No Opportunity Wasted

On the way back to London, our guide points out his native Wales, just on the horizon. Yet one more place to visit on a future trip. The world feels like a small place sometimes, when you're at home, standing still. Once you get moving and get out there, it becomes much bigger, full of new possibilities and experiences. [Newer technologies such as Google Earth try to shrink it back down again, allowing a different sort of travel, via a 19" screen.]

Our guide mentions once visiting a colleague and fellow journalist in America, and then inviting him to visit the UK for their next meeting. He was astonished when his friend informed him that he did not have a passport, and only 11% of American citizens did. One of the Americans on our tour drily notes that one does not need a passport when travelling as part of an invading army. [A more recent figure is up to 25%, partly spurred by planned border security requirements in 2008. The corresponding figure for Canadian citizens is over 40%.]

Time and money are always an issue, and being able to travel is a great privilege. But it seems a shame that many people who could do it, just won't venture out of their insular comfort zones.

Jubilee Sundial

Built in Westminster, across the street from the Parliament buildings, on the occasion of HM Elizabeth II's golden jubilee in 2002, the sundial carries a quotation from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II:

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.