Birthday and Remembrance

Thank you for the birthday wishes! I appreciated the cards, emails, blog comments, etc so much. I had a great birthday, fairly quiet but happy and with friends!

birthday package from home! 

sneaky classmates drew this on the whiteboard
in one of our classrooms on Thursday...

birthday banner outside my door!

Since my birthday is Nov 11 it's very intertwined with remembrance, so I thought I would include both of these in the same post. Unlike in BC, Remembrance Day is not a holiday in the UK. Nov 11 is recognized as "Armistice Day" (referencing the armistice of WWI signed on Nov 11 1918) and two minutes of silence is observed. However, the main focus of remembrance here is Remembrance Sunday, the closest Sunday to Remembrance Day.

About 15 of us from the castle attended the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at Herstmonceux All Saints' Parish Church, which is a 1-minute walk from Bader Hall. Some interesting things I noticed:

- everyone at the service was wearing poppies, but overall the practice does not seem nearly as widespread in England as it is in Canada. I was in London yesterday (Nov 12) and only saw a few poppies, and less than half of the castle staff and professors were wearing them. 

- there was a surprising emphasis on Canada; I think this was because of our presence (us Canadian students made up about 1/7th of the congregation). Hundreds of Canadian students have been studying here in Herstmonceux for more than ten years, and the ties between the castle and the local community are quite strong. The Canadian national anthem was sung after 'God Save the Queen', the poem 'In Flanders Fields' was handed out and mentioned in the sermon, and after prayers for the Queen and the Prime Minister, there was a special prayer for 'the Commonwealth countries, especially Canada, and its government and Prime Minister'. 

- there was a roll call of names read out, of the men from Herstmonceux parish who had died during WWI and WWII. I could not believe how many names were on it. This was not everyone who fought, or everyone who was injured; this was only the list of the dead, and it went on and on and on. The parish is small now, so must have been similarly small then; I can't imagine the impact the losses of so many members must have had. There were also the same last names cropping up- brothers, I assume, who both died in the same war, or, when they were listed in both WWI and WWII, perhaps fathers and sons. 

Herstmonceux All Saints' Church; photo found using Google Images.