Deine Zauber binden wieder...

I am usually allergic to anything with the phrase 'flash mob' in the title.

But this is magnificent.


"Saturday, March 22, 2014, 10:29 am. Odessa Fish Market ('Privoz'). Members of the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra and Odessa Opera Chorus, Hobart Earle, conductor, perform music from Beethoven's 9th symphony."

I admit it: I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. This brought tears to my eyes.

From the ridiculous ....

Since a nice person whom I don't even know personally has suggested that I ought to contribute more to this blog, a brief piece of trivia at the end of the day.

Avid Mail reader that I am, I've been following "Macca vs Mucca" with gleeful disgust (or disgusted glee, whatever you like) and was duly awed by -- was it Friday's? -- impressive divorce settlement (which my favourite tabloid put down to Ms Mills' "bizarre velvet power suit" -- "bizarre" being one of its favourite words at the moment, coming third after "baby bump" and "trout pout").

What I found even more astounding was her announcement that she is planning to settle in ... dig this: Poland or the Czech Republic.

Apparently it's because property prices are so much lower in Eastern Europe than in Britain. Is she aware that people speak different there, I wonder?

Whether or not this is some kind of revenge (masterminded, of course, by a certain xenophobic Tory rag) upon all those Polish plumbers, cleaning ladies, hotel receptionists and general maintainers of a state of orderliness in a certain insignificant (and tacky) sceptred isle in the North Sea, I don't know -- I reckon she's just letting all of us who care to listen know how hard up she is these days.

After reading about her plight this morning, I was excited to find evidence of a very similar exodus in the late nineteenth century. Sheridan LeFanu's Gothic novella Carmilla (1872) begins as follows:

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvellously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.

So there you go -- nothing new under the sun. Britons have always left their green and pleasant land for lonely and primitive places where everything is so marvellously cheap -- just ignore the rabid vampires that come with the demesne.

Might as well go to bed then (though I'll probably dream of Heather Mills as vampirella haunting a picturesque but draughty Bohemian castle).

Night, night, sleep tight .... don't let the bedbugs etc., etc.

51st State?

I'm not sure which of the following is more discomforting, this:

So eager is the country to accommodate Mr. Bush that Parliament unanimously approved a bill last month allowing “American forces to engage in any kind of operation, including the use of force, in order to provide security for the president.” One newspaper, reporting on the effusive mood, published a headline that read, “Please Occupy Us!”

Or this:

After the visit on Sunday, some people expect to see a rash of babies named George.

And this, I don't understand at all...

“Nowhere else can you find such respect and hospitality for the president of the United States. Even in Michigan, he wouldn’t be as welcome.”

Even in Michigan, huh. Wow, that's saying something.

I think there's going to be some time that needs to pass before Albania joins the EU.

Under a leader, undoubtedly, named either Bill or George.

(From the New York Times, via Atlantic Review.)