Photo Hunt - Breakfast

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is breakfast. Since I don't do breakfast I don't have photos of divers cereals, toast, eggs etc. Here is Robyn getting his second breakfast yesterday, to wit a lump of cheese

My cousin Muelle on stage

Hillbillys & the Toothpicks


My cousin and her band Hillbillys and the Toothpicks. Surely the finest garage band in Brittany.

This video is from Sam Balone's MySpace video channel

Satan Cat

A neighbour's cat. Not only does he poke his tongue out he swears at me too... Someone deserves an ASBO

For boobs in peril on the sea

It is with great sadness to note that 130,000 inflatable breasts have been lost at sea en route to Australia. The boobs were to have been a free gift in the January issue of Ralph Magazine

A spokeswoman for Ralph said the container left docks in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week. The magazine has put out an alert to shipping authorities to see if they have the container.

Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone who has any information to contact the magazine. "If anyone finds any washed up on a beach, please let us know."

As sorry as I feel for Ralph magazine and its readership, I would love to think that these breasts might follow the example of the Friendly Floatees and follow the Pacific’s currents to unknown shores...

In 1992 a container with a large consignments of floatees was lost in the Pacific. Most wen south, landing on the shores of Indonesia, Australia and South America. But 10,000 headed north getting trapped in a current called the North Pacific Gyre before continuing north towards the Arctic. Some of the ducks managed to make it through the Arctic before being washed up on the shores on both sides of the Atlantic.

If only....

A Mars mission log

An image sent back from Mars has revealed an object which has conspiracy nuts going wild. An object looking very like a wooden log was captured by the Mars Rover near the Endurance Crater. The discovery has delighted saner heads.

The find has excited conspiracy theorists on blogs and websites who claim it is evidence there are vast forests on Mars that have been kept from the public. A writer from TheCrit.com for example said NASA's claims Mars was a desert world were 'lies' and that 'there are vast forests on Mars, ones that are kept from the public.' Furthermore the 'wood' was brought to its present position by a flood of water that must have happened within 40 years 'because the wood is intact.'

On the other hand tv gardener Diarmuid Gavin, in a statement on behalf of The Decking Association said “this discovery is a momentous occasion for manufacturers of wooden patios across the world. For centuries we have believed that we were alone in the universe, enjoying our decking in splendid isolation. Now we know that our Martian brothers enjoyed decking too, It is a truly marvellous discovery”

Other factions have noticed the polygonal pattern on the Martian surface. David Yorkstone, President of the National Patio Association said “Those foolish deck jockeys seem to believe that a piece of rock that looks like a bit of driftwood proves the existence of extra-terrestrial decking. However, it is clear to even the meanest of intellects that the Mars Rover is resting on an ancient and, if I may say so, a well laid stone patio.”

Relations between the Decking Association and the National Patio Association are believed to be at an all time low.

Banu, Our lady - Simin Behbahani

Banu, Our Lady,

this is my gift to you. Accept it.

This said, he raised his offering

and threw it down the stairs.

On the ground, the sacrificial victim

twisted with pain.

A stream of blood followed his fall.

Silence followed his screams.

A demon had made an offering,

and a person had ceased to exist.

Oh . . . for the child lost so young!

A hundred times Oh . . . for the old mother.

Banu, Our Lady, I dreamt I saw you

in the halo of the moon,

your face pale, your eyes red with sorrow.

In your arms you held two sons,

one perfect like the full moon,

the other radiant like the sun.

You sat beside the corpse,

with the road-dust still on your face,

your soul scalded by sorrow,

your heart tired of arrows.

You complained: O Justice! O Faith!

O, the shamelessness of the brute –

offering me a corpse

and asking me to accept it!

Banu, Our Lady, you shed a deluge of tears

over the man murdered by such ignorance.

You turned your silken coat to a shroud

to cover his body.

O, Banu, our guide! O, Banu, our savior,

O, Banu, unblemished! O, Banu, full of light!

From Archipelago.org Click on the link to find out the inspiration for this poem.

WW - Children of the Kindertransport, Hope Square, Liverpool Stret Station

This week's entry for the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of Wordless Wednesday commemorates the 70th anniversaty of the the arrival of the first kinder in the UK on 2 December 1938. Please see my previous two posts for further information on the Kindertransport

Richard Attenborough and the Kinder

Sunday Times carried the story of two Kindertransport children, Irene and Helga Bejach who were part of his family for over six years and who remained close until their deaths.

In August 1939, two scared children 10-year-old Helga and Irene, aged 12, were picked up by Attenboroughs’s mother Mary at a train station in London to start the last leg of their three-day journey from Berlin. Their Jewish father was facing internment and would later be killed at Auschwitz; their mother had already died of consumption. The plan was for the girls to stay with a family in the UK before continuing their journey to America, where they had relatives.

Attenborough, then 15, remembers noticing that they looked sad and ill – after weeks of privations in Nazi Berlin. “They were also nervous wrecks. Their house in Germany had been smashed by Nazis with guns and their father taken away.” The girls’ presence was accepted as a matter of course. It was not the first time that the family had offered a temporary home to refugee children: several Basque boys and girls had stayed for a few weeks two years before, in flight from the Spanish civil war.

