Its 11/11/11 today which is the anniversary of the day the First World War ended. Civilians wanted to remember the people who had given their lives for peace and freedom. An American War Secretary, Moina Michael, inspired by John McCrae's poem, began selling poppies to friends to raise money for the ex-Service community. And so the tradition began.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Its a shame, we as a species seem to love going to war, anyway

The inauguration of Michael D Higgins as ninth President of Ireland will take place at Dublin Castle today, he is the geriatric hare that I mentioned in a previous article and he beat my prop forward to the line, good on him I hope he makes a grand president.

I was at the solicitor yesterday to catch up with how the house sale is progressing, it looks like it may be another good six months before it goes through, the land registry in this country is renown for being very slow to say the least, anyway it means 6 months of rent free accomodation :) and when the contracts are exchanged they cant remove the house from the market so basically both parties are locked into a sale and its up to them to get all the paperwork correct before I have to pay the final due amount. I shall defer doing any renovations until then, the house is fine, although cool until the insulation gets installed.

Its blowing a gale here this morning and the tv picture, through the satelite is dropping out so it looks liek a couple of the trees are in line with the signal and may have to be topped or I shall have no tv when its windy lol typical ehh when its windy and dreich thats when you want to be watching the googlebox.