REPUBLISHED...........                REPUBLISHED........... The 10 Commandments of iwmpop-mr le marquis-Ian W Mitchell   1.           Be aware of my rights. 2.           Be aware of my responsibilities. 3.           Try to live without troubling others. 4.           Try to help others, without obligations. 5.           Try to speak directly, even if it may hurt. 6.           Try to accept critic, even if it hurts. 7.           Try to be myself, irrespective of which name is used. 8.     ...

                         November!                         mercredi 31 octobre 2007                                                                                                                      ...

   Hallowe'en in Scotland....................... (not me!) First of all - why does the word "Hallowe'en" (now spelt "Halloween") have this  apostrophe   between the two "e's"...? English speaking people may, or may not, know the answer. It's because the word is actually an abbreviation of "Hallowed Evening" and people soon got  fed up trying to say that...so they changed it, then others couldn't spell it, so they  changed it again! German is "Allerheiligen" - occasionally "Polternacht" - since "Allerheiligen" is really the  festival on the 1st November - in English "All Saints Day" or French "Toussaint". Now you know when it is, what it means in various languages, but WHAT is it...? Well - the origins come from a Celtic "pagan" feast, designed to mark the passing from  "summer" to "winter" - long daylight hours to shorte...

Champagne and other things Champagne and other matters Watching a soccer match on the television last night, from the  Stadium at Rheims, France, recalled to mind one of my (our)  experiences as a youngish married couple. We were underway on one of our many "unofficial" trips, from Germany, and our aim  had been to go to Paris, from Berlin, tracing the steps of a famous German Landau  coach driver "Gustaf" (a landau coach was a sort of open horse drawn taxi of the  19th Century) Not having such a vehicle of that nature, we were doing it in our 23 year old Triumph  Spitfire, with a canvas top, foldable back when the sun shone, so that made us almost  identical to "Gustaf" except that we had a few horses more (which often didn't work)  but we did have an open carriage, if I went faster than about 90km/h, because the press  studs which held the canvas cover on were weary, and popped open at the wind force  c...