Category: General

Chopin – Nocturne in E.

Looking at Boadicea’s poppies and thinking of Remembrance Day tomorrow made me realise that our hasty trip to France last month took us past many a signpost with names from both the First and Second World Wars.

Sliding down the eastern side of France, so we could easily reach a frontier if the fuel situation got too bad because of all the strikes, we saw both the Angel of Vimy and the basilica of Notre Dame de Loretto, the largest French war cemetery, from the motorway. Our route then took us across the rivers and departments forever associated with dreadful loss of life, the Somme and the Marne.

The return journey started with a view of Mont Agel overlooking the Mediterranean, the last French fortress in the Maginot Line. The big guns there managed to take out the station at Ventimiglia, slightly holding up the Italian invasion of the south of France in the Second World War. A motorway sign to Vesoul in the Franche-Comte reminded me it was one of the first French towns to be bombarded by the Germans in 1940, driving thousands of refugees on to the roads. Past Nancy and Metz into Luxembourg, where fuel was not only plentiful but cheap. Then into the Belgian Ardennes, with the beautiful forests,too good at concealing Panzer divisions. Signposts to Bastogne. Farther north came the signs for Ypres/Ieper, back to memorials of the First War.

Tomorrow is a public holiday in France and wreaths will be laid at countless war cemeteries and at war memorials in every town and village.

We shall remember them.

There are two excellent theories for arguing with women. Neither one works.

Goodnight everyone, sleep well.

When I heard this morning of another attack on Christians in Iraq, victims of the first attack have been brought to France with their relatives, I could not help wondering if these outrages would have happened under Saddam. I think not. He was a brutal dictator, but he kept the lid on this kind of thing. Will these Christians now say a prayer of thanks to Messrs Bush and Blair?

Maria Callas – Habanera

Queen and Bowie – Under Pressure

Now I realise that posting pictures of any sort of beer might be seen as slightly provocative in the present climate.

But I just have to share this.

When the Threshers empire belly flopped, I had three of their Wine Rack branches within a five minute drive. They closed, festered and got festooned with  Festival Fringe posters. Then some local franchise acquired them and, mindful of the fact that us Jocks have a severe thirst at most times, refurbished and re-opened them. Continue reading “Probably the Best-named Beer in the World”

Christian woman sentenced to death in Pakistan ‘for blasphemy’

The court heard she had been working as a farmhand in fields with other women, when she was asked to fetch drinking water.

Some of the other women – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore “unclean”, according to Mrs Bibi’s evidence, sparking a row.

The incident was forgotten until a few days later when Mrs Bibi said she was set upon by a mob.

The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.

Shahzad Kamran, of the Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan, said: “The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Asia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed.

“So after the police saved her life they then registered a blasphemy case against her.” He added that she had been held in isolation for more than a year before being sentenced to death on Monday.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8120142/Christian-woman-sentenced-to-death-in-Pakistan-for-blasphemy.html

Tolerant, innit?

 

Some days you are the dog, some days you are the tree.

Goodnight everyone, sleep well.