Simon's Blog

In 1514 Francis Hastings was born. He went onto become the 2nd Earl of Huntingdon and had a very successful life marrying very well indeed. However, according to his Wiki entry, he possibly was the son of Henry the 8th. However, he probably wasn’t it is far from clear.

I visited St. Helen’s Church at Ashby de la Zouch again today to try and capture some better images of Francis tomb with a ‘proper‘ camera. It worked out quite well.

In England I think we’re just a little too accepting of all the history around us, take the memorial to Margary Wright as an example. She appears a good upstanding member of society who after her death a fine little memorial was placed on the wall of her local church. Nothing too unusual about that until you see the date when she died – 1623. Now if you are an a US citizen you would probably be aware that this was just 2 years after the Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock. So if this were in the States a great deal would have been made of the monument, here it just gathers dust in the corner of provincial church.

One final lesson from the church involves this fine alabaster memorial to Robert Nundi and his wives. He died in 1525 or 1526. He was a well off local tailor and in his will he left sums of monies to local religious establishments as well as my old school. He no doubt expected the nuns at Langley and monks at Gresley to pray for his soul for a very long time. Unfortunately just a few years later the possible but probably not father of Francis Hastings had other ideas and caused all the religious establishments he had endowed to close, pocketing all the money from the proceeds. There’s a lesson there somewhere.

I have say, and this should come as a surprise to no one, but a ‘proper‘ camera with some excellent lenses puts an iPhone in its place, a very distant second. This is not to downplay just how good an iPhone is but rather to take a poke at some of the nonsense that Apple spurts each time they have a new iPhone to flog. Apple oversells goods hardly breaking news. I say this as someone who is totally enclosed in the Apple walled garden.