Friday, June 08, 2007

Been in Moraira

Mrs. Lear and myself, along with Mrs. Lear's friend The Hospital Visitor have just spent a couple of days near Alicante.
Everything was simply wonderful, and we had several pleasant - and inebriated -meals with friends who live there.
As I don't sit IN the sun, but merely in the shade watching things go by, I have plenty of time for thought whilst everyone else burns.
The main one was that builders are the same the world over - whistling at pretty girls.
The second was that I thought it entirely appropriate that Sir Terence Wogan had become a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire.
Lastly, I have been reading a couple of books about French and Italian collaboration.
The French had a large number of people who were anti-semitic ( Darquier de Pellepoix, Bousquet) and actively helped the Nazis. French Jews were sent to Auschwitz by French policemen. De Gaulle, " We are one nation - we all resisted" made a cardinal error in not allowing the sins to be atoned. Still in parts of France families don't speak to each other.
The Italians were never anti-Jewish as such. Many French Jews hid in the bits of France the Italians annexed after 1940. Once the Salo government in Italy came to power ( Nazi puppets) the Nazis sought Jews in Italy - not Italians. They had a different attitude to the French. As one policeman put it about his superior " He was a party member, but it was not in his heart. I didn't expect him to enforce all the laws, just those we had to to survive."
I think this difference continues today. Italians bend with the wind, and survive. The French are inflexible, and appear to be going to have many more problems in the future than the pliable Italians.
Germany and Italy lost their Fascist regimes in 1945.
Spain only lost hers in 1977.
Anagram of the day: ISNT A TENOR = STENTORIAN

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