Attacks on women in Cologne and other places in Germany. I am wroth.
Burns Night. Shocked by traditionally misogynist "Toast to the Lassies." Wroth again. The dancing is fun, though.
February
Jan Ghomeshi trial. Wroth.
Misogynist American-sex-tourist-in-Poland blogger plans international blognic. Wroth.
A gazillion others also wroth, so Misogynist Pignic cancelled.
Annual visit to Canada. I learn to ski. Skiing is great fun, and for once in my life I learn something easily.
Pope Francis praises Emma Bonino. Wroth.
March
My pianist brother buys us a piano.
I think a lot about the Migrant Crisis.
Islamist bombings in Brussels.
Islamist Easter bombing of Christians in Pakistan.
April
Amoris Laetitia released, and I read it as soon as the embargo is lifted. What a day. Chapter 8 seriously dodgy. I tell my Toronto readers to set it on fire.
I am invited along to Girl Guide camp and do useful things.
Big Eucharistic miracle in Poland.
The Queen turns 90.
My podiatrist says my strangely deforming foot will never straighten out. I add a restored foot to my hopes for heaven.
May
I go on the Chartres Pilgrimage and am sorry until it is over. After two cold nights of roughing it under canvas, the modest Chartres hotel room--a bed! a loo! no queue for the loo!--is paradise.
I also lose a lot of weight, thanks to not eating sugar, or bread, or very much at all.
Someone brings up Women Deacons again. Wroth.
Polish Pretend Son comes to visit, giving me a chance to speak Real Polish before I panic and forget everything like I always do.
June
Brock Turner trial. Like a gazillion other women, I am deeply moved by the Victim Impact statement.
Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooting. Not sure it was Islamist as the Shooter was not just Muslim but gay. I don't write the world's most PC post myself, but I am shocked by the "Satan will eat his own" comments at other Catholic blogs.
Leslie Rasmussen stands up for Brock Turner and is shot down. I object to her concerts being cancelled. In the end Rasmussen grovels. I still object to her concerts being cancelled. I think Turner was as guilty as hell, but I don't need to take it out on the witnesses for the defense.
Brexit results. We are gob-smacked. Byłam bardzo zszokowana.
B.A. and I go on a weekend walking holiday. We stop fighting when we reach the little cottage.
The Archbishop comes to visit our TLM community. As you see, it was a red letter day.
I found a Polish reading club to which I am slavishly devoted until I go to Poland in November.
July
Pope Francis says something that shocks me so much I don't blog what it is.
I buy a Swatch. As I haven't had a watch in 9 years, this is a big deal.
Girl Guide Camp. I fuss a lot about Health and Safety and cook the best campfire meal I've ever cooked, thus saving face in front of a lot of teenage girls.
Islamist attack in Nice: Algerian truck driver. Horrible.
My parents come to visit, and my mother stays for a month or so, washing the dishes every day.
My sister comes to visit for a day or two. We go to Glasgow and visit two of the national cathedrals: Hampden Park and Celtic Park.
Munich shootings by insufficiently integrated New German.
Fishwrap leaks the names of the 45 Theologians, one of whom is one of BA's and my best pals.
Murder of Father Jacques Hamel in France by Islamists. I positively froth at the mouth.
Hired on (so to speak) by Scottish Catholic Observer.
August
Islamist assassin knifes American tourist in London, passing the cab of two Scots, a friend of ours and her mother.
Islamist in Strathroy, Ontario (of all places) is shot by police after detonating a device.
National Catholic Register fires Simcha Fisher. Young American Catholic mothers everywhere discuss this. I congratulate myself on my strict Facebook privacy protocol and having been brought up never to write or say ****, ***** or ****** in public, taber****, hos***.
Islamist "French national" knifes English backpacker in Queensland, Australia.
Catastrophic earthquake levels Amatrice, rocks Norcia.
Burkini fuss in France.
Paul Hollywood dunks a Jaffa cake in his tea on Great British Bake-off. It is a national scandal, which would be funny if B.A. himself had not expressed outrage. When in the UK, don't dunk a Jaffa cake in your tea.
A Pole is beaten to death in Harlow, Essex by a mob. Brexit is blamed, as if nobody has resented the Poles even once since they first arrived in 1940, let alone 2004. (Hollow laughter.) Anti-Polish sentiment in the UK is so widespread, there are anti-Polish rants on telly by Asians. I kid you not. Poles are white, so nobody points out how racist that is. There are 813,000 Poles in the country, but I never hear one on TV. Despite the incredibly right-on political correctness of UK TV, nobody is interested in making sure a proportionate number of Poles are represented in the media (as anything other than rapists, burglars and careless drivers). Strange, that.
September
Apparently Pope Francis told the Argentinian bishops to go ahead and give communion to the divorced-and-remarried-without-annulment. If I hadn't been so devastated by the 2014 Mid-Term Relatio and then shocked by Amoris Laetitia, I might have been perturbed.
B.A. and I go to Norcia. We ride donkeys, eat scrumptious food, drink delicious drinks in the main piazza and are glad that the earthquake hadn't knocked down the Basilica of S. Benedetto. I write two articles encouraging other people to come to lovely Norcia and restore its tourist trade.
October
B.A. and I go to Firenze and then to Rome. Firenze is hot. Rome is rainy.
I am very rude about the Cover Girl Boy, but mostly because he is made up to look like a boy prostitute. He even painted on freckles. Um.
Norcia is devastated by a massive earthquake. Nobody is killed, but that's it for the Basilica of S. Benedetto, not to mention the tourist trade and the relevance of my last two articles.
November
USA election results. We are gob-smacked. All my Canadian relatives, friends and acquaintances light up Facebook and do not take kindly to my declaration that the USA is not the boss of us, so why do we care? I have been away so long, I have forgotten to remember that the USA could invade any minute. I must check and see if my old sniper position is still there by Highway 401.
I go to Poland for two weeks and lose 80% of the sight in my left eye for a day. When I wrote that I go to Poland to be challenged and grow, that's not what I had in mind. Anyway, I learn a lot about traditionalist Catholics in Poland, and about tribal and political rivalries in Poland, and about Polish clericalism, and how sometimes bald Italian guys at European nationalist rallies look like skinheads because they are really are skinheads.
I see Polish Pretend Son and then Polish Pretend Daughter, so that is nice.
December
I spend most of December being depressed. I cheer up only after I write my Polish teacher a long email in Polish about how I think I ought to go back to second year instead of going into fourth year. Although this is probably chock-full of stupid errors, it is still recognizably Polish, and my teacher advises me to go into fourth year.
An Islamist carjacks a Polish lorry, murders a dozen people in a Berlin Christmas market, plus the Polish lorry driver.
There is also an Islamist suicide bombing in a Christian church in Egypt, and God only knows how many people have died in Aleppo.
B.A. and I have a quiet Christmas and eat our Christmas Dinner with a nice trad Catholic family.
I prepare to become a teacher of Ancient Greek.
No comments:
Post a Comment