternative school, instead of the evil Christian Scientists who locked me in a closet for talking about Evolution, grrrrrr...

Ha-hem. Cambridge is confusing to drive through, though. All the one-ways and the narrow streets and the dead people in the middle of the road.

Rad Cam, if that is the Round Thing I am thinking of = way cool.

HANG ON, THIS THREAD IS ABOUT NIGEL SPIVEY AND I REFUSE TO LET YOU TURN IT INTO TAKING SIDES: OXFORD VS. CAMBRIDGE!!!

Hm! Ditto Oxford! And the crazies standing on top of the dead ppl and extolling their long-burned-up-by-royalist-zealots virtues.

Oh god, that reminds me, I had completely forgotten!

The funny thing is, I was once actually sort-of internet stalked by a Cambridge prof. When I first got to the UK and knew no one and was very lonely (boo hoo) I signed up for this internet dating service, you know, as a lark. It was supposed to be all anonymous until you *chose* to meet the person, so it seemed safe enough. So this guy - who was some kind of Cambridge prof (not Spivey, BTW, in fact, I think he was in the maths department) - started writing me. And then he started to mention all this really personal stuff about me that I hadn't put on my profile. I started to get freaked out - so I confronted him. He said he'd just worked out my name and googled me. Turns out he had done a lot more than that - he had actually signed up for the Lollies' mailing list and read all my mail. I was super bugged and told him to get lost.

The last time we played in Cambridge, he saw my photo in the newspaper and came down. He bought an album and was all "Oh, BTW, ha ha, I'm that guy..." and tried to make a joke of it, but it was genuinely quite creepy.

Not that I hold that against the city of Cambridge, or the University, but still...

And yes, this dead person was quite, quite dead and quite lying in the middle of the road. Where his bicycle had quite recently been struck by quite a bus.

(Plus, I know, obv. I do not hold the behaviour of their maths department against, say, their Classics department.)