Today I have one eye on the curious spectacle currently happening in Leicester. The reburial of Richard the third strikes me as very odd. It’s a strange mix of state ceremony, military pageant and historical reenactment. Guys in medieval armour alongside politicians and clergy. I suspect they made the order of events up for this occasion – after all, what precident for the reburial of an ancient monarch is there? – yet it still has the appearence and feel of a grand, well established state event. Lyn suggested the Beeb are making a bigger deal of it than it deserves, and that there’s probably some huge scandal they want to obscure. She is probably right; yet I find my curiosity pricked by this event, as it says something about british/English culture, our taste for events ceremony and pageantry. A diversion it might be; inasmuch as they’re burying the bones of a long-dead, short-lived king, you could say it is a total waste of time and money. There is even a faint whiff of the Pythonesque in the mix. Yet that is why I am so curious: why are we going to all this time and effort? What is it about ceremonies we seem to like so much? Odd…very odd.