More Scargill pictures

The Scargill House flickr pool. Though mostly pretty recent pictures.

United voices

Went to hear the united voices gospel choir from Bradford on Wednesday

only one third of them were here - and some were glad in view of the volume. They got a very churchy audience and could have benefited from a wider invite - though they did draw in a couple off the street. I'd have welcomed more variety with more solo work - especially in view of the rapt lead in of the first song from one singer.
Some what of a culture shock though very enjoyable!

Local news

Two main stories on the fron page of this weeks Macclesfield Express

Is Macc now the cannabis-growing capital of Britain?

yes, the police have found yet another local house stacked full of cannabis plants.
and

Prince Edward arrives in Macclesfield on Friday (June 20) in the highest profile Royal visit since the Queen’s jubilee celebrations in 2002

I'm sure the two stories are entirely unrelated!

12 hours left

To download firefox 3 on the download day! I've already got RC2 so will probably be boring and download when synaptic tells me (assuming there's a difference between rc2 and the release!)

I'm probably too old

to enjoy this properly!

but it carries something of Summer at Scargill. Now Winter was a different matter.
Ohhhh the Racehorses!
Looks like they were summer helpers -surely you can't do all that in a week?!
What do she mean 'holiday', in my time it was ***** hard work, haruumph! ;-)

The Sun Lounge and the estate

A couple more pictures of Scargill from our last visit.
But it's the people and the environment that will form the enduring memory.



I still can't hear the sound of a cattle grid without being taken back - both a sign of arriving and one of departure down that narrow country road into whatever was to come.

Ever onwards...

A tricky few days - last week we were told that we are unlikely to get 0.6 of a clergy person for the part of the team ministry where I worship. So we thinking about redeployment of existing resources! However if you're reading this and you are 0.6 of a clergy person (or even more!) and want a part time post the job pack is still around!
Then this evening I heard that Scargill House (the site index page is broken for GNU/Linux users..) - where I spent 4 years working as a community member is to close and the site sold - now that's another big wrench with the past.
Remembering the folk I worked with the places and the experience of those years.


But always onwards... a pilgrim people...and they're moving on too:

Located on a 100 acre estate in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Scargill community has provided a place to explore contemporary spirituality, celebrate human diversity and act responsibly with regard to creation and the environment. It has just announced the decision to sell the site and to create a grant giving Foundation run by a ‘virtual’ community of members.
...
Now Scargill has taken the radical step to set up a Foundation with the proceeds of the sale of the Centre. Through this it will be enabled to support those who, in numerous and diverse ways, continue to live out its vision.

My album of slide scans from those years is here. I must get around to getting a few more on line, and am tempted to see the place once more before the closure.

Firefox blogging addins

It would appear that Scribefire works nicely with firefox whereas I'm getting strange messages with Deepest Sender about missing content.
Thanks to Storyteller's World for the pointer

We won't be Berlusconi's scapegoats

We won't be Berlusconi's scapegoats, say Gypsies From the Observer:

In a desolate field just beyond the Rome ring road, a single line of caravans is a stark sign of the times in the new and increasingly anti-immigrant Italy. The vehicles are the modest homes of 25 Gypsy families, who have become the first victims of a campaign waged by the city's new right-wing mayor to crack down on foreign criminals and illegal Gypsy camps.

Oblivious to their parents' distress, children laugh and duck behind cars, squirting water pistols at each other as the adults contemplate an uncertain future. But the white sheets waving on clothes lines seem to symbolise a mood of surrender and gloom. Police, accompanied by dogs, have just chased this community from the city centre site it had occupied for 20 years.

'We work for a living, but in a couple of hours, everything we had created, the relationship we had built with locals over decades, was wiped out,' said Alessandro, 36.

Difficult to say more, I'm in the midst of reading Jessica Duchen's Hungarian Dances which also treads on this ground exposing the hypocrisy.

ex-ex-SPCK

SPCK
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

As reported by Dave Walker the SPCK bookshops have closed. This was the Chester one this afternoon. We had a drink in the cafe opposite and there was no activity inside. Back in the 1970's we used to call it the Society for the Prevention of Christian Knowledge - sadly prescient.

To Chester

Andy Bull
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

To Chester this afternoon to see Andy Bull's ordination. The third ordination we've been to in the past twelve months!

Then a much anticipated visit to Chez Jules for dinner


We feel the starter and dessert menu calling us back!
More pictures from the day on my flickr pages.

Shhhhhh!

via Chester LUG

This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000

Give me a paw!

