Jean-Paul vs Albert - Rain stopped play

I know, I know, Sartre vs Camus was supposed to be next but............

I finished 'The boy in the striped pyjamas' today. It's only a couple of hundred pages. It's really hard to decide whether a ten year old should read it. Malcolm Goodson has a great niece about the right age but.........Anyway, I wanted to talk about that today. Not the subject matter, I've already said what I have to say about that. I more wanted to talk about how it's all been constructed, edited, written, plotted. However, I need to think some more about it so I'll stick it in draft and maybe then it might make some sense once I've had a chance to worry it to death.

So I thought today, while I work on that, I'd show you a picture instead of babbling in my usual nonsense way.

Now I've been hassled all winter by a certain individual who can't believe that after 7 months the only thing on my blog that he thinks should be there is a Christmas Card drawing of Fricka and I (with Frodo) last year. All the time, emails, "Oh, c'mon, Dai, please?", "It won't hurt, just one?", "I'll love you forever and have your babies! Please?" You have to admit, it's hard to resist. Though I think the last one I should take with a pinch of salt, it might need a major medical breakthrough first, I think.

So, as all friends must, I have succumbed. I will accede to his request, After all, it's not bad as such things go. I'm just glad we don't have them down here. From what he tells me, they're ten times worse than the bonxies! So here we have.........Falco Peregrinus, the most lethal aerial predator of them all!



I thought I'd leave you with a cut and paste job of an email I received from the 'Wunderkind' after my post about Auschwitz.

"When I was seventeen, I stayed in Germany with an elderly couple who a German teacher used to au pair for. They were quite high up the social ladder but very charming, generous, caring people. I was a working class oik but I had learned manners! Omi (that's German for Grandma), very rich, but not their grandmother, used to come for tea on the lawn three or four times a week. She couldn't pronounce Malcolm so called me Michael because the first time she met me, I was dressed all in white with long, flowing dark brown hair (post Woodstock, you understand) and she said I looked just like an angel. Well one day, she brought a friend. An elderly Jewess with a number tatooed along the underside of her forearm. She had a few bangles but a short sleeved dress. All afternoon I was just gagging to ask. But I didn't. When they'd both gone and we were sitting in the sun drinking iced tea, all that was said was 'Thank you.' For what? 'For saying nothing.'

I never spoke about Stalingrad, either - though the drawings were wonderful!'"