Litigium

Over the last few days, a drama has unfolded in the UK and European media surrounding a 15-year-old schoolgirl who eloped to France with her 30-year-old lover, who was also her maths tutor. Probably to counterbalance the “official” Facebook page that inevitably sprang-up for the occasion, someone started a page entitled Megan Stammers & Jeremy Forrest - Good Luck To You Both . An interesting, stimulating and sometimes heated debate ensued about the rights, wrongs, ups and downs of the case. From the cacophony that erupted emerged a (very eloquent) word of moderation. After some persuasion, the modest wordsmith allowed me to reproduce it here, unedited and its original form, on condition of anonymity. – AMB By courtesy of an anonymous author: My heart truly goes out to ALL those involved, both families, friends, the school, its students, meg and jeremy. There are only two people who know the truth and the facts, everyone else can only speculate. I deliberately avoided pos...

My uncle lived to 96 – almost. His body just shut-down but right until the end, his mind was crystal clear and razor sharp. In the last decade of his life, he’d often say (of people not older than 75) “take these senile old folks away! I want to talk to young people.” And young people always came away from such a chat with something they could keep. But he was an exception that proves the rule. The slowing-down of the brain (in the absence of an actual degenerative disease) after you’re 40 is not a disorder: it’s physiological. Considering you will have learned about 75 percent of everything you will ever learn by the time you are eight, after 30-odd years of making neurological connections, if you have the odd “senior moment” at 45, you needn’t panic and suspect early onset Alzheimer’s. Accepted opinion today is that your brain will have been “slowing down” since your 30s but experience might have compensated for it until now.    Nieuwjaarsduik, Wijk-aan-Zee, 01 Jan 201...

יזכור This blog post has been on my desktop for eight months. The pictures are now several years old (2008). I need to share them. I've been at a bit of a loss as to how. Uncharacteristically (for those who know me), without words (apart from the occasional caption) is the only way I can think of. Because I have none other than those that these pictures scream. - AMB (Click on thumbnails to view full-size image) Main gate, Auschwitz I  Execution yard Crematorium Gallows built after the liberation to hang the camp commandant Entrance to Auschwitz II "Birkenau" One of the scenes of just some of the crimes Symbolic headstones

Growing up in the latter half of the 20 th Century, depending on where you happened to be in the world, it was often neither popular nor PC if you were saddled with a niggling identity that included the historically taboo epithet “Prussian”. Recent online debates on the subject have added it to the agenda in the minds of many, across the full spectrum of the political landscape. Today, anyone prepared to offer a cut-and-dried answer to that question is either a fool or historically illiterate. From a purely de jure historical perspective, Prussia was effectively abolished in 1932 and ceased to exist in 1947. Therefore, while many born after the latter date may claim to be “Prussian” by clear ancestry, descending from the original Prussian tribes has long ceased to be a prerequisite. The first time I heard the term “Prussian” was from my father who, as a liberal (reform, if you prefer) Jew fled from his birthplace of Königsberg to the Netherlands in 1933 and thence t...

Cemetery of Honour to the Fallen of the Dutch Resistance 1940-45, Bloemendaal, the Netherlands The Unknown Soldier We had no cause to hate him; A chap like you and me, With a mother, or a sweetheart, Or a wife, or p’raps all three. He’d trained as hard as we had, His orders were the same: Rout and kill your “enemy”. Obliterate his name! Then Mars put us on different sides Of that field so far away, And Fortune sealed that I, not he, Would fight another day. It wasn’t like a rugby match Where the better team had won. There wasn’t any glory And it wasn’t any fun. Just an emptiness that settled In a corner of each soul As all men breathed, and tallied-up The losses on the roll. No ringing-out of trumpets, But laments of sweat and smoke; And I still wonder every day, 'Bout the name of that poor bloke. They litter fields around the world Under headstone, cross or tell; Names and bodies cast awry By the blast of every shell. So, as we remember t...

In many countries, taxis are very distinctive, such as Germany where they are all a standard off-white, or the UK where they’re black (or covered in advertising) but generally look like an Austin Marina on steroids. In the Netherlands, there is no colour distinction, so for practical purposes, dark colours are favoured. While most taxis have an illuminated roof sign, “executive taxis” can often only be identified by their blue number plate, a subtlety that escapes many tourists and even locals. There are several obvious reasons why C or E-Class Mercedes Benz station wagons are the “preferred model” for taxi drivers anywhere from Amsterdam to Moscow, the least of which being that you can sit in the thing all day and not look like a question mark when you get out. The same reasons of preference apply if you prefer motoring trips to flying. The space is also handy after one of my quarterly visits to Sainsbury’s in the UK for Fray Bentos pies, Bovril or C...

I am an unsettled soul, At peace that I will never fully understand myself, Yet constantly testing just how far my search can go: Not content to just believe what others tell me But always to delve and ask and wonder why. I am an unsettled soul, For as a medium seeks spirits, I seek elusive Truth, And Light, and know there’s always more. Though as I see through the mists of duplicity, spin and lies, The liars do not thank me, those lied-to even less. I am an unsettled soul, For surely it takes less strength to live in the land of the blind Than in one where the many have been raised not to see: Yet when the lightning strikes or the dam bursts, Those who otherwise eschew me often seek my counsel. So let not my eyes grow dim, nor my hearing dull, Nor my wits feeble, nor my memory vague, Lest in the peace and the silence, I cease to be an unsettled soul!   - AMB