Share the Feelgoodness

[Table Card in Belgian Food Outlet, Bruges 2011]

The Long Sunday Afternoon

Sundays can be strange days. Time can do some pretty odd things on the seventh day of the week. 

Indeed, Sunday can be a curiosly loooooooong day. .....  and yet also,  at the same time and once passed, often appear to have gone in an instant.

It is this strange and conflicting sensation that can leave me of a late Sunday evening, contemplating the feeling of profound temporal distortion.

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Lying on the Imperial couch this last Sunday, I was reminded of that fantastic 1960's movie, The Time Machine, based on the famous H. G. Wells novel of the same title. 

Its a firm favourite, most notably because of the distinct sense of Victorian placement; antiquated science fiction, coupled with some quite brilliant 1960's stop-motion film and xylophone sound effects. Features that - in themselves - lend a quality of time and place, not to be replicated by any sexy CGI-reliant remakes [they tried and failed with a 2002 movie version].

Dressed in smoking jacket and slippers, utilising a sedan chair time-conveyance, powered by umbrella motor, our hero sets off on an adventure that spans time and the ages. 

[The Time Machine, 1960. Click to Play]

I tell you, its much like I feel on most given Sundays ....



For the 1960 movie, directed by George Pal, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054387/

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The Stoic philosopher Seneca, had some opinions about the passing of time and the 'Shortness of Human Life':

II

"Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralysed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: "The part of life we really live is small." For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time."

The Burges Bear

Building The Imperial Legacy

"Rome was not built in a day"

 And neither, let me tell you, was my Mum's garage!

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It is incumbent on every emperor  to bestow a physical legacy for the betterment and benefit of mankind; as well of course as to ensure the mark and glorification of their own magnificent reign.

Great baths, theatres, fora and aqueducts dominate the ancient world and still endure to perpetuate the memory of our imperial ancestors.

Indeed, it can be one of the pressures of being an emperor, to know that one must build .... and it is a pressure that I have not been immune from.  The last two summers have seen the emperor building his own modest legacy.

[Video of Great Garage Build, Kinross 2011. Click to Play]

So in my own modest way, I can now somewhat relax.  At least until next Summer, when ramping and landscaping will follow.  

Now Where Did I Leave My Bike?

[You need a good memory to find your bike in the local bike park - Ghent, Belgium, Jan 2012]

Christmas Tree - Bruges, Belgium

New Year in Flanders, Belgium

[Picturesque view form the Ghent Belfry Tower]

The Emperor was recently lucky enough to visit the historic Flemish cities of Ghent and Bruges, Belgium.

[The canals of historic Bruges]

The Emperor was impressed with the abundance of medieval architecture, history  and culture.

Not to mention a  wide range of *strong* Belgian beers, world class chocolates, waffles and fries, that all helped fuel the Emperor's cultural excursion.
For the cities of Flanders see: http://www.discoverflanders.com/

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I am reminded that great, great .... uncle Julius took a campaigning holiday through Belgium  in 57BC and found the locals to be somewhat more unruly than they are now. Writing in his own war commentaries of the Belgae, Aquitani and Gauls, Caesar noted:

"The Belgae are the bravest of the three peoples, being farthest removed from the highly developed civilisation of the Roman Province, least often visited by merchants with enervating luxuries for sale, and nearest to the Germans across the Rhine, with whom they are continually at war."

[Caesar, Bellum Gallicum, I.1.3]

"The Belgae, they said, were the only people who half a century earlier, when all the rest of Gaul was overrun by the Tuetoni and the Cimbri*, prevented the invaders from entering their territory - the recollection of which made them assume an air of much importance and pride themselves on their military power. "

[BG, II.4.2]

*A considerable achievement, as the migrating hordes of the Tuetoni and Cimbri went on to rampage even the Italian peninsula, defeating Roman armies and further terrifying a generation to the menace of the barbarian north.