Two waifs from what was known as the Kindertransport programme became part of the Attenborough family. Helga and Irene Bejach ended up living with the Attenboroughs for nearly seven years, going to the local girls’ grammar school and becoming much-loved “sisters” to the boys.

For Richard, who went on to make films about oppression in India and South Africa, the relationship was particularly formative. “It gave me an understanding of what it was to be Jewish, and taught me to loathe prejudice and persecution,” he says. “Frankly, I would never have been interested in making both Gandhi and Cry Freedom without that experience of the girls. They were just like our sisters,” remembers David Attenborough. “They simply became part of the family. We had some tensions, of course, but that’s family life for you. They ate their meals with us and went on holidays with us to Skegness and north Wales .

When they had arrived, Helga spoke a tiny bit of English, while Irene had just a smattering of French. Both cried a great deal in the early days, and wet their beds. As time went on, David gravitated towards Irene, who was academic, while Richard formed a close bond with Helga, who loved ballet and other forms of dance. As the war continued, the girls became increasingly anxious for news of their father. In fact, he had been taken first to Theresienstadt internment camp, and then to Auschwitz. “But it was only after the war, when the girls were still with us, that letters came to tell them that their father had died there,” recalls David.

In 1946 the sisters left to join their relatives in the United States, where they both settled and eventually married. Until they died – Helga three years ago and Irene in 1992 – they remained close to their “brothers. The sisters had also grown to love the boys’ parents (whom they called “Uncle” and “Auntie”.) “I would talk on the phone to both of them – at least once a month, certainly for the first 20 years after the war,” says Richard. “We would regularly send letters and cards for birthdays and Christmas,” recalls David.

Helga and Irene returned occasionally to England, though not quite as often. One incident in late 1959 sums up just how close they were to “Uncle” and “Auntie”. Samuel Goudsmit, who had become one of America’s most distinguished scientists since leaving his native Holland in 1927 for the US, had fallen in love with Irene and asked her to be his wife. Before agreeing, however, she insisted that he fly to England to ask Frederick for his permission to marry her. “It was as if the governor was her father,” recalls David.

Kindertransport - December 1938

Tomorrow is the 70^th anniversary of the arrival of the first Kindertransport children in the UK. The story of this remarkable rescue fascinates me, partly because I pass a memorial outside Liverpool street every day and partly because of the actions of a local resident, the late Bill Barazetti, one of the Righteous among the Nations

In 2003 a superb memorial, featuring a sculpture by artist Flor Kent was erected Liverpool St station. “Fur das Kind” commemorated the Kindertransport (Wikipedia reference), a rescue mission that saved around 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Nazi occupied areas just before the outbreak of WWII. Unveiled by Sir Nicholas Winton the memorial consisted of a statue of a small girl beside a transparent suitcase filled with memorabilia brought by the children, including books, toys and, poignantly, photographs of family members who almost certainly perished during the Holocaust. Sadly the design was not as successful as planned and the memorabilia was returned to the Imperial War Museum. It was replaced in late 2006 by a new memorial called simply The Children of the Kindertransport

The story of the Kindertransport rescue has been overshadowed by the Holocaust. However, it was an astonishing feat the first transport arrived in England 70 years ago on December 2, 1938, bringing 196 children from a Berlin Jewish orphanage torched by the Nazis the previous month. The work continued until the outbreak of war, although in 1940 a final transport brought 80 children from earlier transports that had stayed in Holland on the day it fell to the Nazis. The freighter itself was strafed by German warplanes.

Around 10,000 children were saved, most of them Jews, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. None were accompanied by parents.

In an effort to deal with the “refugee problem” a conference proposed by President Roosevelt was held in the French resort town of Evian in July 1938, but despite grand words, the conference was ineffectual, as most countries continued to refuse to accept new immigrants.
Following events in Germany and Austria refuge aid committees in Britain swayed the government to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter the United Kingdom. Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to rescue the children. Many great people rose to the moment, including Nicholas Winton, who saved nearly 700 Czech children; and Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer was a Dutch Christian who faced down Eichmann in Vienna and brought out 600 children on one train,

The Children who had prearranged sponsors were sent to London, arriving at Liverpool Street station. The unsponsored children waited in transient camps until individual families came forward to take them. The children were dispersed to many parts of the British Isles. Those over 14, unless they were fortunate enough to be sponsored by individuals and set to boarding schools or taken into foster care, were frequently absorbed into the country’s labour force after a few weeks of training, mainly in agriculture or domestic service. But many families, Jewish and non-Jewish, opened their homes to take in these children.

In 1940, more than 1,000 Kindertransportees over 16 were interred on the Isle of Man and other sites. Some boys, including Walter Kohn (later a Nobel Laureate) were transported to Canada. Many young men and women who had stayed in Britain, Kindertransportees later joined the army when it accepted “enemy aliens”.

Most of the Kinder survived the war, and a small percentage was reunited with parents who had either spent the war in hiding or endured the Nazi camps. The majority of children, however, had to face the reality that home and family were lost forever.

In Praise of Essex (sort of) Part 10 - Jah Wobble

A13

Oh Land of my fathers
Ancient Celtic warrior race
How are your tomatoes doing?

Oh barren, hopeless highway of Essex
I love you