Tuesday 8 April 2014

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Those are the words of Mark Twain when he was disconcerted to find proleptic obituaries in the newspapers.
Here in this little Greek Island we have just had a similar story. A rumour circulated that a Norwegian chap, a well-known local character, had died, and that his body was being brought back to the island for burial. The local gravedigger at once dug a new grave, and friends, foreign and Greek, assembled at the graveyard, bearing flowers and saying how sad they were to hear of the loss. Meanwhile someone drove down to meet the ferry, just arriving, and arrange transport of the coffin up to the hilltop village.
But there was no coffin aboard. Slowly the news filtered back to the assembled mourners. The rumour had been false, so everybody retired to the nearest bar. Long may Stavros live.

There are two further more general reasons for celebration today: one is that today is Buddha's birthday. That is to say, the birthday of the Buddha's best-known avatar, Siddartha Gautama. I think I've got that right, but what I don't know about Buddhism would fill several large volumes.
A good single volume introduction to Buddhism is that of Christmas Humphreys. Humphreys was an English high court judge: it was he who, in one of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice in the twentieth century, condemned poor not-very-bright Timothy Evans to hang for murders in fact committed by his Landlord, John Reginald Christie. Evans was, much later, pardoned. Much good that did him; they had already hanged him.
The other cause for celebration is that today is the anniversary of the death of Margaret Thatcher.

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