- there's a bird up this tree, don't just sit there! Taken a few years ago now - that's Perdita - now long gone, with a local tabby, the clematis and the tree are also no more.

No other way!

to perform music! 'Unison, fourth and fifth - all other intervals are shit!' Hat tip to The Rambler
On digging around, here's the wikipedia article on the M6 series Kaamelott

Probably not a surprise

Your Score: The True Neurotic

You scored 63 anxiety, 81 awkwardness, and 80 neuroticism!

Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You're plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard--even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn't help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.


Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.
Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.
Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors--probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.
__
See the other results!
Well-Adjusted
The Neat Freak
The Dork
The Geek
Phobic
Obsessive-Compulsive
The Subtle Neurotic

The True Neurotic

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
View My Profile(littlelostsnail)

(me again)
I'm sure my reformatting of the html provided by the quiz result tells its own story! Thanks to Janis for the pointer (I think!)

O

O
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Another Thursday another of the evening walks. This time around the grounds of Peover Hall

Pictures of the '07 walks including some others of this walk are here (I hope - my newish router will no longer allow me to loop back to check this URL and I've not yet worked out how to fix it!)

Its sucure

Thanks to the onionring for this wonderful garble! At first glance I thought it was something to do with sugar.

terragen render

Not uploaded one of these for quite a time - but now have wine, nvidia and mandriva working well again and can run terragen under wine. This needs a bit more work - on the greenery I think as well as a more interesting sky - though this one took around 30 hours to render - and slightly slowed the machine down too!
This is with the latest terragen 2 beta.

Rackhams and the Craven Herald

I see that Skipton High Street is up agains two London Streets for the title of Britain's Greatest Street - I have fond memories of spending day's off in Skipton...and here's the Craven Herald article

Theologian in the fast lane

A classic!
via Of course, I could be wrong...:

This is coming at a time of rapid changes that are in direct contradiction to the tenets of Christianity. Especially the global emergence of fast lane theologians and revisionists who deny the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, mass fraud, embezzlement of public fund by those in government, homosexuality, lesbianism and the wanton destruction of lives and property.

I'll just go and rev up my Karl Barth...

Support Women Bishops - Laity

There's a petition modelled on the one that a large proportion of the women clergy of the CofE recently signed offering lay support for their position. It's here - Support Women Bishops - Laity if you're a lay member of the Church of England and in support of this please sign!

Springwatch

Springwatch
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

we're getting the bird table ready! Some with more anticipation than others.

Mister Muscle

Probably NSFW! Dangerous to your health too!

A bit of History

John Cleese's biography of Oliver Cromwell set to the Chopin Ab polonaise. I shall have the words (and music) haunting me for the rest of the day.

Oliver! (Cromwell)
Lord Protector of England (and his wart)
Born in 1599 and died in 1658, (September).

I hope you've all been educated - if you visit the link!

The trailer

Next weekend is complicated so I need to make sure I book a time to see the two parter!
The Arthur C Clarke reference was noted!
(trailer via Peter Ould)

Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Getting some of the b/w photos scanned. The Epson scanner appears to work with Ubuntu but I'm still having problems getting it to talk to this (my Mandriva) machine.
Oh, the photo is Domino getting used to the yard in the Victoria and Consort area of Leeds 3. She was a wedding present...unfortunately she didn't survive the cars long when we moved across Headingley to a busier area.

Disdain

more cat pictures - from LOLcats

Deconstructing the deconstructors

There's a pretty good example of why the global warming nay-sayers are indulging in either fooling themselves, or their readers, on the RealCimate website here. Needs some careful reading, though those who want to take the easy option and don't want to bother their heads about science will no doubt cling to the option that doesn't challenge their comfort zone.
Pointed to it by Elizaphanian.

It makes you want to go out and scrope Val Doonican with a knotted Eamonn Andrews

Just noticed that Kenneth Williams died 20 years ago last month - how have we done without him for 20 years (oh bang goes my non-adult blogger listing). I've just listened to 'The Celluloid Jungle' which I see dated from April 1968..
sorry for any typos in the above firefox is acting (nasal whine) strangely.
The title of this post might well do as an epitaph for Eurovision - though it was uttered by Horne rather than Williams!

The GAFCON Blog

is here. Something leads me to suspect that it is unofficial :-)

Pardon!?

Firefox (rc1) just crashed while viewing OCICBW's unsuitable Swedish photos - on restarting there were various available updates for my addons one of which was a 4 GB download of Deepest Sender(!) (must try using it again with new blogger and Firefox) - fortunately the 4GB was soon downloaded!

