A panorama of our damp day at Elvaston Castle. At least this one isn't too bright and colourful. I seem to have mastered my PanoramaPlus 2 programme now and can churn them out at will. Mostly I hope they will be more interesting than the above. But as I said, everyone who went had a fun time. People are so nice. Necessarily I lagged behind and told everyone to go ahead and I would meet them later. I made steady progress, and after about 10 minutes, Reg came back to see if I was OK. And then he walked with me because it was slippy underfoot.
Picture 2 is some fungi, the identity of which I have no doubt will be forthcoming. There also seems to be some lichen too. We pronouce it "litchen" but Joan says it should be "liken" and she has been on a WEA course "Mosses, lichens, and liverworts" so she should know.If I seem a little preoccupied today it is because I was deeply disturbed by the BBC News coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein. They showed him being led into this small cell equipped with a scaffold, everyone except him in masks. I had to leave the room but Y watched it while they actually put the noose round his neck. The only one who came out of it with any dignity was Saddam himself. I was amazed that the BBC showed it during the day when children could well be watching. In fact I was amazed at their appalling lack of taste in showing it at all. Maybe they would secretly like us to return to public hangings so they could bid for the rights to show them. And there was me thinking we were a civilised country.
Please click here for David's video. I think I've worked out how to do it. And I didn't have to ask an expert.
..... Catch you tomorrow.....................
I like the Elvaston panorama (we once took a moorhen chick there for a caravan holiday and fed it on baby frogs). Not overstated and just the right amount of orangey-red near the middle. Was it Nikonised or Casioed?
ReplyDeleteThe fungus isn’t indoors so it can’t be what used to be called Merulius lacrymans (Dry Rot) which it somewhat resembles. A look in three of my reference books tells me that it has to be Coriolus versicolor (Many-zoned Polypore). The name says it ..
’large overlapping tiered groups …. colour very variable, concentrically … black-green, grey-blue, grey-brown or ochraceous-rust (!) with a white to cream margin … on deciduous wood. Very common. Not edible. … very variable species.’
My dictionary accepts either ‘litchen’ or ‘liken’. I favour the latter.
I too found the television coverage of Saddam’s execution grisly (but compulsive). I watched it all, but Sandra couldn’t watch any. It seemed to get more explicit as the day went on. The first screening ended immediately after the scarf had been put round his neck, “We don’t want you catching cold, do we?”, but later editions proceeded a few seconds further. They said he showed no remorse but he showed no fear either. I understand that the others in the tableau were hooded to save them from revenge attacks. Let us hope that after today it is not repeated, although I suspect it will be. Did you, like me, find the pale apple green of the handrails around the trapdoors somewhat disturbingly incongruous?
I got the video to play once, after several attempts, but could not repeat it. But you must feel like Friese-Green, or Archimedes.
Like you, I found the constant descriptions of Saddam Hussein's execution utterly tasteless. Fortunately, we don't have a TV, but the radio was bad enough. It doesn't seem right to punish murder by committing the same crime on the perpetrator. I know he killed, or had killed, many innocent people, but so have we, the Americans and the Israelis (amongst others), but we're all "friends" on the same side, so it's different, isn't it? Such appalling hypocrisy and all because we wanted the Iraqi oil!
ReplyDeleteYou might be interested to read a Blog by Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman (search for it), they serialised part of it on Radio 4 recently and it put a whole different slant on what we've done to Iraq and the Iraqis.
Madeline.
Is there any time over the holiday period when children AREN'T watching tv? I thought they could have issued a warning beforeheand, like they do about bad language in a drama. We did both watch it though. I wondered if they showed it to convince the Iraquis in this country who supported Hussein that he was actually dead. I often wondered if there was a case for putting him back nominally in charge of Iraq, under UN control, as he managed to hold the country together (like Tito did in Yugoslavia) and stop it descending into civil war, as it may now do. I think there will be calls to partition Iraq, and that the Kurds in the North will move closer to Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteI say 'liken' too.....but am no good at identifying it.
Happy New Year to all our readers.....
To Madeline, I take your point but would say there IS a difference between war and genocide. But please do not regard that as an attempt to justify all actions by US, Iraq, etc.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Riverbend connection which I shall seek out.
Jill’s suggestion about providing convincing evidence of Saddam's death to Iraquis in the UK may well be right. I hadn’t thought of that and consider it a reasonable justification for one or two selective screenings (although, as has been pointed out on Radiogandy many times, ANYTHING can be faked these days). And they DID issue a warning beforehand.
Hussein under UN Control; that’s a laugh!
Sorry, but he had them dancing on strings for years.