Nothing much again

Very cold today, yes very cold. (Chanelling Gielgud as Charles Ryder's father). 6 degrees is really too cold for me to garden, needs to be about 11. I've hurt my knee choofing around in the cold, kneeling on hard, wet concrete, so discretion being the better part of valour, I shall stay inside today. Still trying to get through "Winter King" about Henry 7, because the book is overdue, but its hard to skim-read the intricacies of early Tudor foreign policy. History is always interesting as it confirms my belief that nothing changes in humanity. According to Thomas Penn, Henry gained huge riches by secretly breaking the Papacy's monopoly of the alum trade, importing alum (used in the cloth trade for setting dyes) illegally from the Far East and reselling it in the Lowlands for a cheaper price than that of the Vatican, but still managing to take a healthy profit. After reading the other day in the Guardian about the Barclay's bank scandal, it makes a nice sort of counterpoint; things were ever thus, the rich bastards get to manipulate everything for their own greater gain.  At least the kings and popes of times past built wonderful architecture and commissioned art and music to expiate their sins of greed; I doubt if the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building and the London Egg will be visited by future tourists in the same way that the Sistine Chapel is visited today. If there's anyone left 300 years from now, that is. Only the rich bastards dessicating in their hermetically sealed palaces, brooding over the good times when all the world danced to their tunes.