Springtime for Silvio?

Depressing reading this morning

local authorities would be empowered to check on the living conditions of citizens from other EU nations before granting them right of residence. The measure appeared to be aimed at Roma living in encampments, and particularly at the estimated 50,000 Romanian Gypsies who have entered Italy in recent years and who are being blamed for much of the recent rise in crime rates.

No word on Mr B's attitude to the law then?

In addition, the cabinet agreed to the confiscation of property let to illegal immigrants,

so make them invisible and a separate race which can safely be carted away in cattle trucks?

In Naples last week, a Roma camp was repeatedly attacked following the arrest of a young Gypsy woman accused of trying to abduct a child. After the inhabitants had been moved for their own protection, the buildings and caravans were burned to the ground, apparently by vigilantes acting on orders from the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra.

Fortunately I was there before the change of government, at the moment I see no reason for returning.

May

May
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

And another picture of may blossom - this time on the way to work. Intended to take this picture for a few days but always been too rushed - this morning I got around to it.

In memory..

garden twilight
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

of a friend. Sometimes the internet is tough and tells you things you'd rather not have known. Was listening to Mahler's Der Abscheid earlier too..

Avert your eyes!

especially you - the gentleman in the rear pew!
from ASBO Jesus

You will turn off your mobile

won't you? - on entering a shopping centre.

Blinks

on seeing this news - sounds pretty good to me!

are you my mummy?

somehow sounds appropriate for this evening

and another Ubuntu upgrade oddity!

Following on from this collection, I've just noticed this

$ iwlist eth1 scanning
eth1 No scan results
$ ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1a:73:28:ec:d6
inet addr:192.168.1.9 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

so I'm connected wirelessly through eth1 (I am honestly!) but it can't see any wireless access points. Pardon!?
PS - all explained now - you need sudo iwlist eth1 scanning
they've tightened up permissions on scanning for wireless connections. Not too surprising when you think about it.

Hurrah for the Church of England Women clergy!

In an outspoken statement sent this week to all bishops in the Church of England, nearly half of all licensed women clergy called for no further delay on women bishops, but also, for no further discrimination written into the legislation.

read the statement here I shall see if there's any comment this weekend - especially if I'm in the group which gets to hear the bishop on the Anglican future!

Vulnerable to flattery

The xkcd cartoon on the ssh security hole is here!

Walks 08

may
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Just to record that the Summer Walk season has started and that pictures from the first one are here
and that it looks as if next week's won't quite be as advertised!

Updating the Heron

I blogged a bit back about upgrading and installing Ubuntu's Hardy Heron and Mandriva 2008.1. I rather passed over the Ubuntu upgrade but as some issues have appeared, I'll make some comment just in case anyone else has these issues.

• Initially after the upgrade I was seeing the machine pausing and I was having to kill X in order to get a response. I dug a bit more deeply and discovered that there were some rather large log files in /var/log/gdm - I've using the ATI graphics driver and to solve the issue I''m including these lines in my xorg.conf file:

  option "no_dri" "yes"

  see the discussion here
• I was also having issues with sound due to the upgrade - sound is muted when I start up and I was finding that plugging in the headphones didn't mute the laptop speakers - wonderful for educating (or worrying - see my last.fm playlist!) my colleagues. This is on a HP nx6325 laptop For the moment I'm making sure my laptop has the headphones plugged in when I boot - not idea but it works for me! Googling suggests that a manual compile and install of the latest version of alsa may fix this. In the sound properties (gnome or kmix)I'm not seeing any option to enable speaker muting with headphones

11th May 1968

Forty years ago..and having been working my way gently through a book of photography I was stopped by a photograph of Gilles Caron, this one - see page four of that album. Another album is here. Caron went missing in Cambodia at the age of 30...

Wiki software to avoid

I realised that it’s the C++ of wikis — not only will it not solve your problems, it will cause new ones that will make you long for your original ones.

from mathrick on MoinMoin via The Gay Bar.
I spend most of my work time writing C++! (or maybe that's !C++)

Cat blogging

observant
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Biscuit - next door's elderly cat - was closely observing something. More cat photos from this hot May afternoon added on my flickr pages...

Boggle

This lemur

appears to be wending its way around the blogosphere.
Me last Friday...?
Hat tip to Little Bang Theory

Tesco woods

Suddenly the trees are out (at least I've noticed them) and the ex-industrial wasteland over towards Tesco looks leafy and attractive.

A theatrical knight?

more cat pictures.
But maybe you've already seen this...

