Barking . . . absolutely barking

as only the English can be at times. I made time to watch Two Men Went to War at the week-end. It is an account of events that one would believe could not have happened. But they did. A sergeant and Private of the Army Dental Corps land on the northern coast of occupied France in 1942 on a mission to blow up the Scharnhorst . . . with hand-grenades . . . and without permission.

     The paragraph I quoted in the last post from the book I'm reading made me wonder if a journey in the opposite direction made by a Jewish boy with crates of artwork and furniture would have been possible in 1942?

From the bookshelves 78 and 79

     Soon there will no longer be surviving eyewitnesses to the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the morning of 6 August 1945 at 08:15.

     Masuji Ibuse's powerful novel was also made into an equally moving film. Do NOT confuse this with the Ridley Scott movie of the same name and released in the same year.

From the bookshelves 64

One of those books I read before seeing the film.

From the bookshelves 46

A young Gérard Depardieu

played in a filmed retelling of this story of stolen indentity . . . not a problem peculiar to the twenty-first century. Natalie Zemon Davis was a consultant historian for the making of the film . . . and of course the book delves deeper into the documentary evidence of the story.

Meet some of the cats

 

     All cats are tabbies deep down. Yoda is a Himalayan as witness his blue eyes. He was the only short hair in a litter of five so  he's not pure Himlayan. We lost his medium haired brother Ghengis last year. That little picture of Ghengis was taken on a cell-phone about a month before he disappeared.

Yoda's head isn't really as big as it appears.
     We hand reared a litter of five fluffy white kittens from the age of about ten days after their mother was killed either by coyotes or a large raptor. Ghenis was the most ruthless at feeding time when he was a kitten. Yoda had large ears which twitched as he fed.  All kittens' eyes are blue when they first open at about ten days. When these kittens' eyes remained blue I began to wonder what breed they might be or if the males might be deaf as many white male cats are. Then at about a year old their coats began showing faint tabby markings beginning on the rear quarters. Yoda is now about eight years old.

     Leo adopted us about five years ago after wandering about the neighbourhood not finding anyone else to take him in. He and Yoda abide by the adage keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. Where one is the other isn't very far away.

     I know many people absolutely detest cats for various reasons. Woody Guthrie described  a brutal treatment of kittens in Bound for Gory. And just recently a boy in the USA decided that wrapping a cat with duct tape would be rather fun. The opening scenes of Whistle Down The Wind shows a sack full of kittens being tossed in to a pond. The farmers children rescue the kittens and keep them in a barn where a fugitive from the law has sought refuge. 

I think most people are kind to cats judging from the fuss that is made of Lionel in the bookshop. But then surely book lovers and lovers of reading are lovers period . . .

Restless night . . . again

    I have the very bad habit of reading my self to sleep. That's not strictly true because if I get to bed by ten I'm usually asleep within ten minutes. I should say I have the habit of reading in bed.This wasn't the case last night. I slept a few hours then woke about two in the morning, so I got up and . . .

    . . . watched the Ken Loach film Kes (1970)which was on during TCM's Up All Night period last night. If the film had been shot in black and white it would be gritty like  A Taste of Honey, (1961) a story by Shelagh Delaney filmed by Tony Richardson. But it wasn't, so it isn't, but it is like the book (written by a school teacher who also wrote the screenplay with the director and producer)  I'd not remembered the music, not like the theme tune of Whistle Down the Wind  (1961). The first impression, after not having seen the film since the first time nearly forty (ok thirty-seven) years ago is that a slow reader like me can actually read the credits which appear after the first scene which closely follows the first pages of the book. That I didn't remember any of the music just means that it is all incidental woven seamlessly into the film; not, as in so many movies now, dictating your emotions.

Ha,ha some of the Google ad-sense advertisements that pop up in the page after publishing a post are amusing. This post generated one about preventing bed-wetting.