It appears that the people of Warwick worship a giant blue porcupine. Apart from that they are very nice.

I suppose it makes as much sense as any other god. There was a guy in San Francisco who started worshipping a parking bollard in Golden Gate Park, because he thought it was a lingam (the Hindu god Shiva as represented by a phallus). Eventually other people joined the cult and started leaving offerings for the god. Unfortunately, having a religious icon on public property violated the separation of church and state, so the cult of the Shiva the Parking Bollard, was asked to move their god elsewhere. I believe it ended up in a back yard. Seriously, I am not making this shit up. So, blue porcupines it is. Whatever.

Meanwhile, back in the crypt of St. Mary’s they have the remains of a ducking stool.

It’s been in the basement for two hundred years now. They have lost the long arm with the chair on the end, but they still have the cart the whole thing was mounted on. I’m sure it will come in useful if they ever start drowning witches again.

There we were wandering down this street…

and at the end was the Mill Garden, where for a small fee we got to sit in the shade and watch the river Avon…

while overshadowed by Warwick Castle.

Talking of sitting in the shade, there was a bright light in the sky today the like of which we have not seen in many a grey day. Can it be that the English summer is finally here?

On to the tour of Lord Leycester’s Hospital. The chapel was closed because of an unexplained accident involving a chandelier crashing to the floor. It was probably a failed attempt from the Stratford on Avon tourist board. We got to see the Master’s Garden.

The urn you can see that looks like is it straight out of a Gorey drawing is Egyptian and about 2,000 years old. It was apparently once part of a nilometer, which looks like a misprint for milometer, but was actually a device for measuring the flooding of the Nile. That was actually a much more sensible thing to do in Ancient Egypt.

Djehutihotep: Hey, I’ve just invented the milometer!
Meketaten: You idiot, Djehutihotep, cars won’t be invented for another nineteen hundred years.

From the Master’s Garden, we went to the Great Hall which dates back to the late 1300s…

then via the courtyard with the shrine to Spiny Norman the Porcupine God…

… then into the Guildhall.

The table was used for a feast for King James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland when he came to visit Warwick in 1617. The chair he sat in is at the back on the left. The feast was so expensive that the Town of Warwick took ten years to pay for it. Now that was a party.

The guides here are all military veterans living in the hospital, and they were most charming and informative. There is currently one vacancy in the brethren, so if you know of a retired UK serviceman who likes history and porcupines, get in touch with them.

I nearly forgot, the thing at the back on the right is a box of bricks on rollers. In medieval times it was used to squash excess water out of laundry before hanging out to dry, but these days it is used to sacrifice virgins to the Porcupine God.