Getting sound to work

Just a (I hope only one!) postscript to this experience of a Mandriva install. I rebooted this morning and found that amarok was no longer working

xine was unable to initialize any audio-drivers

It was working before the reboot so I assume something since the reboot before that (dvd encryption?) broke it. I eventually went into the Audio settings and disabled anything associated with Pulse Audio and that appears to have sorted it!

Paddy Ashdown..

tells it like it is!

Installs and upgrades

I installed Ubuntu's Hardy Heron on a replacement machine at home, that seemed to go pretty well and so on Friday I upgraded to the same distro (from Gutsy) on my work laptop - there was one point where it claimed that the download would take 10 hours - we do have a rather fast connection to the internet at work! - but that went pretty smoothly apart from the upgrade installing oodles of games which weren't there before.
So today I decided to go for a few more! To replace a old machine with the new Ubuntu machine - migrating the data and then to do a fresh install of Mandriva 2008.1 on the webserver. All did not go smoothly!

• I pulled the mains cable out of the (switched off) Ubuntu machine to move it across the room and the power circuit board tripped


• I extracted the IDE drive from the old machine so that the new one could use it - easier than copying the data I thought only to discover that the IDE cable in the new box wasn't long enough (it had lots of SATA cables and only one IDE). Wailing and gnashing of teeth and I put it back in the old machine created tar archives of the various home directories and ssh'ed them over

Seemed to go with only slight difficulty, however I then moved upstairs to get the web server done...

• This is the machine that got corrupted last time the power blew, so an install rather than an upgrade! Had 3 cd's of 2008.1, previously the install has read cd 1 followed by cd 2 etc (obviously), in this case it ping-ponged back and forth between the 3 cd's, I think I must have inserted cd 2 six times!


• Booted new OS to discover that grub had not copied over the stuff in the previous MBR (master boot record) - I was intending to gradually migrate over the next few days. Not a problem I thought edit the boot configuration - using drakconf that's pretty simple - so I did and rebooted to try to get back to the old OS - oops!
  

  modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.17-17mdv/modules.dep

  
  googling suggests the kernel hasn't been properly built!? and this machine rebooted successfully this morning! Tried another slightly older kernel version which was still there.


• Pause, I eventually decide to boot from the old OS install disk and try a rescue - and add the new version to a new MBR built from lilo - no! get some obscure error when trying to rescue the lilo version


• Cut losses go for a swift move to the new!


• Also noted that for some reason neither of blackbox nor fluxbox appeared to be in the 3 cd install (not g++ or mysql..)


• Abbreviating somewhat! Now have email setup (I run imap for the rest of the household) downloading and spamchecking ok, I think apache2 is up again. Imap was a bit tricky for various security reasons - so I won't say too much. Tomorrow to get the newsserver up and running!
  

I hope these permutations prove useful to someone!

What a mess!

I was meant to be playing three pieces at the Alderley Edge festival later this month - the last movement of a Haydn sonata, Scriabin Op 2 No 1 Etude and the Grainger/Gershwin Love Walked in - but I've double booked the weekend and I need to be at a conference 50+ miles away so I don't think sneaking out will be possible - grrrr (though the Haydn is still rather ropey!)
I do have - though the score of Poulenc's Embarquement pour Cythere -

sticking out the tongue camp!

Claws are out

see more crazy cat pics
Ideally in favour of victimising an old English sheep dog look-alike

May Day

On the way back from La Cantina - a tapas bar in Macclesfield

meant to take a photo of the sunset coming off the train but was too rushed - so this will have to do!
(we celebrate two half-birthday's on May 1st!)

There should be a law against it

Florida lawmakers consider bill banning ornamental testicles thanks to pseudopiskie

Ever so me..

is today's Clare in the Community
Which leads me neatly on to Sarkozy and the other anniversary - May 1968 - there's apparently been a picture of Sarkozy on the May 1968 barricades(!), wearing a suit(!!) at 13(!!!).
I got this gem from a podcast from the Guardian travel site a Paris 1968 walking tour, you're meant to listen to it while walking though Paris, you stop at the entrance of the Ecole des Arts, and on your left is... I listened to it on my mp3 player on the way to and from Manchester this morning, slightly surreal but recommended on the background and the fall out from those events.
Whilst trying to find the image from Paris Match I found this:

The society of May 1968 “was completely blocked,” Mr. Geismar said — a conservative recreation of pre-World War II society, shaken by the Algerian war and the baby boom, its schools badly overcrowded.

