That & This

I had planned to read I Married A Nazi Officer, Anne’s book club choice. It’s about a Jewish woman who managed to get false papers and married a Nazi officer. She had a child and claims in the book that was the only Jewish baby born in a German hospital during the later part of the war.
But I was sent a review copy of Denis Welch’s Helen Clark: A Political Life. So I read it instead and began the review.Very readable.

Though he makes a major mistake early on. He says she went to a private school. Not so, Epsom Girls’ Grammar is a state school.

In the camellia bush outside my study window yesterday there were two small birds. I think they were rifleman though I can’t be sure. By the time I had looked up the reference books they had gone.

This morning has news of further bomb carnage in Iraq. Bush and Blair’s invasion unleashed smoldering sectarian hatreds that are going to bedevil that poor country as the American troops withdraw.

Starlings have discovered the fat ball hanging on the fence. So the wax-eyes have competition.