Various Things
May. 1st, 2012 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo1. I think that may have been a swallow perched on the wire. By the time I'd grabbed my glasses to make sure it had flown.
2. The sun came out yesterday. I had planned to walk from the hospital to my old church and take pictures of it- brightly lit with interesting clouds behind- but the doctor was late in keeping the appointment we'd booked with him and it left me pressed for time, so instead I sat with Ailz and Dot and watched Eric sleep.
The doctor said the same things he said a week ago. The only new development is the c difficile. Dot thinks Eric is angry with her for not taking him home.
3. The rain came back in the night. A week ago we were talking about hose-pipe bans. Now we're talking about floods. Down in the West Country a man has drowned in his car.
4. The government is flailing about. Polly Toynbee says it's the worst in living memory (she would.) "Brutal" and "blundering" are the adjectives she favours. We're back in recession (That is, if we ever left it.) Cameron was ordered back to the Commons to account for his leniency to Jeremy Hunt and got very red-faced and shouty.
5. Surface to air missiles are going to be positioned around London to protect the Olympics. At least one battery will be sited on top of a high rise apartment building. The first the residents knew of this was when they got a slip of paper slipped under their doors. One of them is looking into suing the MOD.
If there's wide-spread popular excitement about our militarized Games I'm not sensing it. The only British athlete I can name without having to rack my brains is Dwain Chambers, who will be allowed to compete in spite of having been handed a life-long ban for being a drugs cheat.
6. Scholars have known for a while that the source documents of Islam are a bit dodgy, but haven't been in the business of sharing the information with those of us who don't read German. Now Tom Holland is putting it about. I always thought Mohammed was a solidly attested historical figure but I was wrong. There are no contemporary references to him, the earliest "biography" was written two hundred years after his death and the hadith are spurious: all of which makes the founder of Islam as legendary as his near-contemporary King Arthur.
2. The sun came out yesterday. I had planned to walk from the hospital to my old church and take pictures of it- brightly lit with interesting clouds behind- but the doctor was late in keeping the appointment we'd booked with him and it left me pressed for time, so instead I sat with Ailz and Dot and watched Eric sleep.
The doctor said the same things he said a week ago. The only new development is the c difficile. Dot thinks Eric is angry with her for not taking him home.
3. The rain came back in the night. A week ago we were talking about hose-pipe bans. Now we're talking about floods. Down in the West Country a man has drowned in his car.
4. The government is flailing about. Polly Toynbee says it's the worst in living memory (she would.) "Brutal" and "blundering" are the adjectives she favours. We're back in recession (That is, if we ever left it.) Cameron was ordered back to the Commons to account for his leniency to Jeremy Hunt and got very red-faced and shouty.
5. Surface to air missiles are going to be positioned around London to protect the Olympics. At least one battery will be sited on top of a high rise apartment building. The first the residents knew of this was when they got a slip of paper slipped under their doors. One of them is looking into suing the MOD.
If there's wide-spread popular excitement about our militarized Games I'm not sensing it. The only British athlete I can name without having to rack my brains is Dwain Chambers, who will be allowed to compete in spite of having been handed a life-long ban for being a drugs cheat.
6. Scholars have known for a while that the source documents of Islam are a bit dodgy, but haven't been in the business of sharing the information with those of us who don't read German. Now Tom Holland is putting it about. I always thought Mohammed was a solidly attested historical figure but I was wrong. There are no contemporary references to him, the earliest "biography" was written two hundred years after his death and the hadith are spurious: all of which makes the founder of Islam as legendary as his near-contemporary King Arthur.
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 05:34 pm (UTC)We even wondered if it was a memory - perhaps the barn had been a nesting place before it was converted - that had only happened three or four years previously
no subject
Date: 2012-05-03 11:21 am (UTC)