Remembrance Day

In Britain this was the first anniversary of the Armistice ending WW1 to pass without the attendance of eye-witnesses, the last three veterans residing in the U.K. having died in the past year. A British soldier from the war still lives, but in Perth, Australia.

In another connection between Australia and WW1, I have had in my possession for some months the 1916 diary of a friend's grandfather, which I offered to transcribe for her (although with pregnancy there has been a major hiatus on this front). So, to mark the war, lest we forget, I have flipped forward to 11 November 1916:

"There was a straff of unusual violence last night
our first Div had ten guns blown out we never heard if any of the men got knocked
it has been rather a fine day & the mud is like glue a mans feet weigh somewhere near 1 cwt
Fritz put some busters very near us last night & today"

Pregnancy musings (5)

As a PhD student I took over three years to formulate an answer to a question no-one else was really interested in. I don't feel this equips me to come to a snap decision about whether to have the swine-flu vaccine. I'm trained to want to sift lots of evidence about (frankly) unimportant questions, not respond quickly to important questions without sufficient evidence. Feel I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't.

Artefact of the week (2)

Two artefacts from Norwich Cathedral, which I visited on Thursday, for you:
(1) the Despenser reredos
(2) the Pelican lecturn
Both of these survived the Reformation by being hidden: the reredos disguised as a plumber's table, the lecturn buried in a garden. Shame that the powers that be there felt the need to put a hole in the lecturn stand in order to feed a microphone cable through it, though.