I'm Henry the Eighth, I am.

A bit of history today, as we headed out on a jaunt to nearby Portsmouth and her big British naval ships:

HMS Warrior:  The world's first ironclad ship and the fastest and most powerful as well when set sail (and steam) in 1860. Never saw battle, so this humongous four level behemoth with its three ton Canadian pine figurehead is as well preserved as an Irish corpse.

HMS Victory: Admiral Horatio Nelson's ship and the one he died on. I'll get this wrong, but I believe it was while battling the French at Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson was shot when he was up high on something and there is a bronze plaque that marks the spot on the deck to which fell.

HMS Mary Rose:  Fascinating and brand new museum that houses the recovered remains of Henry VIII's battleship, the HMS Mary Rose, which lay for some four hundred years from its sinking in 1545 to when they recovered it from the sea floor between Portsmouth and The Isle of Wight in 1980-something. The museum houses all the recovered items from the ship and a number of cool interactive exhibits. All of this surrounds the large open area that contains the remains of the ship itself. This setup reminded me of the Mammoth Site in South Dakota, where they built a museum around an active archaeological dig of a large area containing the fossilised remains of untold numbers of mammoths.

Nothing better to wash down a few hours of British naval history than a couple of orders of fish and chips slathered in salt and vinegar. Mmm... And then I dropped Pam and Berit off on Albert Street to check out the shops, while Rowan, Griffin and I spent some quality time swimming in some of the coldest water I've ever placed my body into.

"You get used to it," Rowan tells me. Which is true. After your body numbs up a bit. Griffin bailed to the beach after a short time, and Rowan and I swim-raced to the getty. Small English children on the shore threw rocks at us while their mums sat idly by. I think they thought we were the French, attacking.

After the arrival of Pam and Berit to meet us, we moseyed over to King Henry VIII's castle fortress, right next door to where we were swimming. As we were walking in, a tall young man in a suit mumbled something to Berit and I that sounded to us like, "mnmmsnnsn champagne bar smsmnnsn nsns nnsns champagne bar mnnnm..."

We thanked him, laughing to ourselves and walked into the open courtyard where young English hipsters were enjoying alcoholic beverages against the backdrop of a DJ spinning records next to one of the interior castle walls, and it occurred to me how different my misspent youth might have been had I done my partying in the historic castles of British monarchs and also how, while studying these historic monarchs in school, I had no idea that British youths were at that very moment partying in the very castles of said monarchs.