dimoreien's blog

Book talk, life talk, ramblings
10/28/06 08:27 pm

Firstly, I need to get this out of my system.

I've holed myself up in our bedroom tonight as my brother in law is over and it's no secret that I can't stand him.

He came over Thursday night because he said he couldn't come down this weekend, so I was looking forward to having a quiet weekend in. This afternoon around half 3, we get a call from him asking if he can come down cause his wife is out and the kids are with the grandparents. Steve and I scuffled a bit over it 'cause I didn't want him down, but Kev is the worst reason in the world to start fighting, so I gave in. Steve gets upset when I get pissed about his brother, because well, Kev is his brother...but...I can't help if I don't like the guy and I don't see why I should pretend to. So I just take myself out of the equation and hide out. At least my laptop is on wireless and we have tv with a dvd player in the bedroom.

/rant

Ok, now that that's out...

Last weekend when Steve and I were driving home from Stranraer, we stopped in a lovely village called Gatehouse of Fleet. Lovely place, and it was nice and warm out that day. We took a wander through the town, and ended up at the Mill on the Fleet, which has a huge second hand bookstore on the top floor. I came away with some real treasures. At least treasures for me, and I intend on reading through them tonight. The first one is a first edition, published in 1859, Scottish Poetical Works The thing I love about old books is the notes you see scribbled in them. In this book for instance, it's inscribed "To Joseph Both, on his 21st birthday, with best wishes of his friend, W Locke. 26 April 1861". If books could talk eh??

The second book I picked up was The Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry, published in 1941, selected and edited by a well known scottish author, Hugh McDiarmid. It's inscribed in the front "To Jim, wishing you many happy returns. 4th July 1943."

The third and last book I got is called The Charm of Skye: The Winged Isle by Seton Gordon. Published in June of 1929.

So I've got some good reads. I'm intrigued by the Scottish Poetic Works, so I think I'll start on that one first. If you see me posting random bits of poetry or anecotes from any of these books, I hope you enjoy them!

Today was spent watching Rugby. To be more specific, Heineken Cup Rugby (aka European Championship). Munster won again Bourgin 41-21 I think was the final score, Ospreys lost to Paris, and the Reivers lost to Northampton. Tomorrow we're going to see Edinburgh play Leinster at Murrayfield, which is awesome, 'cause I'll get to see Brian O'Driscoll play! (He's the captain of the Ireland squad)....I can't wait to see Munster play Edinburgh here...RONAN!

This morning Steve and I watched a program on the telly called "Aushwitz, the forgotten evidence", and it was about these old aerial photographs that were uncovered that had been taken in the peak of the war, when no one really knew the concentration camps existed. The controversy, or at least, the controversy they tried to portray in this program was that the Allies knew of Aushwitz at this point and did nothing to stop it. Total crap in my opinion because a) not only did the planes only carry so much fuel, but they still had to get home again. b) How did they expect allies to go right into the heart of nazi territory and expect to get out, let alone trying to get millions of people out at the same time. c) The program tried to argue that the allies should have BOMBED the concentration camps....and there's one flaw with that....bombing would have killed them all anyway!

Note, I'm not justifying the holocaust, I think it was a truly horrible thing that happened, but I'm sick of people trying to place the blame for something when the person that should be blamed went and shot himself in the head. So...and yes WWII had some truly awful things go on, so did WWI, but frankly, we've got our own problems NOW in the world that need looking after, not whether or not concentration camps should have been bombed 60+ years ago.

This is just my opinion of course. *Waits for the rotten tomatoes*

Right, I'm going to go read.