Bagpipes
July 26th, 2010 by Bertie
All this dashing Inspector Whozit saves the sweet young thing from the clutching maw of the Black Hand fiction is all very well–none like it better than I–but one longs for something not quite so fraught with tension when one wakes up at 1 or 2 PM in the morning with a frightful headache like costermongers quarrelling. It is then that the young master likes to dip into the Book of Revelations. Refreshing stuff. One reads about giant grasshoppers swanking around making life unpleasant and one has the soothing recollection that it is happening to some other fellow. Not to oneself, if you follow me.
But not even the roll of years and the dashed English Channel is quite enough separation to read the following with repose, even if it was inflicted on the French. After all, dash it, one has one’s human feeling. I am aghast. Positively:
On 10 July, a ceremony to raise the tricolore on the facade of the Eglise Saint-Etienne was held in the presence of Monsieur Daure, the new prefet appointed by de Gaulle’s provisional government. Tears ran down the cheeks of many of those present. Three days later, the British Second Army held what was supposed to be a victory parade in the Place Saint-Martin. A Scottish pipe band struck up, as another tricolore was raised. The bewilderment on the faces of the French crowd was plain. They had never heard the “Marseillaise” played on bagpipes.
Antony Beevor, D-Day: the Battle For Normandy. A book which may be all right for the likes of Jeeves, but a bit too wrenching for my old bean.
Comments (0)
Filed under: Brilliantly Lit,We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: Brilliantly Lit,We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
July 26th, 2010 10:18:17