under another sun

Another beautiful hot day. Hot in the rafters of Old Church Hall, and my brain mainly AWOL during my morning's work, so made off early to the gym and afterwards slunk about not doing very much in the afternoon other than eating ham and salad sandwiches, chatting a little to Sonia who was marvelling at people being in the sea, and saying in her country, Bulgaria, people don't swim much. I watched a documentary  Hitler's Children  about descendants of Nazi wrongdoers. Particularly moving sequences of Rainer Hoess going to Auschwitz where his grandfather was commandant. He was obsessed by one photo of his own father as a little child standing by a gate in a pleasant garden. On the other side of that gate was a death camp, a door into hell as the grandson called it. Visiting that exact spot was appalling. His grandfather could be snapping photographs of his children in paddling pools, driving toy cars and so on, while being meters away from chimneys spewing death. The...

Brighton Moments and a rare honour Today I discovered an email from a man in Poland requesting my date of birth. Turns out that he has selected one of my poems, which he found online, for the anthology of poetry published by the Auschwitz Museum. For more about that see my daywork blog . I think this is a real honour. Otherwise, feeling very middle class this morning, breakfasting at Carats cafe. I was with Anna, Anton the bairns, Sam and Martin, and their flame haired nipper Charlie, plus Lorraine with her likable singing and dancing daughter Beth and her similarly singing and dancing boyfriend Mark. Lots of knife and forkwork of greasy English breakfasts and general chitchatting. Princess Klaudia now zooming on a purple bicycle (with stabilisers) with silver streamers, wearing pink and purple clothes and a pink and purple helmet. Oskar pushing a car about, including dropping it down the front of my teeshirt and laughing when it appeared at my substantial belly. Anton, meanwhile, bein...