“As a divorced man, Sarkozy couldn’t have been invited to dinner at the Élysée Palace, let alone be elected president of France,” Mr. Geismar said. Both the vivid personal life and political success of Mr. Sarkozy, with foreign and Jewish roots, “are unimaginable without 1968,” he said. “The neo-conservatives are unimaginable without ’68.”

Bird houses

..with attitude. Hat tip to Andrew Brown - who also has an exorcism scene that's worth a read!

Humph!

(well covers that other piece of news) and at the radical evangelical there's this

Lis Goddard has just written an article about evangelical women in leadership here. in it she says that experience is showing that a good proportion of women are not given curacies in evangelical churches because of the risk of adultery and/or the belief that a female curate is surplus to requirements because the vicar's wife has got the 'women's stuff' covered.

Grrrrr! Go and read it (and indeed the original)

Tap, tap...

I think things appear to be restored - at least of the ones I've tried. I had to add execute permissions to some files in /etc/init.d and reinstall some zapped files from the appropriate rpm, at least most of them appeared to be the same as in the original install (and not the subject of a security related upgrade). I used

rpm --upgrade --force

a fair bit, probably a blunt instrument but I appear to be unscathed. Web server is now back and running!

Normal service etc.

Had a couple of power trips at home - looks like a faulty monitor generated them - and this morning once I'd worked out the alarm clock wasn't going off and it wasn't that my eyes were getting bad and there were really no numbers on the clock and then identified the issue, this machine insisted on a fsck (file system check) on the system partition and then gave lots of errors on important looking files.
At the moment the email server (the imap end of things) isn't working, the webserver appears broken (so you won't be able to get there!), various applications won't start - most worryingly I can't even get the Mandriva admin tool 'drakconf' to start. I fear a reinstall is going to be necessary working out which files are broken, how to repair each one will I think be a mammoth task - at least, before this, I was thinking an upgrade was due.
Normal service will be resumed whenever.

The Crag

A busy morning - preaching and leading an extended communion service, so I attended the initial service too. Then off to Wildboarclough for lunch with friends at the Crag - the Crag is about to undergo a change of ownership, so there was some uncertainty as to whether it was going to be open - but it was and the carvery was enjoyed. Then we were guided around a local walk which I'm intending to lead when the Thursday evening walks start next month.


Quite a bit to see - apart from the views - with a heron, willow warbler and quite a few other birds.
I believe the Crag is likely still to be open next weekend...

To see it done at all..

To the Wilmslow Symphony Orchestra to see Shostakovich's Festival Overture (great fun), the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 (soloist Christopher Ellis) - pretty well done, not my favourite PC! Ending with the Stravinsky Rite of Spring - this is an amateur orchestra(!!) and an amateur photographer(!)

I nearly dissolved in giggles when the person next to me said `and the best of British' when the conductor got to the podium. They got through it intact with some wonderful playing. With an amateur ensemble you see and hear a lot more of the internal mechanism - especially with this work rather than an over smooth professional orchestra - and it was fascinating. They even continued through a fire alarm that went off during part I. Great ensemble, I really don't want to mention any particular section, very well done!

Prick up your ears

Via Niles comes this link for testing the age of your ears and their high frequency response. With headphones I could hear all of them!? I hope this isn't cheating?

Better be careful

From today's Guardian:

Poland's 28,000 Roman Catholic priests have been told by church authorities that they may be fined if they are discovered to have plagiarised their sermons from the internet, and could even face up to three years in prison.

The church has published a self-help book on writing sermons to lure parish priests away from the growing habit of stealing the words of their fellow clergy.

Father Wieslaw Przyczyna, the co-author of To Plagiarise or not to Plagiarise, told Polish media that the guide had been written to address what had become an increasingly common problem, as more churches put their sermons online and an increasing numbers of priests used the internet.

must try not to inspired by anything I read as I prepare for tomorrow's talk - I do normally cite though..
Am I allowed to quote 'To Plagiarise or not to Plagiarise'?

More on A Child of Our Time

When I wrote

and at short notice Alexander Grove

I knew that he'd only been asked to sing the morning of the concert, I didn't realise that, at that point, he didn't know the work!
A pretty good performance then!!

Spanish walk

We may have thought that some of last autumn's Inntravel arranged Almeria walks were rather exposed - this is an exposed Spanish walk! I'd want to know a little more about the stability of some of those walkways before using them! (Nicked link from uk.rec.humour but this is serious!

Indigènes links

From Isabelle's handouts (more for my benefit?)
Site web de CNDP sur Indigènes
film history you need to search for Indigènes and get here - at least I did!

