I've been watching a bit of footage of the procession of the Queen's coffin to the Palace of Westminster, to lie in state and the guard vigil. I watched some of the BBC footage and some of the closeups, where you see Charles swaying a bit, and others; and, the images of the guards standing vigil, with their heads bowed. It takes me back to standing in formation, for long periods of time and the stress it puts on your body. We were taught, at the beginning of our NROTC indoctrination, to keep our knees flexed, to prevent cutting off circulation, which can be a common occurrence, when you stand like that, for long periods, if you lock your knees. It can trigger a vasovagal response, where blood pressure drops and you feel faint (an can literally do so). Our taller midshipman were more susceptible to the problem, though it did happen to me, once. We were having a retirement ceremony for our squadron chaplain, on our flagship, and I was there as part of the staff, in formation. As the chaplain was making his remarks, I suddenly started to see bright light and then the next thing I knew, I was in a kneeling position, my hands stretched out before me, on the deck, catching me. I was helped to stand and led off to sickbay, to be checked over, as they ran my blood pressure and also cleaned my hands, as the non-skid coating on the deck had created small cuts in my palms, which I nearly pressed against my white uniform. I must have locked my knees, as it had never happened to me before, even when we spent over an hour in formation at the Battalion Commander's inspection, my freshman year (which led to some reprimands to the Battalion staff, for dragging things on so long and carrying on the inspection like a boot camp one, when it is meant to be more of a cursory thing, more ceremonial).

I watched one of the halberd bearers shift his position a bit and thought of the stress they must be enduring, with those very formal positions, though they can and do rest part of their weight on halberd or sword. I watched a bit longer and saw them change out the guard, which relived me, as it had been less than an hour, so they definitely take the duration of such a stance into account (which you would expect, though this isn't a ceremony you conduct often).

I also had to wonder at what the younger ladies were thinking in their choice of footwear, for the ceremony. High heels were not a good idea, to stand on a floor, for the length they did.

You're right; the geographical sense has been around since the 1500s according to wikipedia. I didn't know that, but I just found a couple of interesting articles there:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isles

The wiki article on Brittany also says, "Brittany has also been referred to as Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain, with which it shares an etymology)." That's a variant I haven't encountered before, "Little Britain". If you Google it, add "Brittany" to the search or you'll get pages of results about a TV series by that name.

I've been interested in this stuff for a long time because I have British ancestry, in both senses - my father's mother grew up in rural Wales, speaking Welsh as her first language. She spoke English with a heavy accent all her life.

There's a dead mouse or something in my trunk... not in any of the accessible places like the rear light compartments, but right inside the frame; it must have entered through one of the dollar coin-sized holes here and there. 

The stench is absolutely nauseating; it's like the bottom of a metal trashcan in summer. Unfortunately, short of cutting through the steel plates around the trunk, I don't see how to do anything about it. (Letting nature run its course might work, but without flies a corpse like that may take months to decompose). 

Time to visit the dealer and his highly-paid but well-equipped mechanics, I fear. What a silly way to spend money!

I tried, my friend; I even jury-rigged a vacuum hose extension that would fit into those small holes. Alas it didn't suck enough, unlike the situation! 

We did locate the approximative position of the critter, just using our nose (regular Daredeils, we are!) but beyond "it's on the right side", we can't be more certain. I used a fibre optic camera (cheap but serviceable) to try to get a closer look inside the frame, but allI found was a layer of fabric insulating the trunk from the rest of the car. I thought it was mouse fur at first! 

Wotta revoltin' development! Next thing you know, the police will cordon off our car because there's obviously a dead body inside!!!

Can't be less than a couple hundred bucks. That's just Canadian money, but still!

At least we weren't talking about a certain urban legend, involving Richard Gere.

That's a pretty cool set, and its crazy that it has all the pieces.