Author Archives: europhilevicar

Prelude For reasons that I can’t explain the Vietnam War largely passed me by in real time. Which is very odd. Since it was [by some parameters] the biggest war of my lifetime; and lasted under various names for about three decades. As a crude generalisation it began as a colonial war as France, theContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 106 Vietnam”

Marking time Time goes faster as you get older. So psychologists tell us. It may be true. Last week was seven months since Joanna left us. [I met some people on the bus yesterday, whose name I couldn’t immediately remember, who were asking me about her. I told them that she is the first thingContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 105”

A trip to London Harrison Ford is in London this week. And so is Dolly Parton. Very unusually I was in London too, for 24 hours, but I didn’t see either of them. I went down to London for the 200th anniversary celebration of ICS [the Inter-Continental Church Society] The celebration, followed by lunch andContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 104”

Anniversary Last month, May 17th, was the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters, the celebrated raid on the German dams in May 1943. To mark the occasions hundreds of people gathered to watch a Lancaster bomber fly over Derwent reservoir, in Derbyshire’s Hope valley, one of the sites used by 617 squadron to practise for thisContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 103”

Back to Normandy We went back to Normandy with the children and grand-children for the half-term holiday. Last year we had a house in Montebourg, on the eastern side of the Cotentin peninsula, a town much knocked about by fighting in 1944. This year we were at Carteret on the west coast of the peninsula. Continue reading “Through a glass darkly – 102”

This is a list of blogs posted since starting out in March 2020, at the start of lockdown. It is more for my benefit than anyone else’s; in case I start to write the same thing again. {Elderly vicars have been known to repeat themselves !] NB  The first five blogs were not numbered. [00]Continue reading “Through a glass darkly – from the beginning”

Confession Confession is said to be good for the soul. So I must start by confessing that, although Susie and I lived in the 14ème arrondissement in Paris back in the 1970s, I never visited the Musée de la Libération at Denfert-Rochereau. And, more reprehensibly, although Susie and I later lived in Lyon for thirteenContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 101”

Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul My accompaniment in Istanbul was reading Orhan Pamuk’s melancholic, but seductive, memoirs of growing up in the city, Istanbul: memories and the city. He was born in 1952, so the dilapidated Ottoman city which he describes is more-or-less the city that I dimly remember. It was a city of maybe half aContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 100”

Back to Istanbul The summer of ’64 is a long time ago. As long as from the outbreak of the First World War to the Beatles’ first LP ! But now that we are about to go to Istanbul, on a short, three-day visit from Ankara, it seems a good time to recall what IContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 99”

We are halfway through our time here in Ankara. I continue to be amazed by the steepness of the streets and the amazing proliferation of high-rise buildings. To be horrified by the aggression of  many Ankara drivers, who regard traffic lights as merely advisory. And to be delighted by the helpfulness and friendliness of theContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 98”