Forty years ago

Having mentioned the Powell speech here, I wasn't going to mention it again, but I was struck by the conjunction of that anniversary and the two events I attended yesterday (blogged in the previous two entries). I don't think either of them was planned in light of the anniversary, but maybe it's a measure of where we've moved and the possibility of further change.

Deep River

After a busy morning at Indigènes and an afternoon at ManLUG and OpenVPN, I took the easy option and plumped for The King Edward Musical Society (KEMS) and A Child of Our Time.
I originally saw this work in 1966 (or 1965?) in Macclesfield when I guess it was also performed by KEMS. Written in the days before Tippett's words became over self-indulgent

Pogroms in the east,
lynching in the west;
Europe brooding
on a war of starvation,

I would know
my shadow and my light,
so shall I at last be whole.
Then courage, brother,
dare the grave passage.

Deep river,
my home is over Jordan.
Deep river, Lord,
I want to cross over into camp-ground.
Oh chill! Oh don't you want to go,
To that gospel feast,
That promised land,
That land where all is peace?

Words and a work of great power calling for inner and outer reconciliation between the light and the dark.
Soloists included Margaret Ferguson - you understood why Tippett loved black sopranos - and at short notice Alexander Grove

Mort pour la France

Just back from (most of ) an Open University French Film day at the Cornerhouse with a showing of Rachid Bouchareb's Indigènes. The film was introduced by Isabelle Vanderschelden in French(!) which I understood pretty well and was helpful as a prologue to the film.
Unfortunately the film then had English subtitles - some were necessary but French would have been better. The film tells the story of four Algerians who join up with the French army in 1942 to fight 'pour la patrie' (France) - in scenes of great patriotism - and follows their tale as they help to liberate their country from the Nazis. In the process they discover that their African bodies are somewhat less valuable than French bodies, they are less likely to be promoted and their sergeant - a pied noir (a French national living in Algeria) who often fights their corner is in the end their master race. Powerful scenes of prejudice extending to the most trivial rubbing it in events.

Along the campaign in Italy, France and Alsace, they realize that French soldiers are promoted, has better food and have leaves to visit their families, while the Arab soldiers are shamefully discriminated and treated like 2nd ranking soldiers (from IMDB)

The film was written out of the injustice of Algerian ex-service pensions being frozen when Algeria became independent and in spite of a vote in 2002 for their reinstatement it kept getting postponed until the film was released and Mme Chirac told her husband that 'something must be done'
Echoes of soldiers from the British Empire who also fought in WWII and and also found themselves kept at arms length when the war was over?
The film was released in English as 'Days of Glory'

Decisions

as to what to go to on Saturday night, when I have the choice of

• West Side Story at the Royal Northern College


• Nederlands Dans Theatre at the Lowry


• Tippett's A Child of Our Time at the King Edward Music Society


• The Stockport Symphony Orchestra with a concert of Elgar and Strauss - including Ein Heldenleben

any of those I'd look forward to, with enthusiasm, but to choose one -arrrgh!

An explanation would be useful

from BSI about their approval of the fast-tracking of OOXML, but in the meantime:

Last week BSI (British Standards Institution) decided to approve the fast tracking of the Microsoft sponsored OOXML format (DIS29500).

UKUUG is concerned that this decision is not in the public's interest for several reasons:

* The current draft attracted over 1000 unique comments (i.e. corrections), of which the largest list (635) was from BSI itself. How does BSI then approve fast tracking, in the absence of a revised draft?

* By accepting an unfinished draft into the fast track standards route can only serve to harm the sector to which the standard will apply, as well as undermining wider faith in the standards bodies who are allowing this to happen.

* Given the absence of a single implementation of the standard, not even Microsoft are willing to state when they'll implement it, it seems hard to justify the fast tracking on the basis of urgent market need.

* Rejection of the fast track is not rejection of the standard. If this standard were put on the slow track, there would then be time for all involved to examine the 6000 plus pages in the detail that such an important standard needs if we are to rely on it into the future.

* To be fast tracked a proposed standard needs a high level of consensus, whereas OOXML has been marked by high levels of disagreement and controversy.

That being the case, the UKUUG is seeking legal advice on how best to proceed in order to convince BSI to reconsider its decision and instead raise an objection to the fast tracking of the standard within the 2 month window allowed by the ISO.

read the rest at UKUUG press release

And eventually...

