The Most Beautiful Word In The German Language
according to The Times
Vergangenheitbewältigung
has recently been voted the most beautiful word in the German language. According to this article in Wikipedia, it can be described as the struggle to come to terms with the past.
I read about this word in The Times, where Ben Macintyre is describing how the Germans will be publishing a new copy of Mein Kampf soon. It will be copiously annotated with footnotes to show where Adolf Hitler was just plain wrong.
Macintyre says that Germany has shown a way of defusing long standing problems, by letting historians tell the truth and suggests the approach could solve some of the major problems in the world, like the true nature of Stalin, the Falklands, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Senkaku Islands.
After all, when I learned Shakespeare at school, there were masses of footnotes and other annotations, which helped you understand the text and the age he lived in.
Dwelling On Loneliness
I do think that people will admit that my life can be rather lonely.
Although, as someone, who has often worked alone in his life, my state is little different to where I have been before.
As a child, I used to spend hours with my Meccano or just with my father down at his print works in Wood Green.
I was also very much a solitary programmer for much of my working life. Or if I did work with someone, it was just with one person. The only time I really had someone to work with was when I was writing software in the few years after I’d left ICI. And that was our third son, George, who used to sit in his chair, whilst I bashed away on an old Teletype. Occasionally, he’d get taken over to Time Sharing in Great Portland Street and sometimes, the girls in the office would take him away and play with him.
I sometimes wonder what happened to all those girls; Maeve, Maggie and and the Australians; Crystal Hendricks and Marie Thorpe.
But then I’ve always discarded friends throughout my life. only a couple of my school friends are still in touch. But what happened to Sheena Findley, Susan Portch, Caroline and the other girls from my year at Minchenden? C was just as clumsy with friends, as her best friend from school, Ruth Mason, is just a name in the past. She got married and moved to Ruislip, but where is she now?
I did bump into my first girlfriend at Liverpool; Marilyn Garland, once at Swiss Cottage, a few years after leaving University. She had a baby then and is probably a granmother now.
Some of the Metier people I still know, as I must have got better at keeping in touch as I got older.
But I never really was a team player, and that has stood me in good sense, since the death of C.
I do many things I want to on my own. And in some ways, I like it that way.Although I do miss the company of a good woman. A bad one would probably be good to!
The Catholic Cathedral That Wasn’t
I went over the new Liverpool Museum and they had the model there of Lutyens design for the Catholic Cathedral that was never built.
The Catholic Cathedral That Wasn’t
I’ve seen it some time before. But where or when I do not know. Perhaps it was shown, when they were building the present cathedral. I was in Liverpool at that time.
The Superlambanana With Bling
This superlambanana was outside a jewellers.
The Superlambanana With Bling
Although they are really leftovers from the European Capital of Culture in 2008, you still see them in odd places around the city.
An Equestrian Double
I took these pictures yesterday outside St. George’s Hall in Liverpool.
The view of the hall would be better, if they didn’t use it as a car park!
I wonder if there is another pair of equestrian statues in the world of a royal husband and wife, where each is treated equally. I don’t think there’s another statue of a lady in such a prominent place, where the lady is riding side-saddle. Certainly, there isn’t in the UK. But there is one of Queen Elizabeth on Burmese in Regina, Saskatchewan. But then Burmese was born in that Canadian province.
I also went over St. George’s Hall for the first time. It is rather a creepy and forbidding place in the cells under the courts, which are no longer used, but the whole is a marvel of Victorian architecture. As it is right in front of the station, it is an ideal place to spend an hour or so before cstching a train. Especially, as it is a free attraction.
The Anonymous Widower 