h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Since yesterday, I've been having longer, but earlier breakfasts. No, I'm not on holiday or retired yet: Our heating system has broken down and there's no hot water. It should get fixed today, but my morning routine has now changed from the usual shower-breakfast-dress which I do in a blur (I'm not really fully functioning till about 4 pm on normal days) to a new order.

I get up and put a full kettle of water on to boil and get my breakfast. When the kettle boils, I use some of it to make a cuppa and pour the rest into a bucket. Whilst a further 2 full kettles are boiling, I have breakfast, which gives me more time for breakfast and internetting than on other weekdays.

When the bucket is full of near-boiling water, I take it upstairs where there is another bucket waiting. I mix the hot water with the cold in the other bucket and improvise a shower with a large plastic jug.

*pause to refill kettle*

There - don't we lead exciting lives!

If it weren't for the oddity of the boile, that sounds exactly like my mornings... Looong breakfast, waiting for my personality to arrive... (loosely quoted from Carrie Fisher).
And yes, when people in the office start to go home, that's my best hours! From around 4pm!

In 1969 I had a bath in a hotel in Gondar (Ethiopia) where both the hot and cold water were carried upstairs by small boys quite a few of whom were peeping round the door to the very luxurious tiled bathroom that wasn't plumbed in when I availed myself of it.
I bet you feel more awake after the current ablutions (I do hope so if you are carrying boiling water about)

I remember the name of Gondar from a book about the search for the Ark of the Covenant, but can't remember the context. The author reckoned the Ark had been taken from Israel through Egypt and up into Ethiopia, where it still resides in Axoum. Gondar came into the story somewhere along the way.

My morning routine:

10 minutes waking up
10 minutes shower
10 minutes eating muesli
30 minutes drinking coffee

I boil water for my morning ablutions as well.

I didn't know the Ark of the Covenant still existed.

The Ethiopians say they have it. It's kept in the Church of Saint Mary of Zion in Axum.

I thought it ended up in an American Secret Service facility, after Harrison Ford got it back from the Nazis.

The grail may well be in Axum. Most Ethiopian churches had an "Ark" but St Mary's was one of the many churches/monasteries that women were not allowed to visit. Not generally a great loss as they mostly smelt of the rancid butter the clergy used for dressing their hair

Not that this is relevant to breakfasts, but I thought the holy grail was in a church on the Costa Da Sol in Spain. I can make it relevant to breakfast by imagining that he Grail contains coffee or pina coladas, though that would surely be sacrilegious.

If you put all the "genuine" holy grails together that exist you would probably have an impressive dinner service. Without going into further relics, (the "genuine" cross being made up of more wood than possible, some saints having so many bones they would be giants) I would contend that they only drunk out of a cheap tin, wooden or pottery mug, which would not have stood the test of time. And why would anyone have taken it from the house anyway? It probably went back in a cupboard with dozens of others once the guests had left.

Those are good points.

Of the artifacts that Jesus used, only the plows that he made with his father lasted very long -- maybe up to three centuries. But that could have been exaggerated as well. Some "relics" are kind of disgusting, such as Jesus' foreskin. On the other hand, when I was in Assissi I saw St. Francis' shirt. That might possibly have been genuine. Even the walls of Jerusalem have had to be rebuilt since Jesus' time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Jerusalem

The Colosseum in Rome was pretty sturdy. Parts of it have survived. I doubt that Jesus ever went to Rome. Actually, no one has recorded where we went between the ages of about 11 and thirty.

Yes, the shirt and sandals of St Francis are possible, he was around only 800 years ago and was already marketable by the time he died. I've seen them in Assisi, and by the look of them they were made to last.

Don't we have an Entry on religious relics? We had a few good ones in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, including the Speaking Cross which threw back the coin donated by a Norman invader (12th century) and the Baculum Jesu, a wooden staff handed to St Patrick personally by Jesus.

They all got lost around the time of the Reformation.

A wooden staff hand-carved by Jesus and personally handed by him to Saint Patrick?



My niece-in-law says that she once saw the skull of John the Baptist, but it was small. She quipped that it was John the Baptist as a boy.

In Istanbul they have some clothing belonging to Muhammad and a cast of one of his footprints.