Madeleine Milhaud died 4 months ago tomorrow, as I reported back here, the obituary appeared in the Independent later that month. Today(!) her obituary appeared in the Guardian, it is though a splendid one from Roger Nichols, well worth waiting for and worth reading -

One of the joys of going to see Madeleine was that you never knew who you might meet. Claudel's daughter, perhaps, or Dave Brubeck's son, Darius. Where else could you learn that, at Satie's funeral, his family duly arrived, "and they all had umbrellas" (pronounced "umberellas")? Or that Stravinsky, in America during Prohibition had thought his eminence entitled him to import several dozen bottles of Bordeaux, only to be summoned to the dockside where the customs man ritually smashed each one with a hammer?

and lots of details on her own artistic persona!

Eh?

From today's Guardian Radio 3 listing:
2.00pm British Symphony Series

• Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra


• Strauss: Duett-concertino


• Dallapiccola: Frammenti sinfonici (Marsia)


• Martinu: Symphony No 4

not a lot of British symphonies there I thought - and illustrated by a picture of Bartók (hardly a Brit!) who only wrote one early atypical tone poem/symphony Kossuth. When you see a full entry for the afternoon the Vaughan Williams Symphony No 6 is missing (as well as Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw) - I might catch the whole thing on 'listen again' one afternoon this week..

Must be getting tired!

Can't find a picture on the Sun's web site for today's front page (must be a first time this phrase has appeared on this blog!) - but the front page headline was Harry Army Hero gets MRSA - I spent some time trying to work out who Mrs A was, what the scandal was likely to be and why the Sun was indulging in such circumlocution.

Eh Luiiiiigiiiii!

Today's Steve Bell If on the hairpieced one and Porca Italia.
(sorry that's stereotyping)
This blog is currently getting around a hit a day for this search string, though I expect this to soon fall off!

mr l'ordinateur

I'm sure this must somehow be IT related

Nicely labelled 'Pop Kitch'
Hat tip to eine kleine nicht musik

Rome album

cypresses
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

To make things easier for folk from the Rome trip wanting to see my pictures, they're now all accessible from one page rather than messing around with several blog entries! This picture of a Palatine is currently adorning my work desktop!

Listen carefully

follwing a mention on rmcr I've found this

don't watch the dogs (well you can!) listen to the soundtrack. I must be too young to have heard of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards - Florence Foster Jenkins yes - but not these two, there is though a subtle difference, you have to be pretty good to play like this deliberately! I'm on the trail of their 'I love Paris'...

Seen this morning

On the way to

(outside Christ Church) and on the way home

from church. I love the contrast between the extreme rundownness of the long closed pub and the still intact but battered oval pseudo pre-Raphaelite decoration.

Open wide

see more crazy cat pics
(Immediately after posting this I had to rescue my electric toothbrush head after someone else had mistakenly used it!)

Lavatory love story

Lovely - the punch line is in Russian - but I think its meaning is obvious.
Hattip to Vrovkin's blog - no I don't speak Russian!

Bring on the woad

According to the wikipedia article on the England First Party (a spinoff of the BNP)

Public displays by religions not of European origin would be banned, and the number of non-Christian places of worship would be significantly reduced in order to protect English culture

I can't find this statement on their website but looking at the revision history it looks as if that party has a lot to do with the Wikipedia article. It has a fairly unpleasant set of policies - I do like the way the manifesto moves straight from executing politicians they don't like, to pensioners bus passes - but I do wonder whether they realise where Christianity originated?
How many religions are there of European origin?
I won't link to their web site, you'll just have to find it yourself.

ex-SPCK may damage your computer!

Thanks to Neil for this, hacked or just broken?

Today's Sylvia

Is here. Yes that'll do nicely.
And then there's today's xkcd...

I hope there's some real evidence

From today's Guardian

Three British Muslims took part in a "hostile" reconnaissance mission of potential targets in London with two men who went on to bomb the city's transport system on July 7, a court was told yesterday. The trip, in December 2004, was "part of a sinister plot to cause explosions", according to the prosecution. It was an "essential preparatory step ... to bring death and destruction to the heart of the United Kingdom".
During the mission - seven months before the bombs that killed 52 people - the men visited a number of locations, including the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium.

Neil Flewitt, QC, told a jury at Kingston crown court in south-west London that it was not his case that the defendants were directly involved in the London bombings...

It is the prosecution case that the defendants associated with and shared the beliefs of the London bombers and so were willing to assist them in one particular and important aspect of their preparation for the London bombings."

So if I have a relation who has been found guilty of downloading and sharing indecent images of children and I am found to have used a computer in his presence, I can be up in court with assisting his schemes by assisting in showing him how to use the mouse?! I just hope there's some real significant evidence to come in this case!

Targeted spam

Following last week's trip to Rome, I received a spam yesterday with the subject

Have you been to Rome?

to an email that isn't immediately associated with this weblog - has the spammers subject line random generator come up with this by coincidence? I wasn't responsible to booking the flight but the airport transfer firm looks like a possible culprit? - (later) looks as if I was wrong though - two other messages with this same subject line sent to totally different email addresses - coincidence then!
Then after this announcement

The Federal Communications Commission is set to announce the launch of a national alert system, using text messaging and other mobile technologies to tell Americans when to panic.

I've already received a spam - at my gmail address purporting to be one of these alerts

Male bishop

appointment [of Stockport] has been announced - I think he looks interesting! He's Robert Atwell, vicar of St Mary’s in Primrose Hill, North London. From Stocks to Primroses! (Name and link to the website added 11th Apr)

Women bishops

I seemed to have been away for some of this, but for our Welsh readers:

now that God has willed that the Bible should be in French, women will take over the office of bishops, and bishops the office of women. Women will preach the gospel, while bishops will gossip with young girls

Etienne Le Court (1532!) quoted in McGrath's Christianity's Dangerous Idea
Though I'd like to know more of the background to that quote..

The problem of being away for 1st April

Is that you miss posts like this in context. Nicholas and Carla the Opera..

St Theresa

St Theresa
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

And here's the scupture those men in the theatre box were ogling. A wonderful piece but probably not carrying the meaning intended - well I'm sure someone must have intended a spiritual content!

and Day 3

The Album is here - I used to know how to put a JAlbum into a preexisting location but at the moment I've forgotten. This day was the cat sanctuary, Campo di Fiori, Piazza Navona, lunch and back to the hotel via a second trip to Santa Maria della Vittoria - where's the faculty application :-). Looks as if the EXIF data on all the pictures is one day out...for 1st April read 2nd April etc!

The Tiber

The Tiber
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Flowing peacefully in the Spring sunshine on Thursday. 40 years ago yesterday was the anniversary of Martin Luther King's murder. I remember reading with horror of that event and the unrest that followed whilst on an exchange trip in France - near Compiegne -I don't think the Raoul's had a television - all I can remember is the French press coverage of the riots and then returning to their house in a Latin quarter that was soon to have its own erruption. On my return to the UK, I was struck by other - English this time - newspapers which covered the sacking of Enoch Powell for an inflammatory speech where he quoted Virgil seeing the Tiber foaming with much blood. That was 20th April - that must have been a long school Easter holiday! - I don't think you can separate those two events - which is rightly why his speech attracted the condemnation it did.

Day 2 of Rome

Album is here -including a morning around churches and mosaics, afternoon in the Forum and Palatine and an evening meal at the Antica Taverna - we had a second trip there for lunch next day - I needed to try the cheese antipasto!

Self-promotion

My caption seems to be mentioned in the latest Church Times caption competition - but maybe being mentioned is easy?
Oh, and I see I've now managed more blog entries so far this year than in the whole of 2005 - when I had considerably more time on my hands!

An initial album

For the first day the - almost complete pictures are on my webserver here - looks as if the relative links to the full photos need fixing (they're one level higher than the generated html claims) will get it done tomorrow! (now fixed)

View from the room

View in the early morning of the orange tree.
I had no part in the booking of the hotel for the week - and it was only after walking around on the first evening I decided that it must have been the same hotel the Hotel Piedmonte that I also stayed in on my last trip to Rome in June 1989 in a week when happened, and the death of this man, not to mention this disaster - I did wonder if there was going to be anything left on my return to the UK. I was there (in 1989) to present a paper at the European Simulation Multiconference. This time it was uninterrupted tourism! The restaurant I used a lot the last time was still there - just down the street, I Leoni d'Abruzzo, though rebranded and slightly upmarket - I recommend their vegetable antipasto!

campo di fiori

campo di fiori
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

View of the morning market - yesterday!
Unfortunately I missed out on the consumption of artichokes...

wwjd?

What would Jesus drive? - obviously from this interesting crib scene - a Ferarri.
the second picture is a nighttime view of the scene - with flashing lights - shudder.
If you need a guide to show it you - I'm open to offers (nice restaurant nearby!)

Church as Theatre

I was grandstanding with these dirty old men (sorry that's illustrious benefactors) twice this week, you'll just have to google or wait for the full album to appear to find out what they are ogling! But I'm back from Rome!!